Just Big and Colorful?

A century after they went extinct, Singapore’s campaign to save Oriental Pied Hornbills has been billed as a conservation-success story nationwide. In a conversation with Subaraj Rajuthurai, natural historian and well-known wildlife consultant, we discovered another side of the story. Oriental Pied Hornbills appeared not to have had the most positive impact on Singapore’s biodiversity, and run a risk of becoming a pest. In addition to that, the question also arises: Is this conservation for conservation’s sake, or are there ulterior motives? Tanvi Dutta Gupta reports.

1. Why is the Singapore government trying to help the hornbills? Is this  marketing-based conservation? Well, in my opinion, basically, there are certain animals that are very attractive, they are large, and colorful, and everything the public like. Things like hornbills and otters are part of that range. There was a certain public pressure on National Parks to reintroduce hornbills. . And secondly, there were no scientific studies done on the hornbills, to find out the impact, before we started the introduction, so we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future if these hornbills are there everywhere. That shouldn’t be the reason for the introduction of captive hornbills, though. Introductions should be a last resort. And we have not done that. There are many other animals that are on the verge of extinction that we did not extend the scheme to. 
2. You mention that no scientific studies were done on hornbills before, but what about the information gathered by cameras and sensors in the artificial nests? How has that informed the scientific community about the behaviors of Oriental Pied Hornbills? The data collected from monitoring nest boxes (and nest holes) is definitely important and provide much data, including the animal items that are fed to the young. However, a full and proper study should have been done before releasing any hornbills to determine any potential impact of that exercise. 
3. What about the population census being conducted by NSS? Isn’t that a scientific study of a sort? This will just provide a basic number seen on the one day of the year that it is carried out. We need prolonged, more scientific studies to be carried out as the NSS counts are as much PR exercises as they are surveys. 
4. On another note, Jurong Bird Park released captive hornbills to help ‘diversify the wild genetic pool’. Are hornbills actually at a genetic risk, in your opinion? As far as I’m concerned, we don’t know thateither. We don’t know if there is a genetic reason, I think they are saving them without any proof. So that is something that needs to be investigated. But then there are so many other animals that are isolated in this genetic pool and are at far greater risk of inbreeding and that kind of thing. And we’re not doing anything for them at the moment. The hornbill is not resident, they colonized, and it’s something that went extinct originally. What about the animals that have survived all along and now are in danger of dying off.  
5. Coming back to Oriental Pied Hornbills, they have been observed to eat other birds. What about that? During the breeding season, they have to provide the young with more proteins so they switch more to a meat diet. And they start taking things like other birds, and bird’s eggs and chicks, and lizards, and anything they can catch, that will go straight towards feeding their young. And we’ve seen them at places like Sungei Buloh where they introduced hornbills. The hornbill immediately grabbed a whole sunbird’s nest, complete with chick, and went off. So, they will definitely have an impact in the birds, an impact that will increase as we increase the hornbill numbers by introduction. We’re giving them an unfair advantage, and that can have major repercussions on the rest of the ecosystem.  
6. Can you give me any numbers for birds that they’ve eaten, or is the evidence purely anecdotal? There are records of hornbill taking a sunbird nest with chick at Sungei Buloh and raiding a Little Heron’s nest at Pasir Ris. However, much more study on this is required locally. 
7. Would their eating birds actually have a significant impact on say, our migratory population or breeding population, like actually measurable rather than a few isolated cases here and there, in the long run? Definitely the breeding population as during their breeding season, the hornbills will also take their eggs as it is their breeding time too, which will have an impact on our total wild bird population in the long run. 
8. So, all in perspective, what’s the future you predict for Oriental Pied Hornbills in Singapore? It’s all guesswork, because we have no clue. Some of our ecological balances are very fragile, Singapore being so small, and our ecosystems are very small, so any change in that can have major repercussions, can be a major danger to the biodiversity. On the other hand, of course, among the human population they could also become a pest and start growing in numbers and making a lot of noise. So, I think that hornbills could also become a pest in the future, if we’re not careful. 
9. So you think the Singaporean government is making a mistake by trying to help them. There is no reason to conserve them. This bird is not declining, it’s increasing, so that doesn’t make sense to me. Why would you want to help them when others are declining? As long as nature controls the population the population, based on food availability and nesting availability, there will be balance in the ecosystem. You can’t give an unfair advantage to one species by introducing captives, providing nests, and even feeding them instead. That is not the nature of biodiversity. Conserving biodiversity means you’re looking at the whole ecosystem and looking to save all the species that make up that ecosystem, not just giving the unfair, biased advantage to one species, just because you like it.