Rushdie, bird slaughter

[vaneramos]

Here is an incredible, alarming coincidence between literature and life.

I have been reading The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, my favourite new novel in a long, long time. A mysterious European storyteller arrives at the palace of Akbar the Great with a strange tale about the Mughal Emperor's lost, beautiful aunt. Spanning continents and carried by the framework of this stranger's account, the novel is vivid, sexy and ravishing. The traveller's beguiling tale cleverly blurs boundaries between truth and fiction. Still unfinished, but highly recommended.

Now for the coincidence. In a passage I read last night, Rushdie has Italian diplomat Niccolo Machievelli and a friend catching songbirds using lime-sticks, twigs covered with glue. Apparently thrushes and their kin make a nice snack. "What a barbaric old custom," I thought. Rushdie says this novel required more years of research than any of his previous works, so I supposed this was an obscure Renaissance custom he had uncovered.

Don't follow the next link if you are tenderhearted where small, feathered creatures are concerned. Some alarming photos are attached, however I encourage you to read the post. Today 10,000 Birds blogs about Cyprus: killing Europe's songbirds for a snack? In fact, Cypriots killed an estimated 1.1 million birds in the past 12 months to pluck, peel and sell as ambelopoulia. They used nets, lime-sticks and other traps.

10,000 Birds points out that such non-selective hunting violates conservation directives that the European Community expects of member states, such as Cyprus. The island nation depends heavily on tourist revenue, so travellers are encouraged to consider boycotting, or at least write letters and support local conservation organizations such as Bird Life Cyprus.

Comments

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Are the authors of this aware that the practice of letting cats roam outdoors kills a vastly larger number of birds than trapping and eating them? It strikes me that the indignation over this is a bit misdirected considering the ways ordinary people could reduce bird mortality in their own countries, if they cared to do so.

It seems to me that it's the fate of every bird to die horribly, whether humans are involved or not, so the question I'd ask is whether this is ecologically sustainable.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I agree with your concern about domestic cats, and encourage pet owners to keep them indoors. Cats are content living indoors.

With respect to Cyprus, the article discusses more specific violations than I have given here. The European conservation directive is concerned with issues such as the creation of protection zones, hunting outside periods of reproduction and migration, and banning non-selective hunting and trapping (methods which cannot discriminate at-risk species). Practices that ignore these principles are unsustainable and irresponsible.

[eniastoa.livejournal.com]

Feral cats are ecologically limited and indeed part of an ecological balance ... it's all the domestic cats that are already assured of feeding but hunt anyway that create the real carnage of birds. To me, then, the question is why people think that it's okay to have it both way, whether for household pets or for themselves.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

You mean have your cake and eat your titmouse, too?

Of course we know about cats...

[(Anonymous)]

Snousle, as one of the owners of 10,000 Birds, I can assure you that we know all about the ecological blight caused by feral cats. We've also written about it extensively over the years. Thankfully, we can summon sufficient indignation to address multiple threats to birds.

The issue isn't whether a single bird dies. The issue is when huge numbers of birds are harvested in an unsustainable way. Individual birds live or die according to their place on the food chain on a given day. Entire species are only extirpated in the modern era by the works of man. Feral cats and mass trapping are two examples of how we destabilize ecosystems.

Cats

[(Anonymous)]

Hi. I'm grateful to Van for linking to my post on 10,000 Birds, but I'm a bit disappointed that 'snousle' has moved the thread away from the illegal trapping of migrant songbirds in Europe to feral cats. To answer his question, yes of course I'm aware of the mass slaughter of wildlife by cats (we've written about it many times on the blog, and I just can't understand how selfish and incredibly apathetic cat-owners are about the problem their 'pets' cause to wild animals) but the point of the post was Cyprus and its appalling attitude to EU rules on wild birds. is that not important as well? Besides, I'd be very interested to know what statistics 'snousle' has to back up his claim that 'the practice of letting cats roam outdoors kills a vastly larger number of birds than trapping and eating them' and which region he is talking about specifically (I doubt very much whether cats in Cyprus are killing over a million birds a year but I'd be grateful to be put right if the facts are available)...
Charlie

Re: Cats

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Charlie, thanks for reading and bringing your questions to the discussion here.