Pheasants: Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan ... - IUCN

status of a threatened species by a certain margin within a
nominated time frame, giving a clear basis for auditing the
conservation action taken.
Although no formal PHVA has been held for a pheasant
species, it is a process that has the potential to benefit
several species at some point in the future. Anyone
considering holding a meeting of this type should arrange
it in close consultation with the Pheasant Specialist Group
and the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group. The
latter now provides PHVA training courses around the
world (see Appendix 2 for contact details).
Specific types of conservation action
Protecting habitat: given that habitat loss and degradation,
especially of forests, are major threats to many pheasant
species, establishing and maintaining protected areas that
include localities in which comparatively large populations
of threatened species persist are generally going to be
powerful ways of ensuring their long-term survival. It is
desirable that the granting of reserve status to additional
areas within a particular species’ range is recommended in
the context of a strategic analysis of any existing protected
area network, and with due consideration of the effects of
this on other threatened species. However, even when a
paucity of data does not permit meaningful large-scale
analysis or the consideration of other threatened taxa,
such information as there is on distribution and habitat
use can be a basis on which to recommend the designation
or expansion of apparently crucial protected areas, as well
as changes in their management policies. To have a high
probability of prompting action by decision-makers, it is
necessary that new recommendations concerning protected
areas are based on sound science, allowing persuasive
advocacy campaigns to be targeted at government
departments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs),
and local people.
Two examples from Vietnam illustrate how survey
results can be followed by an appraisal of local habitat
distribution and threats from rural human populations to
produce feasible proposals for protected area designation
and management. After the discovery of several sites
holding the Vietnamese pheasant (Robson et al. 1991,
1993a), a management plan was developed for the Ke Go
Nature Reserve (Le Trong Trai et al. 1999a), which has
now been accepted (Nguyen Cu in litt.). In the same way,
following the re-discovery of Edwards’s pheasant (Eve
1997) further south in the Annamese lowlands, adjoining
nature reserves that cover all the known localities have
been proposed at Phong Dien and Dakrong (Le Trong
Trai et al. 1999b).
Regulating hunting: most pheasant species are hunted for
food by local people that share their habitats and some are
subject to substantial trade for their flesh, plumage, or as
live birds. Most of this hunting, and especially that in
protected areas, is illegal, so its regulation largely revolves
around the issue of law enforcement. Almost all the range
states for pheasants have well-developed legislation for
wildlife protection, usually with a focus on threatened
species. However, financial provision to government
departments responsible for protecting and managing
wildlife resources is generally poor. The usual result in
protected areas is an inadequate staff complement, with
very few people properly trained or sufficiently motivated
to carry out their duties, and a far worse situation in areas
that are unprotected by any law.
There should always be parts of protected areas set
aside as hunting-free sanctuaries (i.e., core zones) to act as
reservoirs for threatened species, but completely denying
any harvesting rights to local people who have historically
been accustomed to them will almost always be counterproductive.
Generally, regulations will be ignored,
precipitating ever-increasing competition amongst hunters
for a share in a dwindling resource. This is the “tragedy of
the commons” that so often results in the complete
exhaustion of natural resources in the face of increasing
and unregulated local human exploitation (Hardin 1968).
An alternative scheme involves giving local people
more control over how natural resources are used, and is
much more likely to produce a sustainable solution for
threatened species and human populations alike. In the
case of protected area management, this involves recruiting
as many staff as possible from the immediate surrounds of
the reserve. These people have a vested interest in protecting
their local area from over-exploitation because it provides
them with potentially permanent employment and
sustenance. They are also uniquely well qualified to police
the area as they can most easily recognise people who enter
the area without rights or come from further afield.
In the specific case of pheasant populations as resources
often hunted for food, the feasibility of having sustainable
harvesting programmes within parts of protected areas
(e.g., buffer zones) needs to be investigated. Allowing
strictly monitored and locally franchised hunting within
areas that are badly affected by illegal hunting may allow
the overall level of harvesting to be more tightly controlled.
To enjoy effective support, such schemes need to emerge
from a process of wide consultation involving local people,
NGOs, species experts, and government departments.
Setting up such schemes might often require the adoption
of special local bylaws or the passing of new pieces of
legislation (see e.g., Simiyu 1998).
Because this will all take a significant period of time to
complete, the Pheasant Specialist Group fully recognises
that, in many circumstances, the only immediate solution
to the plight of a threatened and hunted species will be a
total and vigorously enforced hunting ban. But this cannot
be regarded as a long-term solution because it demands
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