Kitty Harvill (right) holds a bronze statuette of two Wildebeest, sculpted by South Africa's Peter Gray, part of her award received from Artists for Conservation President and Founder, Jeff Whiting (left)

In 15 years as honorary Information Officer for the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP) my most enjoyable experience has been collaborating with Kitty Harvill, Co-founder of Artists & Biologists Unite for Nature (ABUN), and with all her many participating artists.  Over three years, ACAP has received more than 500 artworks depicting its 31-listed species from ABUN in support of World Albatross Day on 19 June, to use to create awareness of the conservation crisis faced by the world's 22 species of albatrosses.  Each year, a selection of ABUN artworks, including several by Kitty, have been chosen to create World Albatross Day posters, made freely downloadable from the ACAP website at a high resolution suitable for printing.

“Lost in a Rising Sea” watercolour by Kitty Harvill in support of WAD2022 and its theme of “Climate Change”, after a photograph by Koa Matsuoka, poster design by Michelle Risi

Kitty Harvill has now been recognized for her contribution to art and wildlife with Artists for Conservation’s (AFC) top honour: the Simon Combes Conservation Artist Award.  The AFC bestows the award annually to individuals for exemplifying the achievements and dedication of the award's namesake.  The award was established in 2006 and has become the world's most prestigious conservation award for visual artists.  Simon Combes was a prominent member of the AFC until his tragic passing in 2004, when he was killed in an encounter with a Cape Buffalo near his home in Kenya.

Artists for Conservation is the world's leading group of artists supporting the environment.  Founded in 1997, the non-profit organization comprises a membership of 500 of the world's most gifted nature artists from 27 countries across five continents.

The award comes with a certificate as well as a statuette

Kitty received her award last month at the AFC’s 12th annual International Exhibit of Nature in Art in Vancouver, Canada.  In her acceptance speech she said in part: “My journey to wildlife art is a ‘From Ashes to Beauty’ story.  When I lost my mother in 2004, I didn’t paint for two years. My mother and I had begun our art careers together.  When I was 18, I left home to pursue a degree in fine art and she went back to school to study art, at Austin Peay State University in our hometown of Clarksville, Tennessee.  She was 46. I was 46 the year she died, and I thought perhaps it was time for me to start a new career, at that age, just like she did, after my career in commercial art and illustration.  I started making trips to Brazil, not to paint but to photograph.  I immersed myself in the nature of Brazil with photography and thought that would be my new career.  But something interesting happened, after two years I pulled out a sheet of pastel paper and began a painting of a Giant River Otter that I’d photographed in the Pantanal.  My hand literally flew all over that paper for more than an hour and I just knew that this was my new career.  I believe my immersion in nature for those two years doing photography helped me to the point that I could paint again, and I certainly have.  To receive an award in honour and memory of such an iconic artist and conservationist as Simon Combes is both humbling and motivating - big shoes and footsteps to fill and follow.  Thank you so very much for this great honour.”

AFC President and Founder, Jeff Whiting, who presented the award on the first day of the festival said “Kitty is a rare kind of inspiring artist and conservationist, and an extraordinary role model of resourcefulness, creativity, persistence and passion.” (click here).

The Artists for Conservation Festival was accompanied by a book with a five-page chapter on Kitty’s award that includes her “All for One. One for All – Albatross” collage of all 22 albatrosses, available as a WAD2020 poster.  The 240-page book features 200 artworks by 178 artists from 19 countries

Among the most threatened groups of birds in the world, albatrosses and their allied petrels face numerous threats on land and at sea.  These include predation by invasive mammals on breeding islands, mortality at sea from fisheries, diseases, plastic pollution, and climate change and consequent sea-level rise causing flooding of low-lying breeding islands.  Kitty's and the ABUN artists' artworks are helping the Agreement work towards mitigating these threats.

Kitty has written to ACAP Latest News: "Vancouver was a wonderful experience in every way.  I am still floating above ground from it all!  I'm delighted that my albatross painting of all 22 species made it into my book chapter”. She adds: “I'm looking forward to working with ACAP once again, and on such an important topic as ‘Plastic Pollution’ for World Albatross Day next year.  The albatrosses always inspire!”

The Albatross and Petrel Agreement agrees and looks forward to collaborating once more with Kitty and her ABUN artists in January next year in support of WAD2023.

John Cooper, ACAP News Correspondent, 11 October 2022

Offshore tests for the recovery of floating plastics conducted by The Ocean Cleanup in the North Pacific Garbage Patch in 2019; photograph by Fedde Poppenk

Laurent Lebreton (The Ocean Cleanup, Rotterdam, The Netherlands) and colleagues have published open access in the journal, Scientific Reports on the origin of floating plastic in the North Pacific Garbage Patch.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“The subtropical oceanic gyre in the North Pacific Ocean is currently covered with tens of thousands of tonnes of floating plastic debris, dispersed over millions of square kilometres. A large fraction is composed of fishing nets and ropes while the rest is mostly composed of hard plastic objects and fragments, sometimes carrying evidence on their origin. In 2019, an oceanographic mission conducted in the area, retrieved over 6000 hard plastic debris items > 5 cm. The debris was later sorted, counted, weighed, and analysed for evidence of origin and age. Our results, complemented with numerical model simulations and findings from a previous oceanographic mission, revealed that a majority of the floating material stems from fishing activities. While recent assessments for plastic inputs into the ocean point to coastal developing economies and rivers as major contributors into oceanic plastic pollution, here we show that most floating plastics in the North Pacific subtropical gyre can be traced back to five industrialised fishing nations, highlighting the important role the fishing industry plays in the solution to this global issue.”

