B.B.Call? Don't Bug the Animals?

At the same time as Sun Yuan-hsun is putting radio transmitters on tawny fish owls and using the signals to track them, many other wild animals are running through the mountains and forests carrying transmitters on their bodies, just as people in Taipei carry mobile phones and pagers.

In August this year, satellite transmitters were attached to marine turtles on Penghu; three years ago, a Formosan black bear was released into Yushan National Park wearing a radio collar; and the squirrels scampering through the grass and up and down the tall tropical trees of Taipei Botanical Garden have been kitted out with modern high-tech products for several years now.

To research the Formosan Reeve's muntjac, the National Pingtung Polytechnic Institute set up receiving stations and amplifiers in the mountains, to enable researchers to locate the muntjacs they had fitted with transmitters.

One might think that the more wild animals are wearing transmitters, the happier everyone should be, because the signal they are sending out is that people in Taiwan care about the ecology. But we should realize that they also transmit another signal.

"The sight of a moose... wearing a great fluorescent plastic necklace with an electronic tattletale pendant is an embarrassment to humankind, an indignity to both man and beast. If such an animal needs to be observed night and day, why not extend the spirit of 'fair chase' and have somebody go out, night and day, and observe it?" These biting words appeared in the American magazine Field and Stream, in an article which seemed to be declaring war on animal researchers.

Putting a collar on a bird or hanging a radio round a black bear's neck really can help us to investigate animals' biology and to understand their movements and distribution, and only by increasing their knowledge of nature can humans take the correct action to protect and manage animal resources.

But it cannot be denied either that just as people who wear pagers all day put themselves under stress and end up with stomach ulcers, radio transmitters can also harm animals in new ways.

Sun Yuan-hsun, who has been researching birds for over a decade, says that researchers have discovered female birds on their nests spending all their time trying to peck off their transmitters. The birds lost interest in looking for food, so that their chicks suffered retarded growth or even died.

Spoiling the view?

In America, researchers have also been accused of disturbing bears' hibernation just to check whether radio collars were still working; under the tightly-buckled collars, the bears' necks had been rubbed red and raw.

Particularly in European and American countries, which have led the way in ecological research, birdwatchers are overjoyed to see birds' beauty through their binoculars. But if they see that the birds have soulless modern high-tech transmitters attached to them, they feel that this ruins the scene. What's more, when humans become prisoners of pagers they do so of their own accord, but the transmitters on animals' bodies are forced on them.

Apart from radio transmitters, the many other instruments increasingly used to study wild animals also all disturb them to some degree.

For instance, because of poor visibility at night, Sun Yuan-hsun has to observe tawny fish owls through an image intensifier, which detects the birds' movement and then photographs them. Although Sun waited until the owls' eggs were hatched before setting up his equipment, so that the adult birds would not abandon the nest, the flashes of infra-red light emitted by the image intensifier may still startle and disturb the birds and so affect the owlets' rearing.

Often empty-handed

In fact, researchers are not unaware of the effects their work may have, and for many of them this is a constant worry. This is one of the reasons why Sun Yuan-hsun's research has progressed so slowly.

To avoid injuring the birds, he can only use soft, thin wire to attach the transmitters to their backs. After going to all the trouble of catching tawny fish owls, attaching transmitters and then releasing them, the birds often break the wire with their beaks, and at one point three owls in succession pecked off their transmitters. Fortunately the transmitters, which cost NT$7-8000 each, were not damaged, and Sun was able to use their signals to find them again.

But would it be possible to do without any scientific instruments at all?

"Of course it would, if our society were prepared to pay a higher price for nature conservation," says Sun Yuan-hsun. If we relied on human effort alone, research would take even longer, and unless people are in no hurry to better understand and protect wildlife, then conservation may be delayed and the cost in lost wildlife may be even greater.

