Intervention

There has been much interest locally - and, because of Springwatch, much more widely - in the osprey project at Cors Dyfi near Machynlleth.  One of the three chicks died a week or more back, and more recently, during the very wet weather, a second died, and a third (the second hatched, I think) was too weak to signal that it wanted feeding, and therefore wasn't being fed.  Wildlife Trust members intervened, took the chick, fed it and warmed it, then returned in to the nest in a happier and healthier state, upon which the parent birds soon recommenced feeding.

Not everyone approves of such intervention.  Nature reserves are bits of wild habitat, not zoos, and nature should be allowed to take its course, some would say.  Personally, I'm glad the intervention was made.  We are, after all, talking about a project here - the ospreys are breeding at Cors Dyfi because of the human intervention that has led to a reserve area being maintained and stewarded, and a breeding platform erected on which the birds are nesting.  To a degree I would oppose intervention - for example, much as I might not like "my" bird table birds being predated by sparrow hawks, I would not intervene to prevent it happening.  But I think rules are made to be broken, and in this case it was the right move.

In any case, we human beings are involved in so many bad interventions that harm environments and destroy wild populations that a bit of positive action is surely not only nice but necessary.  And also, unlike the ospreys which, however we may view their parenting skills, are motivated and triggered by innate and instinctive reflexes (which is why the weak and listless chick was being ignored), we human beings have the capacity to be compassionate, to be aware, and to be interspecific in our action, recognising that all life has value.  And we should use it.