{"id":2826,"date":"2021-08-29T16:23:41","date_gmt":"2021-08-29T06:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=2826"},"modified":"2021-08-05T16:28:33","modified_gmt":"2021-08-05T06:28:33","slug":"for-the-birds-a-chat-with-eric-woehler-oam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=2826","title":{"rendered":"For the birds: a chat with Eric Woehler OAM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Learning\nhe had been nominated in this year\u2019s Queen\u2019s Birthday Honours Awards came as a\ncomplete surprise for BirdLife Tasmania convenor Eric Woehler. Although humbled\nand honoured to know his advocacy work over the last 40 years on behalf of\nbirds had not gone unnoticed, the identity of the person who nominated him remains\na mystery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\nthink the award legitimises the efforts that we\u2019ve made over the last 40 years.\nFundamentally the award is a recognition of contributions made by so many\nAustralians to their communities and to society, and these awards show we\u2019re a\nnation of volunteers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Born\nto parents who met and married in Tasmania after arriving separately as refugees\nafter World War Two, Woehler grew up in Hobart where he undertook his\nundergraduate degree in zoology at the University of Tasmania. The lightbulb\nmoment that set him firmly on the bird ecologist career path came while he was a\nUTAS undergraduate in the late 1970s. He attended a lunchtime seminar with\nlecturer and marine biologist Eric Guiler, who was later also renowned for his work\non the thylacine and the Tasmanian devil. It was while listening to Guiler talk\nabout his conservation research and survey work on marine animal and bird\nspecies that Woehler realised this was an area of work he also wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGuiler\nhad been to Macquarie Island the previous summer as part of an advisory\ncommittee that looked at the research there and he gave a lunchtime talk about\nhis trip. I talked with him afterwards, and later that year as part of my\nHonours program, I got the opportunity to go to Macquarie Island and study\nroyal penguins. That trip was followed by some other surveys and field trips\nand then two years later I was on the Nella Dan<\/em> \u2013 the vessel then used\nin Australia\u2019s Antarctic program \u2013 for my first trip to Antarctica.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

An\nopportunity to study for his PhD in the US came during an Antarctic conference\nthat was held in Hobart in 1988. Woehler was invited by one of the US\nresearchers to apply for a place in the scholarship program being offered by\nthe University of California. His application was successful so from 1990 to\n1995 Woehler was based in the US combining research on populations of Leach\u2019s\nstorm petrels in the Aleutians as part of his PhD studies, with teaching commitments\nat the university. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back\nhome in Tasmania Woehler\u2019s research and survey work has subsequently allowed\nhim to travel the globe monitoring and recording vulnerable and threatened marine\nanimal and bird species. Although conducted with less media attention and\nfanfare than the work of well-known naturalist and TV presenter David\nAttenborough, whose early documentaries first sparked Woehler\u2019s interest during\nthe early \u201870s, the data collected from those surveys has proved invaluable in\nproviding a greater understanding of seabirds and marine ecology more broadly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nquantitative data collected over so many long-term surveys and studies has\nshown the ecological changes in species\u2019 distribution and populations sizes. The\nrise in extinctions, population decreases, emerging wildlife diseases, and the\ndetrimental health impacts from pollution, industry emissions, waste, and human\nactivity have all resulted in a greater focus on Woehler\u2019s research and\nlong-term studies, particularly on birds. The latest challenges involve a push\nto create marine parks, the protection of the high seas and the potential to\ncreate high seas\u2019 reserves to protect their habitats for threatened and\nendangered species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\naddition to a growing public awareness of the environmental risks associated\nwith climate change, and the negative impacts these are increasingly having on\nwildlife species, the data also provides the evidence needed by governments to better\nidentify and establish conservation and management practices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt\nthe moment we have a number of marine parks around Australia within our\nexclusive economic zone (EEZ). For many of these parks we literally have no\nidea how many birds or mammals have been recorded. For four years pre-COVID we\ndid a lot of work on seabird and marine mammal surveys from a research vessel documenting\ndifferent species inside those marine reserves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re\nnow in a position to generate and seek funding for the first time so <\/p>\n\n\n\n

we\ncan provide governments with quantitative data that can define what might be a\nhotspot, or a barren region or whatever. These data are then available for\nstate and federal government agencies to use, and to provide guidance when\ndeveloping management and conservation policies that are based on science. You\ncan make sweeping generalisations but to have any hope of getting a sense of a\ngenuine trend you need quantitative data, and be able to back it up with good\nanalyses.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nongoing field research projects on shorebirds and seabirds, that has allowed Woehler\nthe opportunity to travel and work in all seven continents, has been combined\nwith a position as adjunct with UTAS, teaching undergraduate students and\nsupervising higher-degree research students in a voluntary capacity. This\nposition is one he has held since his return from the US in 1995. The focus of\nhis research projects has always been directed towards conservation and the\nadoption of best-practice management practices, to help create a greater\nunderstanding among the general public that birds have a crucial ecological and\nbiodiversity role in maintaining healthy environments wherever they are found\nin the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause\nbirds are at the top of their food chain in pretty much every habitat in which\nthey live – woodland, wetland, or at sea – they provide a very good indicator\nabout the health of the environment. So many species around the planet are now\nthreatened with extinction, giving very clear signals all is not well with\nplanet Earth. That\u2019s a shocking indictment on our use of land and oceans, and on\ntheir management and its impact on wildlife.