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July 12, 2005
Tawny Owl Survey 2005 - can you help?
This autumn BTO are running a Tawny Owl Survey (15 August - 15 October) and are looking for volunteers to help.
It is a repeat of the 1989 survey and requires a single 10 minute count in the centre of a tetrad after sunset.
The survey is being organised by the BTO network of Regional Representatives (RR). To find out who your RR is use the links below or contact me direct at BTO. Just email your RR to express your interest and you'll be allocated a tetrad (or more if you wish!) to cover.
England: http://www.bto.org/regional/england.htm
Scotland: http://www.bto.org/regional/scotland.htm
Wales: http://www.bto.org/regional/wales.htm
If you need any further information do let me know. It would be great to achieve good coverage this autumn to compare with the results from 1989. Have Tawny Owl numbers gone up or down since then?
Many thanks
Dawn Balmer
Email: dawn.balmer@bto.org
Posted by Surfbirds at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)
July 08, 2005
Proposed legislation to tear apart US endangered species act
Legislation that would tear apart protections for our endangered wildlife may be on the verge of being introduced by Representative
Richard Pombo (R-CA), Chair of the House Resources Committee. Defenders got a hold of the proposed bill, and it is scary.
In the words of Jamie Rappaport Clark, former Director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and now Executive Vice President of Defenders, the draft bill "takes a wrecking ball to the whole Endangered Species Act" by changing its mission, disabling enforcement tools, and providing extensive loopholes for corporate special interests.
Please take action today to stop this bill in its tracks!
This is the moment you've helped us prepare for. We've put our allies in Congress on alert we've started mobilizing grassroots in target districts we've placed public service announcements to educate Americans about the importance of saving our wildlife and we've reached out to diverse groups that understand the importance of saving our wolves, sea otters, bald eagles, manatees, and so many more creatures from extinction.
The time has come for an all-out effort to stop this disastrous bill and protect our wildlife from extinction! You have sustained us this far. We need your help again today. Please send a fax today to tell your Representative that Rep. Richard Pombo's (R-CA) draft legislation is unacceptable:
Please take action today to stop this bill in its tracks!
Once you've taken action, we need your help to spread the word. PLEASE pass this on to at least three of your friends!
How bad is this legislation? It's even worse than we feared. All of the gains we've made since the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973 are at stake and accelerating extinctions would be certain. We've conducted an analysis of the draft bill prepared by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA). Our concerns include:
. The draft bill abandons the national commitment to bringing declining species back from the brink of extinction and recovering them to the point where they no longer need the Act's protection.
. It opens a giant loophole that allows legal appeals during every step of the endangered species conservation process. Irresponsible developers, timber and mining interests and other resource exploiters would be able to tie the process into knots and avoid any meaningful implementation and enforcement.
. It allows federal agencies to ignore their responsibility to protect threatened and endangered species.
. It includes an onerous "takings" provision which requires the federal government to pay landowners for the costs of complying with the law, a terrible precedent to set with regard to environmental protections.
. The proposed bill sets the year 2015 as the expiration date for the Endangered Species Act, setting a timetable for ending protection of our endangered species!
Don't let this happen. Send your representative a fax now at:
http://www.saveesa.org/action.html
Posted by Surfbirds at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
July 06, 2005
Taiga Flycatcher admitted to Category A of the British List
The British Ornithologists’ Union Records Committee (BOURC) has admitted Taiga Flycatcher Ficedula albicilla to Category A of the British List following the occurrence of an adult male at Flamborough Head, East Yorkshire on 23-29 April 2003 (sight record, trapped, photographed).
Taiga Flycatcher breeds across the high north Palearctic region east of c. 50oE (east European Russia) from the Ural Mountains eastwards to eastern Siberia. Its breeding range overlaps that of Red-breasted Flycatcher Ficedula parva between 50oE and 60oE. Taiga Flycatcher winters in south-east Asia (southern Nepal, eastern India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, south-east China).
Taiga Flycatcher, Flamborough Head, copyright Brett Richards
There have been only two previously accepted extralimital Western Palearctic records – a first-winter trapped on 26 October 1998 on Öland, Sweden and another first-winter trapped on 16 September 2002 at Klydesøreservatet, Amager, Denmark (Birding World 16: 153-155).
Taiga Flycatcher is treated as monotypic having recently been split from Red-breasted Flycatcher (Ibis 146: 153-157).
Eric Meek, Chairman of BOURC commented “With the two previous Western Palearctic records having been of young birds in autumn, the expectation was that the first for Britain would follow suit. That it turned out to be a spring male was a real bonus for all who saw this immaculate bird. Siberian vagrants are appearing in spring with increasing regularity and fears have been expressed in the past that this may be resulting from increasing numbers of escapes from captivity. However, our advice was that this is most unlikely to be the case with Taiga Flycatcher. It was interesting, however, that despite initial appearances, the bird could be aged as a first-summer based on the pale edgings to the greater coverts and tertials and it is tempting to speculate that this was a bird that was displaced westwards in the previous autumn and survived the winter on this side of the Eurasian landmass. Whatever its exact route to Flamborough, BOURC members were unanimous in their belief that this was a genuine vagrant and that it should be admitted to category A of the British List.”
The British List now stands at 569 species
(Category A = 547; Category B = 12; Category C = 10).
Posted by Surfbirds at 04:33 PM | Comments (0)