I've never been all that clear about what a "blog" is supposed to be ... I know the word comes from web-log, or a sort of web-based diary, but I've never kept a diary, and I’m not at all sure it would be terribly interesting to me, far less to anyone else! That said, I've found myself chatting with colleagues over the past few days about two recent events and thought these might be timely topics to 'blog' about, so here goes ...
Two seemingly unrelated things transpired here over the weekend, both with huge and long term consequences. The most significant from our perspective at the Trust is that the EU's decision to permanently halt the import of wild caught birds came into force. As most of you will already know, trade halted about 17 months ago with a temporary ban, so 1 July simply meant a temporary ban became a permanent one. More noted and noticeable for many English is the fact that cigarette smoking in public offices, pubs, shops and the like, is no longer permitted here. This ban follows earlier bans in Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and elsewhere (interesting bit of trivia: prisons, submarines, and hospices are exempt ... hmmm?!).
Now, although these two 'bans' seem wholly unrelated, they do in fact have some important commonalities. In actual fact, we have discussed public smoking in the context of the wild bird trade, so it's an amusing coincidence that both these policy changes have come into effect on the very same day. What these decisions share is the fact that they're both obviously very positive steps forward, and with a bit of historic and geographic perspective, both seem quite inevitable. That is, just as millions of people were being needlessly exposed to dangerous second-hand smoke, millions of wild birds were being needlessly trapped from forests around the world - hard to believe either would go unnoticed or continue to go on forever.
First, I want to address something about the use of the term 'needlessly.' For the record, I personally think people should be allowed to smoke cigarettes. For better or worse, I've smoked myself in the past, I have many good friends who smoke, and I don't think the government has a place in regulating individual's personal choices. So the smoking ban is - in broad strokes anyway - simply about protecting non-smokers from second hand smoke, not about making smoking illegal. Likewise, the ban on wild bird imports to Europe is not any sort of ban on bird keeping, it's simply the EU making a decision about no longer buying wild caught birds from overseas. There are of course millions of captive birds already in the EU, many hundreds of species are available for Europeans to keep as pets, breed, show, etc., and they will continue to be available for the indefinite future. Moreover, the ban which just become permanent will still allow captive bred birds to be imported from many countries which have adequate biosecurity regulations. So really these two bans are not about significant constraints on individual liberties, rather they're about the subtle refining of existing regulations, and the elimination of two long standing activities with real and serious consequences for human health and for wild bird conservation and welfare.
Ok, so now that we've narrowed that down a bit, I'm hoping to get to the deeper questions surrounding these changes in public policy. More specifically, I'd like to ask the question, if these decisions are so obviously beneficial and they've been proven to be so time and again, how could it possibly take us so long to actually get to a successful outcome? Although surely it was known to many decades before, it was sometime in the 1960's when it became broadly accepted that cigarette smoking had serious consequences to human health. Likewise, Australia had the great foresight way back in 1959 to ban both the import and export of wild birds. This history of course begs the question, how is it that it can take us more than four decades to make what are seemingly obvious decisions?
One aspect of this bird trade campaign which I initially found to be most eye-opening (and then later amusing) was the degree to which we were up against well educated people saying that such things simply could not be done, and that even if they could be done, they would never work. Our consistent but surprisingly ineffective response was always, "well yes, except for when they have been done and except for when they have worked." That is, the wild bird trade has of course been banned from many parts of the world, famously so in the USA and Australia, but also less famously so in most other parts of the world. Nearly every developed country in the world (including all the 25 countries of the EU) has long since outlawed the commercial exploitation of their own wild birds, with great success and almost no controversy. Somehow taking this logic and this effective public policy and making the reasonable extension to a broader and less hypocritical policy on the exploitation of other countries' wild birds was a difficult conceptual leap. And as it turned out, it was a harder sell than expected.
[As an American, I must hasten to add here that we in the States set what must be the preeminent example of being remarkably incapable of learning from other's experience of what works and what does not when it comes to public policy. Whether we're talking about the death penalty, criminalizing drugs, health care, climate change, you name it, we are uniquely unable to look beyond our borders to benefit from the lessons others have learned long ago. I guess I was naively hoping that no other country could be as foolish as we are, having to reinvent the wheel over and over ... live and learn I guess!]
But there was of course another layer of precedent which was potentially important here. Not only have prohibitions on trade in wild birds been tried in many parts of the world, they've also proven to be stunningly effective. When we first got started with this campaign in 2000, we had the naïve impression that our case would be greatly enhanced by sound science documenting the fact that these bans have been quite successful - they not only eliminated the legal trade in wild birds, but these bans were also able to reduce the illegal trade in wild birds as well. Somehow it seems the fact that these bans had been successful beyond all expectation was as inconsequential as the fact that they'd been done at all.
In the end of course, this transition has been glacially slow because meaningful change is always is, slow and painful. My sense is that, for both the public smoking and wild bird trade issues, the reason these changes have taken decades is that each required a long and arduous sequence of changes in public perception, and each step along the way takes time and substantial effort. What made this most obvious to me is the fact that I happened to hail from a country which had long ago banned the importation of wild caught birds. So long ago in fact, that in most birdkeeping circles, it had been essentially forgotten! When I first met with both non-governmental organizations and government officials over here in Europe it was immediately clear that we might as well have been from different planets - in the USA this whole notion of whether or not to import wild birds was a done deal, so broadly accepted it was no longer even worth discussing. Yet in Europe, not only was the trade still vigorously in practice with some two million wild birds being imported every year, for many, it remained inconceivable that such trade could be ended - to say nothing of whether it should be ended.
So, in practice, it seems then that we go from one sort of inconceivable reality to another with a whole series of steps along the way. That is, we start by assuming that things are the way they are and that meaningful change can not possibly be achieved, and then we wind our way down the path from change being unthinkable, to absurd, to impractical, to unenforceable, to difficult, to annoying, to tolerable, to accepted, to better-than-expected to ... how could it have been any other way?! At any given time, it may be that you can find people whose views fall anywhere along this continuum - and indeed a few rare American aviculturists to this day still think Americans should once again import wild birds - but eventually nearly everyone comes around. After all, it's not easy to find advocates of human slavery or anyone who would openly deny women or minorities the right to vote. Hopefully in the not too distant future, our passion for capturing and trading wild birds will be a similarly distant memory, and every so often we can scratch our heads and wonder, 'did we ever really take millions of birds from the wild every year?'
One can only hope, but in the mean time ...
¡ Long Live the Parrots !
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