Transcriber: Muhammed Yousri Reviewer: Denise RQ
Good morning, everyone.
This technology we are talking about today provides
staggering possibilities for conservation and research.
As an ornithologist, I couldn't be more excited about the possibilities
that we could actually, at some point, bring birds back from extinction.
But ornithologists are not the only group of people
that are excited about birds and bird conservation.
A recent survey showed
48 million Americans consider themselves birders or birdwatchers.
That is 21% of our population.
Americans spend 37 billion dollars a year on birdwatching.
There are almost half a million members of the National Audubon Society.
In one month,
the Cornell Lab of Ornithology had over 3 million observations reported
to their eBird network.
It's staggering.
It's a lot of people involved in birdwatching and ornithology.
You can only conclude people want and love birds.
There are many people that would be very interested
in having birds come back from extinction
or at least having very endangered birds have a better chance at survival.
Before we talk about bringing them back, we need to talk about what we've lost.
This figure shows the distribution of extinct species
by the order of bird in which they occur.
I want to focus on four of those groups.
The biggest group is the biggest group of birds:
the passerines, the perching birds.
We've lost about 70 species of perching birds.
One of the most interesting are the Huia from New Zealand.
They are wattlebirds which were basically loved to death by the Māori people.
They were used in their ceremonies and religious activities.
They used a lot of them.
One interesting thing about Huia from an ornithological perspective
is the difference in the bill shape between the male and the female.
People have hypothesized it provides the pair of birds an interesting way
of being able to forage together but on different foods.
Another group we are concerned about are the rails.
We've lost about 34 species of rails;
they are principally the flightless rails from South Pacific islands.
An interesting member of this group is the Takahe;
the Takahe are the largest rails we know of.
They went extinct early on as a result of climate change.
Later, with the coming of Europeans to New Zealand,
these birds were hunted; predators were also brought along with the people.
Pigeons and doves are a group we'll mention a lot today;
we've lost about 18 species of pigeons and doves.
The primary one we will hear about today is the passenger pigeon.
We've also lost about 19 species of parrots.
One of the species of parrot
I think most people in North America will be most familiar with
is the Carolina parakeet.
Carolina parakeets were very widespread
across the eastern United States all the way up to Wisconsin.
They occurred in large flocks,
and after a while, farmers viewed them
as a group of birds that were depredating their crops,
so there was a lot of hunting that was done.
Unfortunately, with Carolina parakeets,
if you shoot some of the birds, and they fall to the ground,
the others will come down to be with them, which meant they were shot as well.
If we were to understand bird extinction, we need to put it in perspective
in terms of birds that have gone extinct in continents versus those on islands.
87% of the birds that have gone extinct were island species.
When you look at this figure, it shows you not only how species have gone extinct
but it also compares the island and mainland species.
If we look at the recent species that have gone extinct,
it has to do with overexploitation - basically hunting -
habitat loss or alteration,
invasive species - cats, rats, snakes; whatever -
and disease like we found in the Hawaiian birds.
When you compare the continental species that have gone extinct,
they have gone extinct
principally because of habitat alteration or destruction,
whereas the island species have principally gone extinct
because of introduction of invasive species.
I want to take a minute to focus more on this idea of island species
and talk about some of our work in the Pacific islands,
specifically, the island of Pohnpei
which is indicated by the triangle.
Pohnpei is in the Federated States of Micronesia, just north of New Guinea.
One of the interesting things about Pohnpei is they have an intact avifauna.
This means they have one of the species
that used to be most common on Pacific islands.
They have one kingfisher, one white-eye, one parrot, one fruit dove,
one flightless rail, one fantail, and so forth.
Many islands have lost those components.
One of those islands is Guam, which has lost almost everything
because of the introduction of the brown tree snake.
We've worked on the Micronesian kingfisher for years,
and I can tell you, as I listen through the talks
and understand more about the technology that's being developed,
it could absolutely provide some hope that we could take what is left
of the Micronesian kingfisher kept in captivity
and successfully have them live and prosper on another island.
This has all been doom and gloom
- environmental talks tend to go this way -
but what if you could stop for a moment and said, "Forget the terrible things.
What if there were a possibility of bringing birds back from extinction?
What would that mean?"
In my mind, it would mean
we could enjoy George Sutton's beautiful ivory-billed woodpecker.
Why not just see it in the wild?
(ivory-billed woodpecker sounds)
We can see this cartoon of the great auk,
but why not be able to watch it in its natural habitat?
The great auk was found throughout the North Atlantic and hunted to death,
but it would be an incredible thing to see.
It is basically the penguin of the Northern Hemisphere.
Let's say there are possibilities.
How would we choose birds to bring back?
Today, other people will talk about philosophical, legal, and many aspects,
but I wanted to focus only on the ornithological perspective.
What would it take to bring back something like these Labrador ducks?
We would want to think about criteria such as what you are looking at right now.
Would it help if it was a bird that had recently gone extinct,
because it would probably mean
we had a number of individuals in museums to sample from?
There would be better genetic tissue.
We might want it to be non-migratory,
because if you only have one or two, and they fly away, you are going to cry.
Birds have amazingly complex mating systems, but in this case,
we might want to choose a simple, monogamous mating system.
Why not choose a bird that lays a lot of eggs?
You grow the population faster.
This is silly, but it's true:
if we were using surrogates, you would want the female surrogate
to be able to lay an egg the size she is able to deal with.
We do not want chickens laying Moa eggs.
The final thing is we'd want to think about parental care.
We would want to be sure, in a perfect world,
that the chicks would be able to hatch,
walk around, and feed themselves immediately
rather than having them hatch without feathers.
Who would benefit?
When the Cornell Lab found the ivory-billed woodpecker,
people were ecstatic.
Articles in the New York Times; Arkansas changed their license plate.
it was incredible.
Scientists would benefit as well.
So would conservation efforts.
Hunters and sportsmen could see some of their species come back.
Wouldn't it be cool for people in Hawaii
to have at least one of their honeycreepers back?
These possibilities I am proposing are complex.
They make my head spin, and when things make my head spin,
the best thing I can think of to do is to go birdwatching.
(different bird sounds)
Thank you.
(Applause)