Peter Ryan, at sea in his natural habitat

Professor Peter Geoffrey Ryan, Director of the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology since 2014 at the University of Cape Town, was awarded BirdLife South Africa’s Gill Memorial Medal at the organisation’s AGM, held virtually on 28 May.  Peter is the only South African A-rated ornithologist, an author and co-author of many bird books, including on seabirds (see below), and an accomplished bird photographer.

The Gill Memorial Medal is awarded for outstanding lifetime contributions to ornithology in southern Africa.  The inaugural award was presented 1960 and to date has been awarded 26 times; only four recipients can be said to have concentrated their studies on seabirds.

The citation for Peter’s award says in part “He has made particularly important contributions to the fields of seabird ecology, marine plastic pollution and its impacts on seabirds, mitigation of seabird bycatch by fisheries, and evolution in oceanic island birds.  Peter has also led important work on the systematics and phylogeography of continental African birds, and on the effects of energy infrastructure (such as wind turbines and power lines) on land birds.”

Peter Ryan has also received the Gilchrist Memorial Medal of the South African Network for Coastal and Oceanic Research (SANCOR) in 2017 for his contributions to marine science and has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa.  He is set to retire from the ‘Fitztitute’ at the end of the year.  His citation, written by colleague Claire Spottiswoode (herself a recipient of the Gill Memorial Medal) ends with stating Peter “plans to remain active in research and, knowing him, we can be reassured that he will be more active than ever.  As a community we will no doubt continue for decades to come to be inspired (and more than a little awed) by his knowledge, productivity, and insight.”

Reflecting my advanced years, I am pleased to say I have known (or at least met) all 26 Gill Memorial Medal recipients, co-authoring scientific publications with a number of them over five decades.  Surely most have been co-authored with Peter, who I have much valued as a colleague on many island field trips and as a caring friend since his schoolboy days (when presciently I told him on a seabird island that one day he would become Director of the FitzPatrick Institute).

Selected Publications:

Ryan, P.G. (Ed.) 2007.  A Field Guide to the Animals and Plants of Tristan da Cunha and Gough Island.  Newbury: Pisces Publications.  162 pp. [ACAP review].

Ryan, P.[G.] 2017.  Guide to Seabirds of Southern Africa.  Cape Town: Struik Nature.  160 pp.  [ACAP review].

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 31 May 2022

Eric VanderWerf and Lindsay Young band a Laysan Albatross

The annual Ralph W. Schreiber Conservation Award of the American Ornithological Society, honouring extraordinary conservation-related scientific contributions by an individual or small team has been presented this year to Lindsay Young and Eric VanderWerf of the Hawaii-based environmental NGO, Pacific Rim Conservation.  The award honours extraordinary conservation-related scientific contributions by an individual or a small team.  The award, which consists of a framed certificate and an honorarium, is named after Ralph Schreiber, a prominent figure in American ornithology known for his enthusiasm, energy and dedication to research and conservation, notably of the Brown Pelican Pelecanus occidentalis.

The award’s citation reads:

“Drs. Lindsay Young and Eric VanderWerf of Pacific Rim Conservation are being recognized for the sustained success of their conservation actions combined with their publication, individually and together, of a significant body of research on bird conservation and the biology of birds (notably on the Laysan Albatross and Hawaiʻi ʻElepaio). Their long-term study of Hawaiian seabirds and land birds, combined with planning and execution of effective conservation actions, have helped to protect vulnerable breeding birds in Hawaiʻi. Conservation projects led by Pacific Rim Conservation encompass a range of techniques including acoustic survey and population monitoring, habitat restoration, chick fostering and translocation, social attraction, predator-proof fencing, and predator eradication.  Their diverse conservation projects on multiple islands have reduced predation on, and improved habitat for, multiple species of breeding Hawaiian seabirds and land birds and established new breeding colonies of several vulnerable seabird species. Drs. Young and VanderWerf are the authors of multiple scientific articles, book chapters and reports, and co-authors of a forthcoming book, Conservation of Marine Birds (July 2022; Elsevier), on the factors influencing seabird conservation.”

