Aviculture today and tomorrow.

1 June 2016

It's Downy Duckling Days at WWT Slimbridge, an event designed to provide a free opportunity for a family-friendly duckling experience designed to engage and inspire future generations.

We hope that by continuing to engage children and families we will improve their interest in the natural world, highlight the plight of wetlands and their inhabitants, and culture our future supporters and volunteers. As we walk around the tours we might wonder to ourselves "am I stood within the presence of the next Peter Scott?" We could be stood alongside a future wildlife visionary.

Aviculture is a rarely used word. It relates directly to the optimum propagation of bird species within our living collection in order to develop the skills needed to aid potential conservation breeding. At Slimbridge our Aviculture department has directly aided and informed the efforts of our Conservation breeding department during the Great Crane Project, Spoon-billed Sandpiper Project and Mission Madagascar. We're right proud to be able to say this. Thankfully subjects such as Ecology, Biology, Animal behaviour, Animal welfare and Zoology are more desirable at Colleges and Universities than ever before, but we need to get them into ducks!

How then would I sell Aviculture?

Ducks, geese and swans are amazing. Their Ecology, diversity, history and behaviour is just fascinating, and there is still so much to study and learn. There are still some species that we work with at Slimbridge that we barely know about their wild behaviour. For example where do Baers pochard breed in the wild?

Other facts can just blow you away. My reserve colleagues can log the rings of pochard who have flown to overwinter in Slimbridge from several thousands miles away in arctic Russia! As amazing as this is nothing beats the skills of a Black Brant, which can migrate 3,300 miles nonstop from Alaska to Mexico at great height and at exceptional speed. The Maccoa above lays a clutch of eggs that equal her own body weight. The practical feats of wildfowl are stunning.

As a result of the extreme nature of these behaviours, there is so much still left to discover. For those seeking new discoveries and the glory of a bespoke specialism; Aviculture is the way to go.

A question that I was asked recently whilst attending the Sylvan Heights 'Future of waterfowl conservation' workshop in North Carolina was this... What is the state of modern Aviculture?

The reality is that species diversity in captivity is declining. There are genuine and sensible reasons for this. When species were first brought into captivity they were collected as birds and eggs from the wild and so some species where bred from a very small founding population. At the time this was with all the necessary permissions, but there is a simple fact here. Captive collections can never have as much diversity as the wild populations due to the fact of sheer numbers, and so over time these populations can begin to differ. In exceptional circumstances where species acquired were difficult to breed, some populations have been founded on very little indeed. Even this is not an issue however with careful management. Just look at the Hawaiian goose; a species famously re-populated using a founding population of under 35 and with direct input from WWT. The point I'm making is that a few mistakes could make a difference.

During the Future of Conservation workshop we discussed which species have already disappeared from popular Aviculture, and which species are close to being lost. These are normally the 'little brown jobs' which are not inspiring enough, and don't catch the eye. Even this though is a matter of perspective. I know handfuls of people who would call the Northern pintail below their absolute favourite duck, and I know others who rave about the wild muscovy above. Both of these could be considered brown. From my perspective, everything is as interesting as the person teaching it to you.

What then can we do about this? There are boundless skilled breeders throughout the UK with the skills to keep and rear rare captive species. Rarity always courts interest, but for me the future of Aviculture is all about predicting decline and managing populations in advance. Lets use our skills to invest in the future in case of species tragedy. Wildfowl exist around the world in the joyous jigsaw puzzle that evolution created for them. They all occupy their niche and thus they are all important in the same way a jigsaw is incomplete without one piece.