Conservation of Marine Birds of Northern 

 North America A Summary 



by 



Ian C. T. Nisbet 



Massachusetts Audubon Society 

 Lincoln, Massachusetts 01773 



This is not going to be a straightforward 

 summary of the conference because it is my 

 view that a number of important topics have 

 not been addressed. In particular, what was 

 supposed to be the main theme of the confer- 

 encethe need for conservation of marine 

 birds of northern North America has been 

 taken for granted by many speakers and has 

 been treated by others in what may be a mis- 

 leadingly brief way. So instead of simply sum- 

 marizing the information that has been pre- 

 sented in the papers, I want to give my own 

 views about how we should use this informa- 

 tion to make a case for the conservation of 

 marine birds. I feel strongly that we can make 

 a good case for conserving them, and that we 

 know enough to start doing so. The task of 

 making a case for conservation and of propos- 

 ing priorities for action has been left to me as 

 the conference summarizes 



Particularly in the first half of this confer- 

 ence, we heard a long series of accounts of the 

 birds of the area which stressed our ignor- 

 ancelarge amounts of information that was 

 not known and large amounts of research that 

 needed to be done. Now, I have an unexpected 

 advantage over most of these speakers in that 

 I have very little direct experience in the area. 

 What I learned from their papers, not having 

 any very clear picture of the islands, the birds, 

 their habits, or the food that they eat, is that 

 we already know quite a lot about the marine 

 birds of northern North America. We cer- 

 tainly know enough to decide what we ought 

 to do next and how to take the basic steps in 

 conserving them. 



After listening to the presentations, read- 

 ing the abstracts, and studying the maps 

 posted in the conference hall, I drew up a list 



of 10 points that I will first list and then 

 elaborate on. 



We know that we are discussing a very im- 

 portant biological resource which has been 

 neglected for a long time. 



We know roughly what this resource con- 

 sists of and which aspects of it are biologically 

 important. 



We know why this resource is in its 

 present condition, and we know something 

 about the ways in which it is related to other 

 resources. 



We know a certain number of things that 

 the birds do which make them vulnerable to 

 changes in the environment. 



We know that the resource has already 

 been disturbed in the past, both by human-in- 

 duced and by natural changes, and we know 

 that it has already been damaged. 



We can identify at least some of the major 

 threats that the resource will face in the next 

 few years. 



We know that the resource can be con- 

 served, at least to a modest and partial ex- 

 tent. 



We have a fairly good idea of what we 

 ought to do now to start conserving the 

 resource. 



We have some ideas so far rather rough 

 and ill-formulated about why we should con- 

 serve the resource. 



We know or so I believe that it is prac- 

 ticable and economically feasible to conserve 

 the resource. 



I am sure that there will be some disagree- 

 ments with some of these assertions, espe- 

 cially with the last two, so I will give reasons 

 why I believe that we should conserve these 

 birds and that we can afford to do so. 



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