The conservation program on Guadalupe Island in the last 5 years is one of the great restoration successes. Bernie and Island Conservation and their counterparts in Mexico, Conservation de Islas played the major role in that.

http://www.birdchick.com/2008/03/six-word-memoir-meme.html

It’s so hard to understand the attitudes of the time from a 21st-century birder/conservationist’s perspective. I mean, they appreciated the animals they collected at some level, but as trophies rather than as living ( or (once-living) things. I’ve spent a lot of time in museum collections, including a couple of months in college as a student curator, but I’ve never, ever examined a specimen without mourning the life that was taken to make my study of it possible. I wonder how many of the professional and amateur naturalists of a century ago felt anything like that?

Now, who’s up for a trip to Isla Guadalupe? I’d plant trees, shoot goats, build check dams, whatever they need done for the privilege of seeing the recovery first hand. Think we could sell Quelili T-shirts to raise money for the boat trip? (Bonus: Pelagic birding on the way there and back.)

Thanks for this nice blog. Guadalupe’s recovery in the absence of goats is amazing. The forest where the Guadalupe Junco lives has gone from <200 Guadalupe Island Pines and 2,000 Guadalupe Island Cypress to over 6,000 pines and 20,000 cypress. We hold out some hope that the Guadalupe Island Storm-petrel survives.

Thanks,
Bernie