Re Banding

Is there anyone not already bored by this (or wasn’t last time or the time before that)? The anti banding lobby raising the same old rhetorical questions with little or nothing to back it up. Surely the efforts of these people whether based on any conservation concern or concern over animal welfare issues, could be better addressed to the real problems impacting on waders; such as loss of coastal habitat in Asia (and no doubt in Australia too), and hunting of them for food by people in many parts of the world (probably mainly Asia). This is one of the worst divergent of original email discussions. A completely innocent item about Buddigower Nature Reserve. Has nothing to do with waders anyway…… If everything goes off track like this, probably people will stop contributing…….. Whilst I am whinging, why don’t people delete the long list of prior messages and multiple [Birding-Aus] footers before forwarding again….. Philip —–Original Message—–From: Birding-Aus [mailto:birding-aus-bounces@birding-aus.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Ambrose Sent: Saturday, 18 October 2014 9:53 AM To: ‘Ian May’; ‘Peter Shute’ Cc: ‘geoff jones barra images’; birding-aus@birding-aus.org Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] Re Banding trip to Buddigower Nature Reserve take2 Ian, You have repeatedly expressed your concerns about bird banding on Birding-aus for several years now. In all those discussions you refer to data that supposedly indicate bird numbers are declining due to banding, leg flagging, cannon-netting etc. Yet when others on Birding-aus have repeatedly requested that you identify the data or photographs that you are referring to, or make them available, it is met with silence. How can we have a sensible discussion on this topic if you fail to produce scientifically-robust evidence in support of your claims? Even if the data that you are using aren’t scientifically-robust, it is still worth making them available to Birding-aus so that a discussion of the merits of the data and validity of the conclusions can occur. Stephen Ambrose Ryde NSW