Map 14: 'Action Plan
for Lesser
Flamingo'
Flamingos are a
poignant example of elegance in nature. The Egyptians had a great admiration
for the birds and worshiped them, considering they
were an embodiment of the god Ra.
This pot dates to Predynastic Egypt,
before the unification of the country under pharaonic rule.
One of the centers of early Egyptian civilization was at Nagada,
where a sophisticated artistic culture had its origins. Nagada II
pottery (3,300 BCE) characteristically has red lines on a
neutral clay body and is decorated with geometric patterns and
stylized representations of animals, such as these graceful yet
simplified flamingos. The Nagada culture developed among
indigenous hunter-gatherers and fishermen exploiting the fish
and birds of the shallow lagoons along the Upper
Nile.
All Flamingo species feed on microscopic algae and diatoms in shallow lakes and
lagoons by filtering individual cells through their highly
adapted bills. Flamingo bills are the most complex in the avian
world, lined with rows of horny “teeth” (lamellae) that resemble the
filtering apparatus of baleen whales. Those of Andean and James’s
flamingos are neatly separated in width, allowing each species to
specialize on food particles of different sizes. The structure of the feeding apparatus of flamingos is
entirely different from that of the swans, ducks and geese, but
is strikingly convergent towards that of baleen whales that filter out
microscopic deep sea plancton.
With regard
to conservation, although the world population of flamingos runs into millions
of birds, they are under threat from local human impacts
on their specialised saline lagoon habitats.
History shows there is no safety in large
numbers. For
example, the Passenger Pigeon was once
probably the most numerous bird on the planet, making its home in
the billion or so acres of primary forest that once covered North America
east of the Rocky Mountains. Stories are told of their flocks
being a mile wide and up to 300 miles long, and so dense that they
darkened the sky for hours and days as the flock passed overhead.
Population estimates from the 19th century ranged from 1 billion
to close to 4 billion individuals. Total populations may have
reached 5 billion individuals and comprised up to 40% of the total
number of birds in North America. The Passenger Pigeon is now extinct.
Hunting and the clearing of forests to make way for
agriculture doomed the species. The decline was well under way by
the 1850’s. The last nesting birds were reported in the Great Lakes
region in the 1890’s. The last reported individuals in the wild were
shot at Babcock, Wisconsin in 1899, and in Pike County, Ohio on
March 24, 1900. Some birds, however, remained in
captivity. The last
Passenger Pigeon, named Martha, died alone at the Cincinnati Zoo at
about 1:00 pm on September 1, 1914. Who could have dreamed that
within a few decades, the once most numerous bird on Earth would be
forever gone?
The fate of the Passenger Pigeon
now hangs over the world's Flamingos as humanity encroaches on its shallow
water habitats. This makes Flamingos an ideal
learning model for
the era of education for living sustainably.
There is now a need to consider social
and economic factors within a cultural ecology ecology framework. Humankind is creating the
havoc right now and increasingly, educationalist
have to turn their attention globally to to how adults in
the boardroom, factory floor, farm, unions, NGOs, consumer groups and
local communities can become involved in conservation
management.
This module is an educational development of the action
plan for the conservation of the Lesser Flamingo
that was produced by the Wetlands International
Specialist Group, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, Wetlands
International and BirdLife International Africa
Partnership.
The major threats to the survival of the
Lesser Flamingo are the loss and/or the degradation
and distruption of its specialized habitat at key places through altered hydrology and
water quality, wetland pollution, extraction of salt and soda ash, particularly
at its breeding sites. Other threats include predation at the nesting
colonies, particularly by the Marabou Stork, poisoning, disease,
harvesting of eggs and live birds, human disturbance at non-breeding
sites, predation, and competition for food and breeding sites. The
activities are identified as management factors the
action plan for the Lesser Fllamingo focuses on measures to
address the threats, fill current knowledge gaps. and increase
public awareness of the need for protecting the species and its
habitats.
Because the Lesser Flamingo is an
itinerant species moving through a network of sites in several countries, successful
implementation of the plan will require effective international
coordination of organisation and action. The following mindmap sets out the the major
management factors that have to be addressed to meet the objective
for this species which is to stabilise the size and distribution of
regional populations at their 2008 levels by 2020.
A key piece of research is the
report by Ekkhard Vareschi who made the first
detailed study of the ecology of Lake Nakuru in Kenya which included
the abundance and feeding of the Lesser Flamingo.
Establishing a database
The knowledge system for presenting an action
plan as an educational resource is a ‘strategy-to-action’ database
(STAc). The
structure allows learners to seamlessly track a plan from its
strategic objectives down to the jobs of project workers to overcome
limiting management factors and the monitoring of performance
indicators to measure the effectiveness of the work. A STAc is defined as
follows:
- It is a USER FRIENDLY on-line PLANNING/RECORDING
system that allows professionals and volunteers to work together
to make long-term action plans for local issues.
- These plans focus on PLACE-BASED FEATURES, which
are the main elements that define a local issue, structure,
process or environment (e.g. local crime, transport, biodiversity,
energy use, health).
- The OBJECTIVE of the action plan for a feature is
to bring the feature into a FAVOURABLE STATE or CONDITION.
- This is done by controlling the major FACTORS,
positive and negative, which affect each feature. (e.g. exercise
is a major health factor)
- These major factors are defined using prior
RESEARCH, which has established an EVIDENCE BASE as to how the
factors affect the condition of features.
- The evidence base is used to define the RATIONALE
for scheduling PROJECTS to control the factors.
- A project sets out the methods to be used, who is
to do the work, when they are to do it and what resources are
needed.
- The state of a feature is MONITORED frequently by
checking one (or more) of its ATTRIBUTES as a PERFORMANCE
INDICATOR.
- An attribute is an obvious RECORDABLE
CHARACTERISTIC of the feature, which defines its state (e.g. the
number of people using an exercise facility).
- FEEDBACK from monitoring features is used to
improve the effectiveness of projects.
- PUBLIC ACCESS to the
database is allowed by pc, laptop or cell phone according to ‘need
to know’ and ‘need for participation’.
The STAc educational framework is set out below to show
the flows of data and information between the participants in
organisation and community.
The following diagram sets out the major management
factors that have to be addressed to meet the strategic conservation
objective of the international single species action pland for the
Lesser Flamingo.
An
interactive educational module of the plan is currently being
prepared.
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