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While\nWoehler\u2019s field trips have involved research in exotic Arctic, sub-Antarctic,\nAntarctic, and North American locations and have allowed him to travel to\nwithin 1000 km of both the North and South Poles, he has also led the\nconservation effort closer to home highlighting the risks for Tasmania\u2019s birds.\nSome species such as swift parrots, masked owls and orange-bellied parrots are decreasing\nand genuinely threatened with extinction, and he spends much of his time trying\nto educate and engage the public, not just about the risks from the state\u2019s\nforestry and mining practices, but also the risks to farmers and agriculture\nfrom loss of biodiversity and the important pollination role birds have for\nmany of our crops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt\nthe moment we have approximately 10,000 species of birds, globally. About 1500\nof these are formerly listed by the IUCN\u2019s Red List as having a threatened\nstatus of some sort; vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered or whatever.\nWe rely on birds for so much, including pollination of crops. Birds have a\nrole, as do insects, and birds also do a good job in managing insects, so we\nreally are fouling our own nest in so many ways. Yet it\u2019s clear from our\nBirdLife Tasmania community events that everyone has an awareness or an\ninterest in birds and can relate a story about a magpie, a parrot or an eagle\non their property, so birds are valued by people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite\nobserving and researching thousands of birds in his career, Woehler has never\nkept a tally of the number of species he has monitored and claims he has no\nfavourites. He said it all depended on where he was at the time, and what might\nbe happening as he walks along Tasmania\u2019s beaches, but he admits to being,\n\u2018very tuned into\u2019 fairy terns, a species he has studied for many years, and\nwhich is now showing somewhere in the region of a 90 per cent decrease across\nAustralia as a whole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt\nsea I take pure delight in watching albatrosses cruise over the ocean surface,\nbut it\u2019s been a challenge to note the fundamental shifts in the reduction of\nspecies like the blue petrel where huge flocks were sighted in the Southern\nOcean during the \u201880s and \u201890s, but where I didn\u2019t see a single bird during the\nlast couple of trips. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTasmania\nis recognised as a bellwether for the flyway used by migratory birds, a\npredictor where we first pick up the signals that indicate change. A lot of my\nwork has been on long-term population studies, on population trends of\nshorebirds and migratory birds and the message is clear and unambiguous and\nit\u2019s all going in the wrong direction. Due to variations in state and national\nlegislations swift parrots, for example, have gone from being listed as\nthreatened, to endangered under Tasmanian legislation yet are considered critically\nendangered under the EPBC. There is no \u2018critically endangered\u2019 status under\nTasmanian legislation so masked owls are listed as endangered, but are\nconsidered vulnerable under the EPBC, and these changes have occurred in a\nrelatively short period of time. In Tasmania we\u2019re seeing something in the\norder of a 95 per cent decrease in eastern curlews who migrate to Tasmania\u2019s\ncoasts and wetlands. This loss of biodiversity will, I think, cost Australia\ndearly and result in a deterioration of our quality of life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite\nall the challenges Woehler remains optimistic and has no regrets that the\nadvocacy work he has done on behalf of birds and the environment has resulted\nin limited employment opportunities with some government agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve\nno regrets and would do the whole thing all over again. We need people to stand\nup because we\u2019re losing so much and it\u2019s not right for future generations to be\ndenied the opportunities to have what we\u2019ve taken for granted, so I\u2019ll keep doing\nwhat I\u2019m doing because I don\u2019t know when to stop! I reckon I\u2019ve got another 20\nyears in me. The alternative is sitting on a couch watching TV and channel\nsurfing, and that\u2019s not going to achieve anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anne\nLayton-Bennett<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learning he had been nominated in this year\u2019s Queen\u2019s Birthday Honours Awards came as a complete surprise for BirdLife Tasmania convenor Eric Woehler. Although humbled and honoured to know his advocacy work over the last 40 years on behalf of birds had not gone unnoticed, the identity of the person who nominated him remains a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[405,2210,78,201,81],"class_list":["post-2826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-birds","tag-eric-woehler","tag-face-to-face","tag-features-2","tag-interview"],"rise-blocks_total_comments":0,"rise-blocks_categories":[{"term_id":67,"name":"Features","slug":"features","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":68,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":63,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":67,"category_count":63,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Features","category_nicename":"features","category_parent":0}],"rise-blocks_excerpt":"Learning he had been nominated in this year\u2019s Queen\u2019s Birthday Honours Awards came as a complete surprise for BirdLife Tasmania convenor Eric Woehler. 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