ACAP Latest News has featured the conservation efforts of Pacific Rim Conservation on numerous times over the last decade (click here), especially in combating the effects of climate change on ACAP-listed Black-footed Phoebastria nigripes and Laysan P. immutabilis Albatrosses.

The 2022 award was also given to David Ainley, well-known penguin researcher and Editor of Marine Ornithology.

On a personal note, the ACAP Information Office knew the late Ralph Schreiber (1942-1988) from a couple of international conferences and a field trip to study Great White Pelicans P. onocrotalus together on South Africa’s Dassen Island in 1979.  He remembers him as a larger-than-life character with a booming voice, and one who died far too young in his 40s.  I am sure he would have been pleased to know the award named after him has gone this year to Eric and Lindsay for their work conserving seabirds in the North Pacific.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 30 May 2022

Bill Bourne, from the Ibis obituary by Euan Dunn; photograph by Mike Harris

William ‘Bill’ Richmond Postle Bourne, MA, MB, B CH died on 31 May 2021, nearly a year ago, at the good age of 91.  English born, where he trained as a medical doctor, he lived most of his long life in Scotland, working mostly as a marine ornithologist concentrating on procellariiform seabirds (mainly petrels, but also albatrosses) as well as co-authoring results of the first survey of the United Kingdom’s breeding seabirds.  During his career he gained a reputation of irascibility, interspersed with moments of genuine compassion and thoughtful caring for others.

I first met Bill Bourne at an international conference for marine birds that I organized in 1979 at South Africa’s University of Cape Town -where I was then a junior researcher in the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology.  I had invited Bill, who I had known by reputation and correspondence in my role as Editor of Cormorant (now Marine Ornithology), a journal I started three years earlier, to give an address, which resulted in his paper “Some factors underlying the distribution of seabirds” in the conference proceedings, which I edited.  He knew that I had started my own career as a marine ornithologist studying African Penguins Spheniscus demersus and Bank Cormorants Phalacrocorax neglectus on Dassen Island, off South Africa’s west coast during 1971 and 1972.  He had the foresight to bring with him a second-hand copy of Cherry Kearton’s classic 1930 book ‘The Island of Penguins’, which without ever naming the island, was all about Dassen and its penguins.  The book contained photographs of massed penguins on the shore and in the breeding flats which still astound anyone who knows the island nowadays and how relatively few of this Endangered species sadly remain.

During the conference he surreptitiously passed Kearton’s book along the rows of lecture seats, getting every international attendee to sign it below his own signature and dedication of the book to myself.  I was then presented with the book at the closing dinner.  It was a wholly and unexpected gift, and one I have treasured ever since.

Photographs from The Island of Penguins by Cherry Kearton

I next met Bill at the ICBP Seabird Conservation Symposium and associated workshop in Cambridge, UK in August 1982.  I well remember our meeting up in the quadrangle of King’s College where we were both holding the meetings and staying.  He had balanced on one shoulder an ancient, disreputable-looking suitcase with broken locks kept together with roughly tied rope.  It seemed to fit his style.  Later during the workshop passed me a hand-written note when we were both chairing a session saying that I was “waffling”.  I most likely was, but needless to say I was quite disconcerted!  But at the same meeting he showed a different side of his personality when an attendee unexpectedly had a Tonic-clonic "grand mal" epileptic seizure, falling backward over his chair with an unearthly cry.  Bill swiftly attended the person with his medical knowledge and ensured he was taken to hospital, where he recovered well enough to travel home, although he did not return to the symposium.

Since then, we slowly lost touch as he moved back to practice as a medical doctor. Full obituaries for Bill Bourne have appeared in several journals, as referenced below.  They are well worth a read to learn of a person who enlivened marine ornithology in his unique way for many years.

References:

Bourne, W.R.P. 1977.  Albatrosses occurring off South Africa.  Cormorant 2: 7-10.

Bourne, W.R.P. 1978.  Correspondence.  Impact of human activities on seabirds, and their nomenclature.  Cormorant 5: 35-36.

