‘It’s very easy to save a species’: how Carl Jones rescued more endangered animals than anyone else

Without Jones, the world might have lost the Mauritius kestrel, the pink pigeon, the echo parakeet and more – but the biologist’s methods are controversialThe last surviving bird of prey on Mauritius seemed doomed. In 1974, there were only four Mauritius kestrels left in the wild and attempts to breed them in captivity were failing. Extinction was “all but inevitable”, in the words of Norman Myers, one of the world’s leading environmental scientists.Carl Jones, a biologist who arrived on the island in the 70s as an idealistic 24-year-old, remembers his employers, the charity that becameBirdLife International, instructing him to “pull out elegantly” and leave the kestrel-saving to Mauritius government officials. “That actually meant closing it down, because the Mauritians didn’t have the resources or capacity for doing it,” he says.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Conservation Wildlife Biology Mauritius Environment Science World news Source Type: news