Red Data Books: How and Why

Abstract

First Principles

"How and why" is the usual way we put the words together, but to construct a serious case for Red Data Books (RDBs), the updatable volumes that document threatened species, it is simpler to make the journey from why to how. Moreover, the first and fundamental why is not so much "why do we need these books?" as "why do we need these species?" Without an answer to this basic point, the whole process of threatened species documentation is placed in some jeopardy.

In recent years, many different answers to this elemental why have been provided, the issue producing an entire branch of philosophical inquiry, as reflected by the titles of several books such as Why Preserve Natural Variety? and Philosophy Gone Wild. Despite this, of all the answers available, the only one I am comfortable with is my own, if only because at least I understand it and believe it. I set out my views in the essay '' Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in American Birds (42 [1988): 19-22). They are that the mere existence of species confers on us all an essential human liberty, that the extinction of species, by reducing the complexity of the world and our capacity to enjoy it for its diversity, erodes our freedom, and that when we fight to save species we are fighting for our basic right to enjoyment - not just of wildlife, but of life.

Of course, other things than species extinction contribute to the general deterioration in the quality of our lives. To lose subspecies, populations, areas, even cherished individual plants and animals, is to have life turned greyer, poorer, flatter. By and large there are too many such cases to lament or fight, and we shrug them off; but there has to be a line, and to me - and I am sure to many others - species is it.

 

In order to prevent the extinction of the species, the first and most fundamental step must be to identify the ones at risk and then review, analyze and organize all the data relevant to their conservation. This is the purpose and function of RDBs, which were introduced by IUCN in 1964. They are the cornerstones of successful strategies to preserve the enormous variety of life on earth. Without their dispassionate amassing and sifting of evidence, the world's conservationists and decision makers would simply not possess the information they need to exercise their responsibilities fully and fairly.

I say "fully and fairly" because, while the planet remains extremely rich in species, commonly rather few animals attract a disproportionate amount of concern for their well being. This is not necessarily bad, but the danger remains that, through public or institutional ignorance of other issues, these animals will absorb all the limited conservation resources of a country, to the literal loss of less farniliar or less attractive species. The RDBs provide the single most effective mechanism to counter this danger, since their remit is to take an entire group of animals or plants - birds, reptiles, corals, etc. - and evaluate them purely in terms of their security for survival, irrespective of any other factor. Even if a government authority or private body decides to take no action for a species, at least they have the information and the choice; at least another body has the opportunity to step in; and at least the extinction, if it happens, cannot be attributed to mere ignorance.

ICBP's experience has certainly been that its international bird RDB has become increasingly central to the planning and implementation of conservation in countries throughout the world. In Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Pacific, where the majority of threatened birds occur, there has been a major growth in interest in working to save species identified through ICBP's Red Data Book Program. In other words, the RDB actually works: it spurs conservation, it saves species from extinction.

The Problem of Subspecies

ICBP played a leading part in the development of RDBs, with Col. Jack Vincent working for ICBP at IUCN's Swiss headquarters from 1963, and producing the bird volume simultaneously with Noel Simon's mammal book, the first two RDBs ever to appear. The first and second editions of the Bird RDB (the second being produced by Warren King in Washington over the years 197 4 through 1979) both treated subspecies as well as species, since at that time the dimensions of the species crisis were less clear, and there was still space to consider subspecies. James Greenway's 1958 prototype RDB, Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World, had treated only 95 threatened species, Vincent's first (1966) RDB treated 190 and later (1971) 220, King's (1979) 290. Less than 10 years after King, ICBP published its evidence (in an abbreviated ROB called Birds to Watch) that no fewer than 1,029 species of bird are at risk of extinction around the world. To document each fully is clearly sufficient work, and grounds enough to leave subspecies, with regret, to fend for themselves (although in fact many threatened subspecies are sympatric with threatened species, and so can be secured through action to secure the habitat of the latter).

All the same, this decision need not be the end for some so-called subspecies. The fist step to be taken on the long trek to a completed ROB (if such books can ever be regarded as completed) is to determine the taxonomy and nomenclature to be followed. In certain respects, it is obviously desirable to stay as much as possible with the system that is most up-to-date and widely accepted, although of course these two characteristics are often mutually exclusive; in practice, it is imperative to remain flexible within the chosen system, and deviate from it where the evidence requires. Taxonomy is in a constant state of flux, and it is vital to keep abreast of new developments, such as the recent perception that the Rusty-faced Parrot Hapatopsitta amazonina may actually constitute three or four species, with several of these "new" species having extremely small ranges.

Conservationists clearly have difficulties here. It is important to err on the side of caution and allow specific status if reasonable doubt exists; on the other hand, to see scarce conservation money spent on a form that is barely differentiated from another that is secure, while much more distinctive creatures remain unattended, is always frustrating. Hence ICBP readily splits Banded Wattle-eye Platysteira laticincta from Blackthroated Wattle-eye P. p eit at a (because distinct in both plumage and habitat requirements), Guadelupe Junco Junco insularis from Oar keyed Junco]. byemalis ( on a recent observer's assessment of its voice, morphology and plumage), and Sumatran Cochoa Cocboa beccarii from Javan Cochoa C. az urea (because the two are utterly different, the problem being that so few museum skins of the former exist no taxonomist had compared the forms for half a century).

By contrast, ICBP resists splitting if the grounds are not in some degree convincing to or accepted by others, as in the case of the Ngoye Green Barbet Stactolaema olivacea woodwa rd i, which one taxonomist upgraded to species level in a new genus Cryptolybia woodwardi, or the Cuban (Hook-billed) Kite Chondrobierax (uncinatus) uittsonii, often regarded as distinct but whose skins are virtually identical to mainland forms. Indeed, ICBP's own RDB work revealed that the threatened Van Dam's Vanga Xenopirostris damii could well prove conspecific with (and even doubtfully distinct at the subspecific level from) Lafresnaye's Vanga X. xenopirostris, a perception that has certainly downgraded the bird in ICBP's priorities on Madagascar.

 

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