Composition of hard plastic debris harvested from the North Pacific Garbage Patch in 2019. Relative (a) mass and (b) numerical distribution of hard plastic items > 5 cm only (e.g., excluding nets and ropes)

In Freda Kreier’s discussion of the paper in Nature this month, the author expands on the paper’s findings that show between 75 and 86% of the large floating plastic pieces collected for the survey in the North Pacific Garbage Patch can be attributed to fishing vessels originating from just five regions of the globe.

REFERENCE

Lebreton L., Royer S.J., Peytavin A., Strietman W.J., Smeding-Zuurendonk I., Egger M. Industrialised fishing nations largely contribute to floating plastic pollution in the North Pacific subtropical gyre. Scientific Report. 2022. Sep 1;12(1):12666.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-16529-0  

Images courtesy of the authors and journal, Scientific Reports, and are permitted for publication under the creative commons licence, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Plastic Pollution has been chosen by ACAP as the theme to mark the fourth World Albatross Day, to be celebrated on June 19, 2023. Albatrosses are affected by a range of pollutants, of which plastics, whether ingested and then fed to chicks or causing entanglements, are certainly the most visible and well known to the public.  However, albatrosses face other significant pollutants, including heavy metals, (such as mercury) and POPs (persistent organic pollutants, such as insecticides).  ACAP will therefore include these and other categories of pollutants along with plastics in promoting “WAD2023”.

Ghost fishing gear has also been highlighted recently by the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) who have released an educational infographic poster on the problem. The poster is available to download at the ASOC website. 

10 October 2022

World Migratory Bird Day (WMBD) is set to mark the second of its twice-yearly celebratory days on 8 October under this year’s theme, “Light Pollution”. Adopting the catch cry, “Dim the Lights for Birds at Night”, WMBD is raising awareness of the impact of light pollution on migratory birds of whom most species do so under night skies.

“Light Pollution refers to artificial light that alters the natural patterns of light and dark in ecosystems. Light Pollution is increasing globally. The amount of artificial light on the earth's surface is increasing by at least 2% each year and poses a growing threat to migratory birds. Excessive artificial light at night can disorient birds during their migration, leading to collisions with buildings, interfering with their internal clocks and disrupting migrations.”

As stated in an ACAP Latest News story earlier this year, ACAP-listed species particularly at risk are the Westland Petrel Procellaria westlandica, the Pink-footed Shearwater Ardenna creatopus and the Balearic Shearwater Puffinus mauretanicus.  Other procellariiform species seriously affected include Newell’s Puffinus newelli and Wedge-tailed Ardenna pacifica Shearwaters and Hawaiian Petrels Pterodroma sandwichensis on inhabited Hawaiian islands and Hutton’s Shearwater Puffinus huttoni that breeds inland on New Zealand’s South Island.

The issue of light pollution and its impacts on wildlife are increasingly recognised globally as a serious problem. The topic was considered for the first time at the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals thirteenth meeting of the Conference of Parties (CMS COP13) in 2020 following draft resolutions submitted independently by the European Union and Australia. Best practice guidelines are now under development under the Convention on Migratory Species.

World Migratory Bird Day is celebrated twice a year, on the second Saturdays in May and October, reflecting the peak times of migration along the world’s flyways and the seasonal nature of bird migration. For more information on WMBD and how you can be involved visit their website.

7 October 2022

A Wandering Albatross displays to potential mates; journal cover photograph by Samantha Patrick

Ruijiao Sun (Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts, USA) and colleagues have published open access in the journal Biology Letters on divorce in the globally Vulnerable Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Personality predicts divorce rates in humans, yet how personality traits affect divorce in wild animals remains largely unknown.  In a male-skewed population of wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans), we showed that personality predicts divorce; shyer males exhibited higher divorce rates than bolder males but no such relationship was found in females.  We propose that divorce may be caused by the intrusion of male competitors and shyer males divorce more often because of their avoidance of territorial aggression, while females have easier access to mates regardless of their personality.  Thus, personality may have important implications for the dynamics of social relationships.”

Access a related paper on divorce in Wandering Albatrosses by Ruijiao Sun and colleagues from here.

Reference:

Sun R., Van de Walle, J., Patrick, S.C., Barbraud, C., Weimerskirch, H., Delord, K. & Jenouvrier S. 2022.  Boldness predicts divorce rates in wandering albatrosses (Diomedea exulans).  Biology Letters 18 (9) doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2022.0301.

John Cooper, ACAP News Correspondent, 06 October 2022