To take the Formosan black bear as an example, if one did not use transmitters to track them, one would need to spend money to hire a large number of aboriginals to track them night and day. With rare animals, which cannot simply be found whenever we feel like it, the effort required may be even greater. Of course, one could say that if we want to understand animals we should pay a price, but the funds which Taiwan makes available for ecological research are limited, and researchers often have to scrape together the budgets to hire research assistants as best they can. Much of the research done by academic institutions relies on the support of biology undergraduates.

Where's that boar?

Especially in Taiwan, with its many high mountains and deep valleys, it is only by using technology that one can increase the efficiency and reduce the dangers of research work.

Wu Hsing-ju, a research assistant at National Taiwan Normal University's biology department who is researching the Formosan wild boar, says that in Taiwan's damp, rainy mountains, the forest understorey is thick with shrubs and tall grasses, and often researchers might be within two meters of a wild boar and still not know it is there. It is not like in the Americas or Africa, where the animals one is researching are at least somewhat easier to find, and (funds permitting) researchers just have to follow the wild boar herds in a helicopter and shoot tranquilizer darts to get hold of them.

The vegetation of the western United States is sparser and the flora of the virgin forests where researchers may find tree-dwelling raptors is less diverse than in Taiwan. Three years ago the American professor who was Sun Yuan-hsun's advisor on his master's program, imagining the environment in Taiwan to be similar to the United States, expressed the hope that Sun would find a few more nests in Taiwan to research.

Not long afterwards the professor came to Taiwan with his whole family, and Sun Yuan-hsun took them along the island's steep and winding mountain roads to visit places where raptors might be seen. They all nervously demanded that Sun should concentrate on driving and not chat with anybody in the van. It was only then that they realized the natural obstacles to doing wildlife research in Taiwan.

Not a video game!

In America, conservationist groups attacked the measures taken to protect the California condor, which included attaching radio transmitters to the birds and hatching their eggs artificially in incubators. They said "Condors are not video games for people to play with, we shouldn't blindfold them, control them, spy on them or fix radio listening devices to them..." But at the same time as this appeal full of moral love was being made, the condors continued to slide towards extinction at the hands of man.

In the end a few researchers, braving this criticism, continued their breeding program and only thus stabilized the California condor's numbers. The critical voices then temporarily died down.

Although technological aids to ecological research have their risks, if the alternative is complete inaction, then to speak of conservation just becomes empty talk.

Of course, external pressure also has its positive side, and scientists also consider animals' rights and have always been trying to improve the equipment they use so as to minimize any harm to animals. For instance, in the past regulations demanded that transmitters should not weigh more than 5% of the animal's body weight, and today this has been reduced to 3% to prevent the devices being too great a burden and obstructing the animals' movements. Recently, people have also suggested developing transmitters which will degrade and disappear within a short time, which would eliminate the need for animals to be forced to carry on wearing transmitters for the rest of their lives after the research has finished, like wedding rings.

Feeding human vanity?

As yet there have been no cases of people in Taiwan being criticized for using technology to assist biological research. But the pace of ecological research has been stepped up in Taiwan over the last decade, and animal rights consciousness has also been growing. In the past, conservationists have accused academics of using wild animals caught by hunters for their research, and not long ago there was a case of a severely ill orang-utan which died in a wildlife halfway house set up by researchers, where a conservation group demanded that the researchers should take responsibility for the animal's death. Perhaps there is no pleasing some people, yet only by taking even greater care can biologists reduce unnecessary harm to wild animals.

Field and Stream's article observed that it seems that human beings often hastily stick their noses into areas which they do not understand well, but apart from feeding their own vanity do not achieve very much. But it would appear that wildlife researchers have little choice, for the world of wild animals has long been intruded on by man, and researchers can only do their best to redress the balance.

Perhaps academics really need to keep reminding themselves that they should not become another source of pressure on wildlife populations. If you ask what is best for animals, perhaps you should first ask why it is that people today need to research and protect wildlife.

[Picture Caption]

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Researchers regard attaching radio transmitters to wild animals as a necessary evil. Here Sun Yuan- hsun is preparing to release a tawny fish owl with a transmitter. (courtesy of Sun Yuan-hsun)