Another aspect of public education is to develop public interest by making some of the birds more visible. The great problem with this biological resource we have been talking about is that no one knows it is there. Probably half of us did not know how substantial and important a resource it is even 5 years ago. In setting up a large-scale conservation program, we should not make the mistake of basing it only on the most remote and inaccessible colonies, even if these are the most important numerically. Many of the smaller colonies are locally very important, both biologically and for human interest and education. One example given at this conference was the State of Washington's program for conserving what are, by northern Pacific standards, quite small colonies. This program is important and impressive because it is conserving bird populations near people who want to see the birds. We have the same sort of situation in Massachusetts and Maine, where effective protection programs have been established for extremely small seabird colonies. We have learned from these programs that a few hundred birds, or even a few dozen if properly managed, can be of immense educational importance. If human access is carefully managed so that people can see the birds without disturbing them, these programs can generate support for conservation of larger bird populations that may be thousands of miles away where people may never see them.
A Rationale for Conservation
As I have tried to show, we know something about the importance of this biological resource, and we know in outline what we should do to conserve it. But why should we? Almost no one knows the birds are there. We ourselves do not know whether there are 50 million or 250 million birds in the north Pacific Ocean. Who cares if 10 million disappear? If we cannot give a good answer to this question, we might as well go home and study chickadees instead.
To justify spending money on conserving marine birds—or any other natural resources—we must establish their value. Some of the arguments made in this conference for assigning economic values to seabirds have been dangerously weak. The annual value of "muttonbirds" (Puffinus tenuirostris) in the New Zealand markets is about $70,000. Some speakers have tried to argue that seabirds might play some subtle role that we do not yet understand in regulating marine communities—perhaps they weed out the sick fish. The direct economic values that we have specified for seabirds are really not very impressive, even in terms of the costs involved in conserving and studying them. The biggest number we have heard for the value of these seabirds is the amount of money we are spending on surveys.
However, this is not the real issue. In judging the costs and benefits of a conservation program, we should not look just at the value of the birds as meat, or oil, or indicators of pollution. The real issue here, as in all economic problems, is the rational allocation of resources. H. Boyd posed the rhetorical question: "Why should we waste public money on conserving birds when there are so many other things to spend it on?" The question is more properly posed in reverse: "Why should the government waste so much public money on unproductive projects when only a small amount of money can achieve conservation of these birds which some people think are important?"
The fact is that we already know why we should allocate resources to conservation. I believe that we have just been evading the answer. We ought to conserve these birds because many people want them to be conserved.
This is not, as one speaker said, an elite interest. The public, as we well know, is already willing to spend money to conserve natural resources and is increasingly demonstrating that willingness. The public, in fact, is ahead of the administrators and bureaucrats. To appreciate this, we need only look at some of the laws already on the books. The Congress of the United States, in the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, declared that it was the national policy to "create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans." The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 found that "marine mammals have proven themselves to be resources of great international significance, esthetic and recreational as well as economic, and it is the sense of Congress that they should be protected and encouraged to the greatest extent feasible commensurate with sound policies of resource management and that the primary object of their management should be to maintain the health and stability of the marine ecosystem." As these laws have been enacted, their language has become progressively stronger. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 declares as the policy of Congress "that all federal departments and agencies shall seek to conserve endangered species and threatened species and shall use their authorities in furtherance of the purposes of this Act" (P.L. 93-205). It further directs all Federal departments and agencies to carry out conservation programs for the conservation of endangered or threatened species and to insure that their actions do not jeopardize the continued existence of these species or destroy or modify critical habitat.
These references are not only to Federal laws passed by remote politicians who can vote with only a modest responsibility to their constituents. As we have heard, there are many State laws and local ordinances which specify the same kind of thing. All these laws are on the books for a powerful reason: public opinion was behind them. The fact that they have not been enforced and implemented fully means that we have not been doing our job.
In fact, there is no philosophical problem in justifying conservation. What we face is an institutional problem. There is both a public determination that natural resources should be conserved and a public apathy and bureaucratic resistance toward doing it. As concerned biologists, we should be combating this apathy by pointing out that conservation represents a rational allocation of public resources.
Those who do not learn the lessons of history are destined to repeat it. If we study the history of conservation, we find that it developed most rapidly in those countries which mismanaged their natural resources earliest. Within the developed countries there has been a progressive historical trend toward rational use and conservation of natural resources. Conservation of natural resources, in fact, represents the future and, as biologists, it is our duty to promote it.