Heard late one night recently during a talkback session on a fading mainland radio station (I think 7CC?), a caller talking about opposition to coal seem gas extraction. He stated “it was well known that activists were responsible for releasing captive bred Black-throated Finches into the wild at Brimblebox, to reinforce arguments for protection”. Has anyone on the list heard details and is there any truth to this?
Ian
St Helens, Tasmania
Grahame Rogers wrote:
> See the email from Bimblebox Nature Refuge below. The issue of mining > in a Nature Refuge calls for a strong response. > > Grahame Rogers| Convenor > > BirdLife Southern Queensland > 44 Emu Creek Road, Crows Nest, QLD 4355 > T07 4698 1727 > gwrogers@bigpond.com | > birdlife.org.au http://birdlife.org.au > > ABN 75 149 124 744 > > Hello everyone > The heat is on > When they are scared, they lie! > I have just heard the > > http://blogs.abc.net.au/queensland/2012/05/clive-palmer-showman-or-savvy.html?site=brisbane&program=612_morning > > > podcast (go to 19min and 20”) and I am outraged and amazed of how > many lies Palmer can pack up in such a short time! > > We were ready to dismiss it as ‘Palmer’s usual lies’ to obtain what he > wants, that is the Mining Lease, so by bad mouthing Bimblebox yet > again (he has done it before) ppl will start to believe in the lie, > thus giving him the ‘social licence’ to destroy it. The problem is > that the perception that ppl will have of Bimblebox now could change. > > Paola > > > =============================== > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, > send the message: > unsubscribe > (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) > to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au > > http://birding-aus.org > =============================== > ===============================
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If you are referring to the name of the mine then see http://www.waratahcoal.com/china-first-coal-project.htm and http://www.smh.com.au/business/billionaires-china-first-qld-coal-mine-move-20090527-bn4i.html for two of many that Google finds.
Mike Owen Sunshine Coast
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I’m very interested to hear where these rumours actually came from. Is there any record of this allegation being made in a public media forum anywhere?
James O’Connor Head of Research BirdLife Australia
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Very off-topic but I wonder how the dynamics of the debate over this mine would change if the broad community knew that the real name of the proposed mine is “China First”.
Tom
Hi Peter, to be honest I know very little about aviculture so that isn’t what I meant. The northern subspecies doesn’t have the white rump though, and bird breeders often aim for mutations so I would expect that to source a bunch of wild type southern subspecies birds to release wouldn’t be straightforwards.
I also wonder even if the birds were released from captivity, how that would be any different to Regent Honeyeaters in Chiltern? Would the finches be somehow less worth of protection? I sincerely doubt the claims have any truth though, just more rumour mongering to discredit justifiable opposition to a nature reserve being destroyed.
Cheers, Chris
Sent from my iPhone
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Chris Sanderson mentioned that they would have to be “wild-type Black-throated Finches with white rumps”, implying, I assume, that these aren’t as readily available.
Peter Shute
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I am sure Black-throated Finches are readily available in avicultural circles – where people are probably still calling them ‘Blackhearts’.
Certainly when I was a kid they were often seen in bird-dealers’ shops and stalls. I have no idea what is paid for a pair these days.
Anthea Fleming
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Hi Ian,
I’m sure you have already guessed this but I’d say the caller on your talkback show was horribly misinformed. For starters, Maureen Cooper, who originally saw the birds, is a very upstanding conservationist and highly skilled birder who has been doing bird surveys for the Atlas and the Queensland Wader Study Group for a very long time. As you have discovered her record was accepted as reliable (of course), and the birds were of the southern subspecies, which is protected as Endangered (hence the problem for the mine). The area is well within the former range of the birds. In terms of “unscrupulous conservationists” releasing the birds, I see a few issues with this. The first is sourcing enough wild-type Black-throated Finches with white rumps to release. The second is timing this release to coincide with an independent bird expert arriving to do surveys. And finally there is the silly idea that the birds would stay in one place and survive long enough to actually be seen. The coincidences pile up to a mound of…well something about the accusation stinks anyway. For me this has all the rhetoric of the incident that earned Orange-bellied Parrots the moniker “Trumped-up Corella”. I certainly hope no birder will give the lies being told any credence, the job of saving Bimblebox Nature Refuge is already hard enough as it is.
Regards, Chris
Hello Peter and Paul
Not sure about DNA and banding analysis but, I would be interested to find more about the Brimblebox discovery of Black-throated Finch? What sub species has been located there? Under what circumstances and who found them? How close is this discovery to the previously expected population?
Does anyone know of a published reference to the Brimblebox find?
This morning I had a look for information about australian distribution and captive collections of Black-throated Finch and found this link interesting.
See: http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/publicspecies.pl?taxon_id=64447#australian_distribution
Specifically it says
Land Tenure of Populations
Records of the Black-throated Finch (southern) in northern Queensland have been mainly from leasehold or freehold land. Near Townsville, the subspecies has also been reported on council and Commonwealth Department of Defence land, with a few records on a Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service nature refuge at Serpentine Lagoon (BTF Recovery Team 2004). There are four areas dedicated as Nature Refuges for the Black-throated Finch (southern) in the Townsville region: Upper Sleeper Log Creek, Ollera Creek, Stuart Creek and Oak Valley (Townsville Bulletin 2008).
Records of the Black-throated Finch (southern) from central and southern Queensland during the past 20 years have been from either roadsides or private land (BTF Recovery Team 2004).
Captive populations The Black-throated Finch (southern) is popular with aviculturists, and breeds readily in captivity. In the early 1990s, it was estimated that approximately 5000 birds were being held in private collections (Garnett 1993; Garnett & Crowley 2000).
At the species level, captive populations of the Black-throated Finch are maintained at Auckland Zoological Park in New Zealand, Zoologico De Santillana Del Mar in Spain, Attica Zoological Park in Greece, Frankfurt Zoo in Germany, Budapest Zoological and
Regards
Ian
St Helens ===============================
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Ian,
Have the Bimblebox finches been banded? It sounds like a variation of the “captive bred” Peregrine Falcon conspiracy theory in pigeon fancier circles.
Most likely, though, it’s Clive Palmer spreading rumours via the usual channels to discredit his opponents; I’m surprised that the CIA didn’t rate a mention.
If there was proof that this had happened then surely we’d have heard about it from Clive Palmer. If there’s no proof then how did this story start -someone saw something suspicious, or someone just thought up a good story?
Are Black-throated Finches commonly kept in captivity so that someone could do this? And could a captured bird be identified as released, either by appearance or by DNA testing? If so then there’s so much money available from interested parties to do so that surely it would have been done by now.
Peter Shute
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