S5E9: Red Kites - Conservation and The Ethical Dilemmas of Wildlife Translocation

Virginia explores how the recovery of red kites in Britain has been shaped by international efforts and cross-border collaborations between governments and NGOs. Thinking about these birds, Virginia raises questions and concerns about translocation, culture, and species conservation. 

Recorded: 14 December 2023

 Featured: 

• International Relations with Andrea Schapper on The Animal Turn
• Natural England
• Royal Society for Protection of Birds  
• Animal Culture with Carl Safinaon The Animal Turn
• Bears on Displayat Queen’s University

Virginia Thomas is an environmental social scientist with a PhD in Sociology. She is interested in people’s interactions with their environment and with other animals. Virginia’s work explores the social and ethical questions in human-animal relationships. She is currently a research fellow on the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘From Feed the Birds to Do Not Feed the Animals’ which examines the drivers and consequences of animal feeding. This leads on from her previous research which examined human-animal relations in the media (as part of zoonotic disease framing) and in rewilding projects (in relation to biopolitics and human-animal coexistence). You can connect with Virginia via Twitter (@ArbitrioHumano).

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Virginia Thomas, script write, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Sound clips taken from: BBC Sound Effects, xeno canto: https://xeno-canto.org/species/milvus-milvus  
• Learn more about the team here. 

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A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Animals and Politics
• 1:11 The Red Kite's Distinctive Features
• 3:22 Historical Persecution to Near Extinction
• 4:54 International Conservation Collaboration
• 6:47 Individual Rights vs Species Conservation
• 10:44 Need for Animals in SDGs
• 12:44 Episode Closing and Credits

Transcript

Siobhan O'Sullivan: 0:01

This is another iRaw podcast. We podcast to make the world a better place for animals.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 0:16

Welcome back to season five of the Animal Highlights, where we're focused on animals and politics. All the content from this season has been extracted from season six of the Animal Turn podcast, which is a season of the same name Animals and Politics. Andrea Schapper joined me on the Animal Turn to talk about international relations, and Virginia did something really nice with this. She tried to think a little bit about the international relations of animals and she brought her attention to red kites and how the resurgence of the species in the UK has been shaped by international agreements and acts of collaboration. Hello Virginia, welcome to the second last animal highlight. It's been a wonderful season so far. I've very much enjoyed listening to your highlights. Who are we talking about today? I know it's a very special one.

Virginia Thomas: 1:11

Well, yeah, it is. I'm going to talk about the red kite today, and they're special because they're one of the animals that come up in my research, and the reason I'm looking at them is because I actually found it hard to find an animal for this highlight. You and Andrea Schapper had such a broad and high-level discussion about the sustainable development goals and global politics that I couldn't think of an animal whose story fit the topic perfectly. So I thought I'd talk about another of the animals from my own research the red kite and in particular, I'm going to talk about the story of the red kites' reintroduction to Britain. In many ways, this story fits with Andrea's definition of international relations as politics beyond borders. That's because, as part of the reintroduction project, red kites were translocated to Britain from Germany, spain and Sweden by Natural England, who are a public body, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, who are an NGO, and, as I'll explain, red kites are now travelling in the other direction and being translocated from Britain back to Spain.

Virginia Thomas: 2:17

For listeners who don't know, red kites are a large bird of prey. They live throughout Europe and across into Western Asia and North Africa. One of the many things which makes red kites special is that they're incredibly distinctive. Even if you find it hard to recognise different types of birds, you can't miss a red kite With their russet plumage. They're red in the way that we say foxes and squirrels are red. They have a forked tail like a swallow and, perhaps most distinct of all, they have an incredible lofting flight. The kites that people fly get their name from red kites because of the graceful way these birds soar. In many ways kites are an example of what we might call charismatic megafauna. They're large, distinctive, recognisable and they elicit a strong response from people. But people haven't always appreciated red kites.

Virginia Thomas: 3:10

In Tudor Britain they were classified as vermin by the Preservation of Grain Act of 1532 because they were perceived to conflict with human interests. Bounties were paid for their killing and this led to widespread persecution. Bounties were paid for their killing and this led to widespread persecution. The development of game bird shooting intensified this persecution. Game bird shooting usually involves the captive rearing of birds like grouse, pheasants and partridges, to be released and then shot. Gamekeepers were concerned that red kites were a threat to their young birds and therefore to game shooting, so they killed them. And things got even worse in the Victorian era Because red kites were becoming scarce, they became a target for egg collectors and taxidermists.

Virginia Thomas: 3:52

By the early 1900s red kites had been wiped out in England and Scotland. A small population survived in Wales, but with only a few or possibly only one breeding pair. So in 1903 measures were put in place to protect them, in particular guarding their nests to protect them from egg collectors. Despite this, the red kite's rate of recovery was very slow. This was for a couple of reasons. First, the availability of food in the red kite's last stronghold in Wales was low. This made it hard for adults to feed and raise more than one chick at a time. Secondly, unlike most other raptors, kites are sociable. They're content to live with or near other kites. So as their population grows they disperse only very slowly into new territories.

Virginia Thomas: 4:41

So at this point conservationists realised that without intervention red kites would face a slow and even uncertain recovery. So they decided to intervene. And this is where international relations and global politics come in. In 1990, red kite chicks were taken from nests in Germany, spain and Sweden and released in England and Scotland. This international conservation effort required cooperation between the British government and the governments in Germany, spain and Sweden, together with the RSPB in Britain and their counterparts in the other countries.

