Tony Silva

[GregH]

Reputation is everything even if you are the Bird Man of Alcatraz. As an aviculturist his repution on husbandry was unassailable but did he have faults that would would quiestion your sanity if you were to leave him in charge of your five year old - yes. I don't really know Silvio's case but as I am not with out sin can I "cast the first stone"?

[mickw]

John Gould described many birds previously unknown to science as "tasting gamey".........ie they were shot

There are a stack of birds you are all happily breeding that were kindly brought to these shores stuffed in hair rollers, PVC pipes or porcelain figurines........let alone our own Aussie Natives in captivity overseas..............

Capture, Smuggling, exportation and importation has played a huge part in the history of our hobby/pastime/business/...., so too has monetary benefit.

Lets not get too precious now please.

[Jayburd]

hmmm

[mickw]

Had a few reds last night but mean everything I said.....but should note that I dont condone smuggling etc.

I just think we need to remind ourselves where our birds came from and that many people have initiated captive breeding programmes over the years from wild caught stock with or without bureacratic or peer support/consent.

[arthur]

Plenty on the 'net if you want to search . . both on the guilt & innocence of TS
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And Mick is correct of course

The forebears of all of our 'exotic' species came from . . . overseas

The forebears of all of our natives came from . . . . . . . . the wild

Many, many years ago it was neither legal nor illegal to trap or bring in birds . . there were no laws at all

Then it became illegal to trap certain species but not others . . Trapping was made illegal in some states, but not others . . etc etc . . Until we arrived at the situation that is in place today

Depending on your viewpoint, legality doesn't mean morality and the converse is also true . . the hotchpotch of fauna laws that still vary from state to state provide clear evidence of this

[jusdeb]

I like to think that Tony did what he did in the best interests of the species he imported (illegally) .
I like to see the best in people . Sometimes good people do bad things .

This has been my question all along ..what motivated him ?

[GregH]

Well if somone turned up with a captive population of Southern Star Finch that they had "saved from the wild" would the authorities thank them or charge them? I suspect it's the latter but wasn't their demise because of laws that allowed clearing and graizing of their habitat (probably still get a tax deduction for improving the land by clearing native vegetation) and not because of trapping. We live on planted with 7 billion people whihc leaves very little room for anything else. For some species their only hope for survival is captivity until we as a species learn to contol ourselves with the same precision but hopefully a little more humanity than we might show to plague locusts. Tony almost certainly broke the law but do those laws actually make more of a difference than Tony's captive breeding results. For parrots on the verge of extinction I truely doubt it.

[E Orix]

Tony Silva
When Tony got caught and convicted etc. it was a major shock not just in the USA but here as well.
Prior to his problem he was a well respected author and speaker even here in Oz so why should his books and comments be
thrown away because he got caught up in a net of corruption.
In those days there was huge money around and the shadowy people wanted access and recruited people who had no idea what they were getting into.
Because of the amount of money involved the USA agencies teamed up and nabbed the underlings to try and gain access to those above.
The result from memory the money guys melted away and the likes of Tony got left holding the bag.
After all this, yes use his works as a reference
Remember Robert Stroud was a murderer and one real bad person yet we still refer to his methods 60 years+ later,he was the Birdman of Alcatraz