Hi All,
I have inserted a discussion from CV birds for those of you who do not
subscribe and are interested in the captivity status of Demosille Cranes in the
United States.
It should be pointed out the the data presented by Don are publicly
available through the International Species Information System at
www.isis.org (click on Species Holdings and work your way through from
there). I am grateful to Steve Holzman for originally directing me to
this site, which also gives info on all the collections in question.
ISIS receives data from many public collections worldwide, but not all
of them, and from no private collections. I asked Roger Wilkinson
(Curator of Birds at Chester Zoo, UK, and expert consultant to the
British RC) about this further. He estimated that private collections
would very likely hold at least double the ISIS total (which for
Demoiselle Crane is 103) and possibly many more. So I would suggest that
200 is a minimum estimate. I am currently researching the American
Federation of Avicultures' Exotic Bird Registry (i.e. private
collections) to see what, if anything, that reveals. Alan Knox, formerly
of the British RC, was of the opinion that globally "they aren't at all
rare in collections which have large birds."
I have researched the ISIS data further. Given that we will almost
certainly never have accurate data for private holdings, I tried to
examine the ISIS figures as an index of a species relative abundance in
captivity. (I appreciate that there several flaws with this approach;
discussion of these is beyond the scope of this posting, but I'd be
happy to answer queries privately.) Here are the ISIS numbers for North
America for a variety of species:
Demoiselle Crane (Anthropoides virgo) 103
Common Crane (Grus grus) 13
Hooded Crane (Grus monacha) 33
White-naped Crane (Grus vipio) 66
Red-crowned Crane (Grus japonensis) 67
Red-breasted Goose (Branta ruficollis) 128
Bar-headed Goose (Anser indicus) 157
Emporer Goose (Anser canagicus) 44
Kittlitz's Plover (Charadrius pecuarius)4
Greater Sand-plover (Charadrius lesch.) 0
Siberian Accentor (Prunella montanella) 0
Great Tit (Parus major) 5
Blue Rock Thrush (Monticola solitarius) 0
Swallow-tailed Gull (Creagrus furcatus) 0
Doug Shaw Santa Rosa, CA |