Virginia Thomas: 5:15

I think what this highlights most is that international collaborations are needed to conserve other than human species, especially species like the red kite, who cross international borders either as individuals, when they're seeking food, mates or territories, or as a species, depending on where their range is. And since 1990, when the project to restore red kites to Britain began, red kites have flourished there and their numbers continue to rise. There are now thought to be around 10,000 red kites in Britain. Meanwhile, red kite numbers in Spain are falling because of persecution and a shortage of food. So now the tables have turned and red kite chicks are being translocated from Britain to Spain.

Virginia Thomas: 6:00

As this shows, considering species at a global level has the potential to facilitate translocation projects like that of the red kite. International agreements like this can allow species to be moved across borders so as to conserve geographically separate populations and the species as a whole. The potential of international policy and action can, however, extend beyond thinking about animals and their conservation at species level, as Andrew suggests. We can also think about how international agreements and actions impact individual animals. A shift in focus from species to individual would require that attention is paid to how specific individuals are treated to achieve the overall goal of species conservation. This could include discussions about whether their rights to freedom and dignity are being infringed, as Andrea suggested, such discussions could perhaps be facilitated if there were a sustainable development goal dedicated to animal rights.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 7:02

I know you started that out, saying that you weren't too sure how to connect this to international relations and thinking about sustainable development goals, but I think there are so many layers to what you just said. With regards to international relations, right, there's the relations between the various governments to make the red kite conservation projects work. There's also the mobility of the red kites right, their capacity to themselves move across borders and also be assisted across borders, and, I think, really importantly, what you raised there at the end, the question, though, about species conservation versus individual rights, because I know that a lot of these translocation activities I don't know if it's with red kites in particular, but I know with various species translocation activities have been critiqued for their capacity to kind of seemingly pluck or rear specific animals for the conservation of a species, without necessarily thinking about how those individuals are treated or potentially experience those efforts.

Virginia Thomas: 8:03

Yeah, the mortality rate in species translocations can be really high. Oh, is that so? Yeah, I don't remember the figures, but you know you really are putting these animals into an alien environment. I remember one of your really early interviews talked about the cultures that animals have.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 8:29

Yeah, I think that was with Carl Safina quite a while ago. That's it.

Virginia Thomas: 8:32

Yeah, carl Safina quite a while ago. That's it, yeah, and you know what he was saying was. You know, the culture of an animal in one place is not necessarily the same as the culture in another place.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 8:46

So translocating an animal is actually really dislocating. Yeah, and it's interesting because I mean there are many people would make the arguments, like I know, with red kites you were speaking here about chicks, right. So there's this idea that if you remove an animal when they're really young, they'll adapt to new environments and I have little doubt that that is the case. You know, most animals, depending on their various niches and stuff, are adaptable. But that doesn't mean that there aren't problems with these practices. That should be ironed out and thought about.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 9:13

And it's really tricky. I mean this has come up in our conversations a whole bunch. I do think conservationists care and they want to change the world and they see a massive problem that they're trying to address. But sometimes there's also a need for more nuance with thinking about individuals and sometimes talking about individuals can get really confusing. It can be a thorn in the side of a species level conversation right, where you have what seems to be a really easy answer to something, just all of a sudden becomes really messy and complicated. And I don't know if that's always. I don't know if the mess is always appreciated right, like then maybe nothing gets done.

Virginia Thomas: 9:50

Well, it's such a trade off, isn't it? That's the trouble, you know, if you're concerned about individuals, then yeah, absolutely, translocation is arguably not the right thing for that individual. But if you're concerned about species level conservation, then then it is the right thing.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 10:07

Yeah, I always try to think about myself like if someone blindfolded me and just dumped me in the middle of like a random field somewhere and I was like, oh, even in a random city, in a language I didn't speak, you know, I would probably adapt, but it would probably be a really jarring experience. I know I did a walking tour and I think obviously these translocation activities have gotten better and better with time. But I remember doing a historical walking tour stop with regards to a bear and the use of bears at Queen's University as mascots and these bears were literally being plucked. So these were little black bears and they were literally being plucked from Algonquin Park as cubs used as mascots at the university. And then when the students kind of got tired of them, they just randomly dumped them somewhere else in a forest. They were like they'll be fine, but these were cubs that had now become quite habituated to humans, were used to eating candy and sweets and being paraded through, and then just this idea that you can just dump them in the middle of a forest somewhere and they'll be fine, it kind of speaks to this idea that they're just automatons, right, like they're the same.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 11:21

A bear is a bear is a bear. A red kite is a red kite is a red kite. But I think more and more research is just showing that that's not the case. Individuals have individual preferences, have individual like attached to specific cultures. Anyway, I think this animal highlight was really, really fascinating and I really appreciated Andrea's suggestion of animals being better incorporated into SDGs. I think it's much needed.

Virginia Thomas: 11:49

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting idea because she's absolutely right. You know, they're there in the background, in life on land and life underwater, but they're not front and center.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 11:59

And I fear that even in life on land and life in the water, it's operating at the species level we've been talking about, or it's operating at just this kind of abstract idea of nature. So often animals are co-opted into the idea. I mean, we're all part of nature, but what does it mean when you say you know we want to preserve nature? Like? What does that actually mean? Like, which relationships are we talking about? Which you know? Individuals and places and cultures are we talking about here?

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 12:29

When you start to get into those details, it becomes complicated. So having an international organization that can help wade through those conflicts and those complexities is a brilliant idea, I think. All right. Well, virginia, thank you so much for your work with Animal Highlights and I'm looking forward to chatting with you at the Grad Review. Great see you then. Thank you so much to Virginia Thomas for being an incredible co-host and to Rebecca Shen for her work on the logo and all the artwork done with the animal highlight. The show was edited and produced by myself. This is the Animal Highlight, with me, claudia Hüttenfelder.

Siobhan O'Sullivan: 13:28

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