海角大神

For scientists, should killing rare species be business as usual?

The debate over a rare kingfisher's capture and death reveals rifts within the scientific community over long-term conservation versus individual animal welfare. 

It鈥檚 a 鈥� rare bird.鈥� It鈥檚 鈥渁dorable,鈥� yet 鈥渃artoonish.鈥� It was 鈥溾�� in the words of American Museum of Natural History biologist Chris Filardi, who found one in the highlands of Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, last month, after it hid from scientists for more than half a century.

No one could say enough about the reappearance of the mustached kingfisher,聽Actenoides bougainvillei excelsus, especially after they learned that Dr. Filardi killed it.

鈥淭his was neither an easy decision nor one made in the spur of the moment,鈥� Filardi , confirming that his team had euthanized the mustached kingfisher, the only male ever found by scientists, after taking photographs and recording its song.

In his of the finding, Filardi lavishly described his field site, the Guadalcanal hilltops painted as 鈥渟ky island[s] filled with scientific mystery,鈥� and wrote of his lifelong pursuit of 鈥済host animals,鈥� species so rare that nothing can 鈥渇ully shake the legend and mystery surrounding them.鈥� His research focuses on biodiversity and conservation, trying to protect such creatures鈥� habitats for years to come.

Including the kingfisher:

When I came upon the netted bird in the cool shadowy light of the forest I gasped aloud,聽鈥淥h my god, the kingfisher.鈥� One of the most poorly known birds in the world was there, in front of me, like a creature of myth come to life.

Only four kingfishers have ever been recorded, none male, and the last was captured in the 1950s. In light of this, and local communities鈥� reports that the bird is not uncommon 鈥� just rarely seen by visiting scientists 鈥� Filardi鈥檚 team felt the scientific cost of releasing the bird was greater than that of for a flurry of tests, such as whether it is actually its own species.聽

Many weren鈥檛 buying the "kill to conserve" argument.

鈥淔ilardi鈥檚 weak justification attempts to explain why science trumps common sense, decensy, or morality,鈥� protested , a British bird-watcher and podcaster who founded .

Another sarcastically commented that Filardi had best revise his description of the 鈥渃reature of myth come to life鈥� to 鈥渁 mythical beast .鈥澛�

More substantiated criticism came from Professor Marc Bekoff, an expert on animal emotion, who, alongside conservation legend Jane Goodall, co-founded .

Bekoff represents the new field of so-called , which believes researchers must constantly keep in mind the welfare of not only humans and animal species, but individual creatures, as well.

鈥淔ar too much research and conservation biology is and does not need to be,鈥� Dr. Bekoff wrote in the Huffington Post. He has previously called out scientists who claimed their research demanded the deaths of , , and a

But scientists by the dozens are fighting back against the idea that occasional specimen-collecting equals harm, or even extinction. Over 120 signed a May 2014 in an attempt to discredit the notion that biologists collect samples indiscriminately. 鈥淧reserved specimens also provide verifiable data points for monitoring species health, distribution, and phenotypes through time,鈥� they wrote, an argument Filardi pointed to when his critics attacked.

Just as historic eggshell collections helped convince the US to ban DDT, he wrote, we cannot totally predict the future use of specimens 鈥� but we can count on their being helpful. And the death of the mustache kingfisher also had immediate benefit, he argued: unprecedented steps are now in place .

The kingfisher may be in trouble, he admitted; . Its environment may be threatened by climate change, which is not

the fault of some mining company or unscrupulous logger. These are threats聽from all of us who use petroleum and petro-chemicals, consume wood products, invest in extractive industry, or type on computers filled with metals dug from places rich in ore [like the Solomon Islands].