Letter: Cry freedom
I would like to comment on Annabelle Birchall’s article (‘Who’s a clever
parrot, then?’, 24 February) and Barry Riley’s reply (Letters, 21 April).
Parrots are renowned for their longevity. Yet the average life expectancy
of a cockatoo in captivity in the US is three years; amazons can expect
to live for five years. This is due to poor diet, disease and stress.
Having been involved in the rehabilitation of ‘pet’ cockatoos in Australia,
I’m well acquainted with the ravages that the stress of captivity brings.
I have seen birds that have feather-plucked themselves almost naked, some
that have chewed holes in their own flesh. The vets here call it ‘slow suicide’.
Some birds engage in continual stereotypical behaviour, an endless cat’s
cradle of dementia. Given the right conditions, many can recover and are
readily accepted into flocks of wild cockatoos.
Riley maintains that since macaws have been ‘harvested’ in the wild
for centuries, it is alright to continue to do so. He overlooks the fact
that these days bird populations have to contend with the insatiable appetite
of the bird trade (birds taken in their hundreds of thousands each year,
with an estimated 80 per cent mortality rate between forest and ‘pet’ shop).
Add to this the increasing pressure from massive destruction of habitat
and you have a recipe for disaster.
It is pertinent to add that whereas parrot populations could once withstand
traditional methods of hunting by indigenous peoples, nowadays their numbers
are decimated by the gun.
We cannot afford to be complacent about the birds’ ability to survive
the ravages of an exploitative humanity.
Marian White Freedom for Birds Melbourne, Australia
Letter: Parks and people
Fred Pearce (‘The green missionaries of Africa’, Forum, 21 April) accused
national parks of endangering the very people who can best preserve the
environment, and questioned whether funds donated to the World Wide Fund
for Nature (WWF) were being used to destroy indigenous culture. We wish
that Pearce had asked our views. The International Union for Conversation
of Nature and National Resources (IUCN) and WWF have a very clear position:
conservation is for people. Where national parks deny some resources to
local people to meet national conservation objectives, it is the responsibility
of government to provide the economic incentives which are required to ensure
that local people benefit from the park.
We have also been very clear that indigenous people have the right to
remain in national parks, where their presence is consistent with the management
objectives of the park. IUCN books contain numerous case studies showing
how the relationship between local human cultures and protected areas can
be a positive one.
In the specific case of the Air Tenere National Nature Reserve in Niger,
Pearce presents only part of the picture. Facts he ignored include: the
Tuaregs are no longer hunters because wildlife populations have been so
devastated that little game can be found; the objective of our joint project
is the sustainable use of the area’s natural and cultural resources; project
activities which benefit the local people include introduction of woodless
building techniques (because few trees remain), adult literacy classes,
improvement of wells, and training of rural health workers; the regulations
controlling human use of the resources are based on traditional laws relevant
to the conditions in the area; major investments are being made to demonstrate
mechanisms for rehabilitating the habitat (though we recognise that the
very limited funds available prevent these from being applied over broad
areas; and the areas where human use is most restricted were virtually uninhabited
before the reserve was established.
While the Air Tenere project is not perfect – few conservation projects
are – it certainly is helping the Tuaregs far more than it is hurting them.
Conservation is clearly in the interest of the Tuaregs. As John Newby, our
project manager in the region, says, ‘What future is there for the people
of the Sahel if the meagre resources upon which their lives depend deteriorate
even further?
Martin Holdgate Director General IUCN Gland Switzerland
Letter: Parks and people
Fred Pearce rightly points out that conservationists often find themselves
caught in a conflict between governments who, for good economic and ecological
reasons, want to preserve national parks, and local people, who wish to
exploit their environment.
But he is wrong in describing the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as
an organisation pursuing conservation strategies which exclude indigenous
peoples’ rights, are incompatible with the long-term interests of local
people, or are developed and implemented without these people. Had he cared
to look at the WWF programme in Africa, Asia and Latin America, he would
have discovered: Programmes in African countries such as Zimbabwe, Zambia,
Tanzania and Malawi, to help concerned local people to maintain, develop
and promote forms of sustainable utilisation of wildlife which will provide
income to these local people and protect the resource.
A programme in India to establish a rural community movement to protect
biodiversity of local crop races by using them for land rehabilitation.
Programmes in the Philippines and Irian Jaya to foster agro-forestry
and sustainable forms of coastal fisheries.
Programmes in Thailand to implement, with local people, sustainable
rural development around national parks.
Programmes in Latin American countries such as Ecuador, Colombia, Panama
and Brazil, to help indigenous people to promote their land rights, while
supporting them in maintaining and developing traditional forms of resource
use, which are the only ones proven to be sustainable in the moist tropics.
Programmes for environmental education in Madagascar, Zambia, Cameroon
and other countries, which carefully follow up our assessment, quoted by
Pearce, that ‘the concept of a Westerner carrying our environmental education
in developing countries is presumptuous’. These programmes are, without
exception, designed and implemented by locals. There are no ‘teams from
the WWF’, who would have to be educated.
It is useful to receive accurate and up-to-date criticism, but it is
misleading and counter-productive for criticism to be based on arguments
which professional conservationists have taken to heart and have been acting
upon since the World Conservation strategy was jointly published a decade
ago by WWF, IUCN and UNEP.
Charles de Haes Director General WWF Gland, Switzerland
Letter: Science trust
I found your ‘Mad as a catter’ diatribe extremely irritating (Comment,
19 May). The reason that the ‘populace at large’ gets ‘hysterical’ comes
down to one simple factor: trust. As a member of that ‘populace at large’,
I do not feel that the government has my best interests at heart. It will
happily let me die (as long as I am statistically insignificant) as long
as it keeps the abattoirs of farming industrious.
