I've been trying to post the following to OB but can't seem to get a message through so here is my posting.
Dear All
As a member of the team on the recent Guadalcanal expedition I feel obliged to say a few words in response to the recent comments on OB and elsewhere.
This expedition was an multi-disciplinary biodiversity survey of the poorly known highlands of Guadalcanal. The expedition team consisted of over 30 scientists from the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Zealand, Australia, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Taiwan, Japan, the UK and the USA. Also participating and instrumental to this work were the Uluna-Sutahuri people, the owners and guardians of this land. Much of the Solomon Islands are threatened by logging and mining interests and the Uluna-Sutahari are working towards establishing a protected area on their lands. As part of our surveys specimens were collected: ferns, orchids, dragonflies, ants, fishes, lizards, frogs, bats and yes, birds. It goes without saying that all this is fully permitted and endorsed by the Solomon Islands’ government. It should not come as a surprise to OB members that scientific collecting is ongoing, and now more than ever documenting biodiversity is critical for conservation (see many papers published in Forktail for example). In the last two decades there are very few countries in the OB region that have not permitted judicious collecting by natural history museums and universities. Sadly there seems to be a lack of understanding of the importance of such collecting for basic research as well as conservation. I’m not going to go into the general importance of collecting here, but will refer readers to some references. Regarding birds see Remsen
http://bit.ly/1O5LErc and for more on the general importance of specimen collection see Rocha et al.
http://biology.unm.edu/Witt/pub_files/Science-2014-Rocha-814-5.pdf .
On the status of the species in question, it has been classified as Endangered by IUCN and Birdlife
http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/species/factsheet/22726883 with the caveats that “ further research may reveal it to be more common” and “there are no data on population trends”. From data provided by David Gibbs an estimate of some 1500 individuals was proposed. Given the amount of suitable habitat within the elevational range of this species (900 to at least 1500 m) this is probably a low estimate. Several individuals were seen and heard (and recorded by Frank Lambert) along an approximately 2 km trail at 1200 to 1400 m. A quick look at Google Earth will show that the habitat at this elevation is undisturbed and consists of at least 20% of the land area of Guadalcanal (total 5,302 km2). With this information we decided that collecting a specimen would have no long term effect on the population.
The charge of trophy collection shows a lack of understanding of the value of museum specimens. The AMNH collections are heavily used by ornithologists from around the world for a huge range of projects. As an example anyone who uses a field guide or consults a monograph is a direct beneficiary of specimen collecting. All taxonomy is based on specimens, including for example the recent HBW taxonomy, for which Nigel Collar has extensively used our collections. As far as immediate information goes we can now properly describe the previously unknown male plumage and compare this to the Bougainville bird which will inform us on its species status. Also of interest, is the higher level relationship of the Melanesian taxa placed in Actenoides to the others found far to the west in the Philippines and Indonesia. With high quality genetic samples this relationship can now be elucidated by comparing DNA sequence to existing data (also obtained from specimen collection). Allegations of pseudo-science are also unfounded. I give the following two examples of specimen based science papers that may be of interest to OB members and that were authored by two members of our team
http://bit.ly/1RiFxjd &
http://bit.ly/1WAlBvn
Finally I would like to inform readers that to my knowledge no one has done more than Chris Filardi for bird conservation in the Solomon Islands. Chris has been involved in working with local people to set up community based conservation areas in critical sites for endemic birds for example the Imbu Rano lodge on Kolombangara.
http://www.kolombangara.org/imbu-rano-lodge
Folks if you really care about conservation you should be attacking logging, agribusiness and mining interests that are the real threat to biodiversity in Melanesia, not naturalist biologists who actively working to save it.
Respectfully, Paul Sweet
