Great article! I’ve had fun reading most of your blogs in this site, but this one is probably the most enjoyable!

I hope that you can return to your native land down under soon… as I’m sure it will include another excursion like the one you just had at Kimberly, and probably a few more wonderful blogs as well.

Until next time!

Yes the Philippines is a poor country but poverty isn’t the issue with nature conservation. It’s how adapted the ecosystems are to human influences and how great that pressure is. While I don’t condone the unsustainable trade in wild harvested animals I’m not against it as, in general, the “pet” trade offers a very small pressure compared to habitat degredation. When populations reach critial levels as they have with the Philippine’s cockatoo, wild collection should have already ceased and environmental enhancement of their habitat must become a priority.

Food self-sufficency is a difficulty for a poor and overpopulated country because land is need to produce food. At some point though the land runs out and then what do we as citizens or a species do? If voluntary population control isn’t seen as desirable then the alternatives don’t look too good. At a global level too rich counties like Australia can fool themselves into thinking that they can keep squeezing every last gram of rice/wheat/corn etc from a landscape with scientific improvements but eventually there is no elasticity in the system and the population teeters on the brink of destruction. It’s been a long time since I studied population and systems ecology but I remember that eventually all such critically balanced sytems collapse because they as so vulnerable to random events like the weather and disease.

i stayed in puerto princesa for two years and one of the most unforgettable thing is saw while living there was a pair of red vents flying noisily overhead. i can just imagine the wonderful cacophony they would have created if their population level could still form flocks.

i understand they are critically endangered today but 30 years ago when i was still in high school they were sold for P80 each in cartimar pet shops and practically every pet shop there had several red vents for sale.

it’s a national shame how people took them for granted.

i think it’s great the way australia is able preserve its wildlife but i guess in an impoverished country like ours wildlife is simply not a priority.