Carl Jones battled with his
scientific elders to save the Mauritius kestrel. His renegade success taught
him that mainstream conservation needs a rethink
By Fred Pearce and Carl
Jones
I OFTEN clash with my fellow
conservationists, even though we have the same goals. I’ve always focused on
species, whereas most of the conservation community look at ecosystems. For me,
it all started with a love of birds of prey: as a schoolboy in rural Wales I
kept and bred common kestrels in my garden.
When I was 20, I went to a
conference on captive breeding at the University of Oxford, where I was
inspired by the ornithologist Tom Cade. He said: “No birds of prey need become
extinct – we have the capability to breed them and put them back into the
wild.” He showed a picture of the Mauritius kestrel and said it was the world’s
rarest bird but it could be saved.
I thought this was amazing: what
I had been learning in my garden could help save the Mauritius kestrel. I was
so fired up that I later went to the US to meet Cade and learn more about
captive breeding. The trouble was that many conservationists believed that it
was too late to save critically endangered species like the Mauritius kestrel.
They were doomed, and the money would be better spent elsewhere.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and
the International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP) had a small Mauritius
kestrel project, but were talking about pulling out. I was determined: through
a contact, I persuaded Peter Scott, an ornithologist and head of WWF, to give
me, a novice, the chance to go to the island in a last-ditch bid to save the
species.
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