Bourne, W.R.P. 1979.  Report of the Standing Committee of the International Ornithological Congress for the Co-ordination of Seabird Research.  Cormorant 6: 41-46.

Bourne, W.R.P. 1980.  Birds of the Sea and Shore.  Cormorant 8: 29-30.

Bourne, W.R.P. 1981.  Some factors underlying the distribution of seabirds.  In: Cooper, J. (Ed.). 1981. Proceedings of the Symposium on Birds of the Sea and Shore held at the University of Cape Town, 19-21 November 1979.  Cape Town: African Seabird Group.  pp.  119-134.

Cooper, J. 2022.  Editorial: 50 Volumes of Marine Ornithology, 1976-2022: the founding editor looks back. Marine Ornithology 50: i-ii.

Cramp. S., Bourne, W.R.P. & Saunders, D. 1974.  The Seabirds of Britain and Ireland.  London: Williams Collins Sons & Co.  287 pp.

Croxall, J.P., Evans, P.G.H. & Schreiber, R.W. (Ed). 1984.  Status and conservation of the World's Seabirds. Based on the Proceedings of the ICBP Seabird Conservation Symposium, Cambridge, August 1982.  Cambridge, International Council for Bird Preservation.  778 pp.

Dunn, E. 2022.  William (Bill) Richmond Postle Bourne, MA, MB, B CH, MBOU (1930–2021).  Ibis 164: 631-633.

Kearton, C. 1930.  The Island of Penguins.  London: Longmans Green & Co.  223 pp.

Tasker, M. 2021.  W.R.P. Bourne 1930-2021. Seabird 123-125.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 27 May 2022

Hawaiian Petrel chick: at risk to feral cats; photograph by Andre Raine

Scott Loss (Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, USA) and colleagues have published  a review of the global literature on impacts on wildlife by unowned (including feral) domestic cats Felis catus in the Journal of Animal Ecology.  “Nearly half of studies evaluated cat impacts in non-continental areas, reflecting human introductions of cats and establishment of feral populations on many oceanic islands worldwide.”  They find little or no positive effects of controversial TNR (Trap Neuter Release) programmes on wildlife; a finding relevant to the situation pertaining on some inhabited islands with burrowing seabird populations (such as in Hawaii).

The paper’s abstract follows:

“1. A vast global literature documents that free-roaming domestic cats (Felis catus) have substantial negative effects on wildlife, including through predation, fear, disease, and competition-related impacts that have contributed to numerous wildlife extinctions and population declines worldwide. However, no study has synthesized this literature on cat impacts on wildlife to evaluate its overarching biases and major gaps.
2. To direct future research and conservation related to cat impacts on wildlife, we conducted a global literature review that entailed evaluation and synthesis of patterns and gaps in the literature related to the geographic context, methods, and types of impacts studied.
3. Our systematic literature search compiled 2,245 publications. We extracted information from 332 of these meeting inclusion criteria designed to ensure the relevance of studies analyzed.
4. This synthesis of research on cat impacts on wildlife highlights a focus on oceanic  slands, Australia, Europe, and North America, and on rural areas, predation, impacts of unowned cats, and impacts at population and species levels. Key research advances needed to better understand and manage cat impacts include more studies in underrepresented, highly biodiverse regions (Africa, Asia, South America), on cat impacts other than predation, and on methods designed to reduce impacts on wildlife.
5. The identified areas of needed research into cat impacts on wildlife will be critical to further clarifying the role of cats in global wildlife declines and to implementing science driven policy and management that benefit conservation efforts.”

With thanks to Janine Dunlop, Niven Librarian, FitzPatrick Institute, University of Cape Town.

Reference:

Loss, S.R., C., Boughton, B., Cady, S.M., Londe, D.W., McKinney, C., O’Connell, T.J., Riggs, G.J. & Robertson, E.P. 2022.  Review and synthesis of the global literature on domestic cat impacts on wildlife.  Journal of Animal EcologyJournal of Animal Ecology doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13745.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 26 May 2022