I will respectfully have to disagree with you on the need to continue to take whole-bird specimens in the 21st century. I don't question the historic value of collecting, or the value of continuing to study existing museum specimens, but we are no longer in the Victorian era. We have so many more tools at our disposal now than the shotgun, and a large part of avian taxonomic work - perhaps even the majority - is now focused on vocalisations (which obviously require a living bird) or genetics (which don't require lethal collection).
I also think the argument that collecting birds = conserving forests is at best overplayed, and at worst a myth. I recall the same argument being promulgated to justify collecting in the Philippines a few years ago - as though collecting and describing yet another cryptic species in a long-list of endemics would somehow lead to a change in government policy in a nation largely indifferent to its natural environment.
In any event, isn't it time we moved the argument on from trying to find additional endemic taxa to justify protecting the diminishing fragments of natural forest on the planet? Isn't it pretty much a given that any significant area of forest in Melanesia is important for biodiversity? If you make the argument that Fragment A has Moustached Kingfisher and therefore should be protected, where does it leave Fragment B that doesn't?
Cheers
Duncan