This lack of trust, unfortunately, applies also to scientists, which
is a sad indication of a change of attitude in the past decade. I listen
with increasing apprehension to scientists publicly denigrating each other’s
theories and results. This applies to many things relevant to personal survival,
from the greenhouse effect to this, the latest food scare: whether bovine
spongiform encephalopathy can, or has been, passed to our food chain.
As members of this unfortunate mass we have to trust our pessimism,
for to whom else can we turn?
JS Hargrave-Wright Barnstaple Devon
Letter: Is GIFT illegal?
As the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill goes back to the House
of Commons for the report stage, confusion over the legal status of the
controversial infertility treatment GIFT (gamete intrafallopian transfer)
continues. Virginia Bottomley, the health minister, has reiterated the government’s
aim to exclude GIFT from the bill, when donated sperm or eggs are not involved.
But this stance has real dangers for both patients and practitioners. There
are doubts about the legality of GIFT and the wisdom of leaving the resolution
of the issue to the courts.
GIFT is now subject to common law. This has some worrying consequences
for those who want to keep the procedure outside the legislation. First,
there are some ‘trespasses to the person’ (which include medical procedures),
to which one cannot lawfully consent. There are limited circumstances where
the law may regard a woman’s consent to GIFT as void, and hence the procedure
unlawful. The law holds that it is not in the public interest that people
should cause, or try to cause, actual bodily harm to others, without good
reason.
The determination of the public interest is a matter for the courts,
applying any relevant statutory provisions, whether directly or by analogy
to the common law. For GIFT the relevant analogy would be the new statutory
licensing authority’s regulations for GIFT using donated gametes.
The statutory authority will determine how many eggs or embryos may
lawfully be transferred. The interim licensing authority (ILA) now states
that no more than three eggs or embryos should be routinely transferred
to reduce the risk of multiple pregnancies.
Recent reports of the routine transfer of four, five and even six eggs
(some clinics acknowledge that they ‘occasionally’ transfer eight or more)
raise grave legal doubts. Given the known increased risks to the woman and
each fetus in a higher order pregnancy, a prima facie case for caution on
the part of a practitioner of GIFT is established. Add to this the existing
ILA guideline and its statutory successor, and I am persuaded that circumstances
exist in which GIFT is and will continue to be unlawful.
There is another sense in which the law of consent impinges on the conduct
of GIFT, illustrated by the recently reported experiences of Helen Pusey,
who underwent GIFT and had quads. Two died, and two are severely disabled.
According to her, the possibility of multiple birth following GIFT was mentioned
only once, early in the morning, minutes before the operation to transfer
eggs and sperm. Even the meagre legal requirements for disclosure of information
and advice about a surgical procedure do not appear to have been complied
with. Failure to discharge this duty may render a practitioner liable in
negligence.
English law requires that the patient be alerted to ‘a substantial risk
of grave adverse consequences’. The multiple pregnancy rate associated with
GIFT and the consequent risks of disability or death in the resulting fetus
or child are obvious candidates. To protect against liability in negligence
for non-disclosure, doctors must give their patients time for discussion,
reflection and judgment. This is precisely what the counselling opportunity
demanded by the bill seeks to provide for women undergoing IVF or GIFT with
donated gametes. Again, these regulations will form the analogy against
which the standards of a non-licensed centre performing GIFT will be judged.
The suggestion from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
that procedures for monitoring GIFT should be established in a voluntary
code of guidance prepared by the licensing authority is better than nothing.
But whether that will afford anything more than a veneer of protection to
women presenting for treatment services or indeed for participating clinics
is doubtful.
The apparent freedom from review vaunted by the Royal College is more
illusory than real. Faced with the Scylla of statutory control and the Charybdis
of the common law, it strikes me as extraordinary that the medical profession
should want to sail through the channel on the raft of clinical freedom
rather than in the more securely built, and more easily navigable Human
Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.
Derek Morgan Fellow in Health Care Law Centre for Philosophy and Health
Care University College Swansea
Letter: Penguin point
I was somewhat surprised to find you suggesting in ‘Environmentalists
urge Britain to reject Antarctic Treaty’ (This Week, 19 May), that the British
Antarctic Survey had built ‘a hard airstrip through penguin colonies near
its Rothera base’. Readers will know that prior to the BAS signing a contract
to build an airstrip in support of its science programmes, a full and ‘Comprehensive
Environmental Evaluation’ was undertaken. This was circulated internationally
in draft for comment and published in September 1989. It is available from
BAS.
There are no penguin colonies in the vicinity of the airstrip. Indeed,
vertebrate fauna is very poorly represented even by Antarctic standards
at Rothera Point. Skuas are the most abundant breeding and non-breeding
bird, with 16 nests in 1989. Ironically, the skua population has benefited
from the presence of the base with a 36 per cent increase since 1976. There
are no traditional breeding areas for seals at the Point and only in October
1989 was a Weddell seal known to have pupped on the Point (well away from
the intended construction site), forced in by an unusual lack of sea ice
that winter.
BAS endorses fully the concerns of many organisations to care for and
conserve the environment of Antarctica. The total banning of all human activity
in this region as promulgated by some groups has to be seen against the
possibility of using the unique natural observatory conditions of Antarctica
to address questions of global relevance (like ozone depletion, background
levels of anthropogenic pollutants, climate change processes and effects).
The BAS is committed to a concerned, responsible and sensitive approach
to its research, minimising its impact on the Antarctic environment.
DJ Drewry, Director British Antarctic Survey Cambridge