Talk:African sacred ibis

Image

removed image, since it was an American White Ibis. jimfbleak 06:38, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oh, ok. →Raul654 06:41, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

Australia

The Sacred Ibis is not introduced in Australia. The closely related Australian White Ibis (sometimes called the Sacred Ibis) is an entirely indigenous species.

Comparative religion

As part of a research in comparative religion, I was wondering if any comparison could ever be made between the sacred Ibis of Thoth and the holy Dove representing the Holy Spirit. ADM (talk) 20:00, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

IUCN Redlist

Not sure what to do here... the info provided by Birdlife International to the IUCN is horribly bad.

1.) The IUCN pretends to update their assessments, but the assessments have simply been copied and pasted 5x since 2004, with a small change to the description in 2008 (2 sentences).

2.) The later assessments are missing references (i.e. pop. numbers) compared to the original text by Birdlife International made before 2004 - it seems the 'reviewers' forgot some data during copying and pasting.

3.) Despite the assessment being prepared by the same people at the same time by an organisation which had just decided to split the Malagasy sacred ibis from this species, the text and assessment consistently mix up the two species.

4.) The IUCN has consistently claimed since 2004 that the population of the species has been declining (without sourcing their belief), and this has been parroted on various websites; however, based upon the methodology used in other assessments upon closer look it is apparent this assessment appears to have been predicated upon 3 documented 'threats'/sources; all spurious: 2 are about the wrong species (1 of which refers to an anecdote of the late 19th century), the last source about botulism has been completely misinterpreted: the source is a list of dead animals which tested positive for botulism in the 1960's/early 1970's at a dam in South Africa (where the birds were in fact becoming more common), which for some reason Birdlife International has interpreted as meaning that the population is threatened by an 'invasive non-native disease', despite that avian botulism is endemic in the area whereas the bird is likely not (furthermore, the mere entry in this list is interpreted as 'severity: rapid declines', whereas the original source makes no such claim). This despite ample evidence since the 1960's that the population has been increasing, which has been reflected in IUCN assessment proposals by Wetlands International in the early 1990's. When Birdlife International got the IUCN gig, they appear to have ignored the earlier reports or very selectively looked at them. Also, to belabour the point, the methodology stinks: just because a 'threat' exists doesn't mean the population is declining (the human population is 'threatened' by asteroids and nuclear war, but can hardly be said to be declining), and because a 'threat' was documented in the past, i.e. the killing of island endemic Threskiornis bernieri ssp. abbotti for food by settlers between 1888 up until perhaps the 1930's (original report from 1893) doesn't mean the population of T. aethiopicus is still declining.

5.) There are other obvious mistakes/omissions (perhaps wilful): for example, among others, since 2004 the IUCN has claimed 5 times that the species is not kept in ex situ collections, while in actual fact there have been hundreds of birds bred in captivity since at least the 1970's.

Oddly, Wetlands International has monitored this species since 1991 and produced an initiatory IUCN assessment in 1995, but Birdlife International wrote the assessment in 2004, despite not conducting any censuses of their own, ignoring most of the WI data, claiming an opposite population trend, and never updating their assessment. This situation persists 14 years later, whereas WI (in various guises) continues to publish updated population data every few years.

Considering the low quality of the IUCN work, it might be best to ignore them, but the institution is so dogmatic/ubiquitous in modern biodiversity studies it's difficult to do so.

Leo 86.83.56.115 (talk) 01:09, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

At least the LC classification hasn't changed over that period, whether or not there is a decline, so we can stick with that without issues. I agree that it might be smarter to ignore other IUCN pronouncements in this case since all their data appear to be old - if there are more recent assessment, they should be given preference. We are kind of wedded to reporting IUCN status as they publish it, but I think it is well understood that the organization can sometimes be extremely tardy in updating, and that other sources can supersede them. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:57, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi Elmidae, thanks for the feedback and good you're here, as you're the last to add good edits (in proper English), and I was eyeing at rewriting parts of your last work here...

Best/newest data regarding modern population I found is an AEWA report from 2014 by Dodman titled 'Report on the Conservation Status of Migratory Waterbirds in the Agreement Area', which like all WI/AEWA publications concludes the opposite of the IUCN.

So regarding the IUCN/conservation; just ignore assessment? Or delineate IUCN errors as above? Or start with AEWA data, report IUCN status, but say that the IUCN assessment cannot be trusted in this case and leave it to the public to figure out why for themselves/see talk page? What convinces readers to distrust bad old IUCN info? I'm not sure the general public understands how the IUCN works.

My plan is to round off distribution (the range map is slightly inaccurate), update invasive info (by now (2018), most feral populations have been eradicated), and tackle the conservation part. Also I found a book from the 18th century with nice info.

Leo 86.83.56.115 (talk) 16:31, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

I doubt discussing the shortcomings of IUCN in the text will be very productive and/or much welcomed, as it will invariably involve original research (i.e. novel statements about comparative assessments of differing sources). I mean, we can make this kind of executive decision about material inclusion here, but it can't really be aired on the article page ;) I'd suggest just reporting the status in box and conservation section, but not making much if any use of the rest of the IUCN page material, instead relying on more up-to-date sources. After all, these do not contradict an LC assessment. If later edits come up against the discrepancy, we can extend the discussion here. - Thanks for digging into this species! Lots of good stuff there... --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:55, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Cool. I do see your point. I'll do as suggested. I guess I got unduly annoyed by the untrustworthy data and can get a bit obsessed (into original research territory). Spent ages on trying to find sources to prove/disprove introduced status on Bahrain, for example. Again, am very grateful for the useful feedback here. Cheers.

Leo 86.83.56.115 (talk) 13:18, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Categories

Couiros22 (talk) has taken exception to two categories in this article, namely Birds of East Africa and Birds of Southern Africa. And asks two questions

First, I'll point out that the range of this ibis does NOT correspond to Sub-Saharan Africa. It's range both does not include all of Sub-Saharan Africa and also includes areas outside of Sub-Saharan Africa (native areas in the Middle East and introduced areas around the world). So if the editor is basing his reasoning for his changes on that fundamental point, it is fatally flawed.

Even if the above were true, and the categories were being used correctly for the purpose of refining searches, this would necessitate the removal of the categories Birds of Africa and Birds of the Middle East, which the editor has inexplicably neglected to do.

The use of categories for the geographic location of species appears to be, from what I can see, a basic misuse of categories. And yet it is now so prevalent it appears impossible to undo. The fundamental problem with attempting to do this is that every distribution is unique and does not follow human boundaries, or even usual geographic ones. Looking at this example, if we take the principle of using the most precise category that the article is unique to then the best we can say is that it is a bird of the world, as there is no single geographic category that will suffice. If we allow the article to exist in a multiple of sub-categories, then without a strict protocol about how this is done, we end up with the uncontrolled plethora of sub-categories that we do today where the categorisation is nearly completely arbitrary, and the article can find itself validly in every possible sub-category.

In terms of this particular dispute, until there are clear guidelines on how animals are geographically categorised there is no possible way to determine which is the appropriate solution.

I did raise this as an issue a number of years ago, but garnered no interest in seeing a resolution. Jameel the Saluki (talk) 04:17, 28 November 2022 (UTC)