Penguins of the Fleurieu Peninsula: life, death and policy failure

One of the very reasons I wrote ‘Wildlife in the Balance’ was to help empower community groups with alternative narrative for wildlife conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More. So it’s heartening to receive a letter from someone who plans to do just that for the penguins of the Fleurieu Peninsula.

It’s also somewhat disappointing to hear the same concerns being voiced time and again: that research supposed to be for conservation is acting instead as an obstacle to progress. And that wildlife policy failure sets species up to fall at the very last hurdle before extinction. That’s to say, when animals are super-rare they become less significant to protect. Makes no sense does it? But this is the irony of what we are facing. Our systems of governance are the very opposite of what we need. It’s all because we don’t understand the importance of wildlife for habitable ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More.

This is the gist of the letter I received:

The numbers of Little Penguin left on South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula are down to 20 wild birds. All other colonies are extinct. The State Government has commissioned research that is not going to save the species in time. This can give the impression that valuable work is being done while little or no action is taken. Despite being in rapid decline the Government continually points out that numbers at Phillip Island in Victoria (several hundred kilometres away) are stable and increasing. Therefore, local extinction in South Australia isn’t so much of a priority. This justification is based on the IUCN red list(of endangered species). A list of current conservation status for all the world’s known species. The list is administered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the data is fed into by national and international organisations to be continuously updated. More advice.

Graham Philp, Save Granite Island Penguins.

A policy that’s set up to fail

The United Nations keeps a list of most of the known animals on Earth and identifies their conservation status – this is called the IUCN Red List. Over the last 20 years or so, countries have based their local legislation on this, which has been a good thing in general. The problem is, until an animal becomes rare, it isn’t a priority. For a while it might enjoy the limelight but once it becomes too rare, its significance is lost once again. Things that are too rare are put in the ‘too hard basket’.

It may seem odd to you that anyone would say: “Who cares if we lose a species locally, as there are plenty of others elsewhere” but that’s what this system allows us to do. And it happens all of the time. Just as it has with the penguins of the Fleurieu Peninsula.

Policy-makers have been wrongly led to believe that avoiding extinction is all that needs to be done. That is the one measure of a country’s compliance with international law that most politicians are familiar with. There are other biodiversityWhat is the definition of biodiversity? When we ask, what is the definition of biodiversity? It depends on what we want to do with it. The term is widely and commonly misused, leading to significant misinterpretation of the importance of how animals function on Earth and why they matter a great deal, to human survival. Here I will try to More measures but since animals are only ever considered ‘the icing on the cake‘, even they fail to protect wildlife.

There are only a handful of Little Penguins left on the Fleurieu Peninsula. But as long as there are 35,000 in a neighbouring state, then the ‘species’ isn’t going extinct. So that’s fine … right?

The problem is this.

The importance of animals has nothing to do with their rarity, it has to do with their abundance. That is the very opposite and a mistake of catastrophic proportions! Especially when animals are almost solely responsible for building and maintaining the ecosystems we need for our own survival.

When research gets in the way of progress

It would be wrong to generalise. It’s not scientists that are the problem, it’s how research is done. There is excellent practical conservation work all over the world. But in many cases, money flowing through a university, is tied up for years. That’s no good when you have a species on the brink of extinction and only a decade or so to reverse ecosystem collapse.

‘The world of academia is a strange, sometimes counterproductive and often sluggish place. As the old saying goes: “Science advances one funeral at a time.”‘

Isabella Tree, Wilding (2018).

This reality, combined with neglecting the critical importance of animals and a failing policy system, leaves little room for manoeuvre. Research is not (has never been) the answer. Research can only succeed if it follows action. The idea about what can be done cannot come from researchers, as it’s not appropriate for a few individuals to be making life or death decisions about entire communities of people and animals.

Life or death decisions about penguins

Think about it this way. Our future lifestyle, economy, food security, water and climate depend on the fate of animal life. What the people of the Fleurieu Peninsula ought to be most concerned about, is that the extinction of penguins is a permanent loss.

Without abundant penguins, whole ecosystems collapse. Penguins are important for a huge variety of reasons:

• They are one of the biggest sources of nutrientA substance that contains the raw materials for life. At a chemical level, these are contained inside compounds that are absorbed into the body and essential energy-containing molecules are extracted, so that energy can be transformed into other chemical processes that use the energy for living. More transfer(of nutrients) the thing that sets animals apart from plants, is that they can move. Some of the biggest migrations on Earth every day, are the movement of insects like caterpillars, from the stem of a plant to a leaf and back, before turning into butterflies and transferring the energy elsewhere. Large-scale migration of grazing animals and migratory songbirds moves More between land and sea (a process reduced by 96% due in part to loss of seabirds).
• Their presence substantially increases the abundance of fish in local waters (removing seabirds can reduce fish abundance by up to a third).
• Colonies create ammonia which mixes with ocean algae to create clouds, lowering air temperatures and influencing rainfall on a regional scale.
• They help rebuild coastal soil integrity, reducing moisture loss in coastal areas, reducing the risk of extreme local storm events, storm-water run off and flooding.
• They increase vegetation diversity and reduce the impact of bushfires.

Why would we wait for decisions of such incredible importance or place this in the hands of a small number of researchers? Unelected, unaccountable individuals given power over life-or-death. Even though it might not be deliberate it’s common to find research work being used by politicians as an excuse to delay taking action. This can result in scientists becoming complicit in the failure to find meaningful solutions to the extinction crisis.

Our whole economy depends on ecosystems and animals are the only mechanism for their restoration. Once gone, this potential is lost forever.

Local community empowerment and a change in human values

While looking for more evidence, details and a magic-bullet solution to a problem, researchers might forget that communities – of people and animals – are localised. Everywhere is different. Also, if you want a lasting outcome for nature, you have to take your ideas from local people. A group of 5-year-old children can just as readily come up with imaginative ideas of how to save wildlife. A few of those will work. It doesn’t take a researcher to come up with ideas. But it may take research to steer those ideas into reality.

Ironically, the best examples of [conservation] are in some of the poorest areas of the world. It has taken many years to stop western scientists believing that protection requires wholesale exclusion of people. When this ‘ideal’ is imposed on less privileged local communities overseas it is described as a form of neo-colonialism. The same colonial attitude lives on today in our own back yard. 

Article on Spider Crab conservation

We must stop procrastinating and start taking action to restock empty ecosystems with wildlife. Before this can happen we need a swift and decisive change in human values. This means changing the narrative. We must stop measuring wildlife importance based on its rarity and start valuing its abundance. And we must let people lead on protection with this real story about why animals are humanity’s best hope for the future.