Status
The Blakiston's Fish Owl is endangered due to the widespread loss of riverine forest, increasing development along rivers and dam construction. The current population in Japan is approximately 100-150 birds (20 breeding pairs and unpaired individuals), whereas on mainland Asia the population is higher, variously estimated at several hundred or perhaps thousands of individuals (Slaght and Surmach 2008). In Russia, fish owls are killed by fur-trappers (see above), drown in nets set for salmon, and are shot by hunters (Slaght and Surmach 2008). In Japan, death by hunting is unlikely, but fish owls have been hit by cars and killed by powerlines (Yanagawa 1993). Local conservation efforts in Japan have been undertaken including education and installation of large nest-boxes.
Henry Seebohm named this bird after the English naturalist Thomas Blakiston, who collected the original specimen in Hakodate on HokkaidÅ, Japan in 1883.
Read more about this topic: Blakiston's Fish Owl
Famous quotes containing the word status:
“Knowing how beleaguered working mothers truly are—knowing because I am one of them—I am still amazed at how one need only say “I work” to be forgiven all expectation, to be assigned almost a handicapped status that no decent human being would burden further with demands. “I work” has become the universally accepted excuse, invoked as an all-purpose explanation for bowing out, not participating, letting others down, or otherwise behaving inexcusably.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)