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Victims and diplomats: European white stork conservation efforts, animal representations, and images of expertise in postwar ornithology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2024

Simone Schleper*
Affiliation:
History Department, GTD Research Group, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University
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Argument

This article discusses two approaches to save the European white stork populations from extinction that emerged after 1980. Despite the shared objective to devise transnational, science-based conservation measures, the two approaches’ geographical focus was radically different. Projects by the World Wildlife Fund and the International Council for Bird Preservation focused firmly on the stork’s wintering areas on the African continent. Interventions by a second group of ornithologists at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell concentrated on the Middle East as a migration bottleneck. Based on archival research, interviews and correspondence with involved ornithologists, the article examines stork representations as an important lens for investigating the professional politics of ecology and conservation. It shows that representations of white storks, the birds’ ecology, and derived conservation hotspots became part of the boundary work used by European ornithologists in the creation of changing scientific and institutional identities.

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Research Article
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Introduction

From 1985 onwards, the German branch of the World Wildlife Fund (now World Wide Fund for Nature, WWF), together with the International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP) and the German Federation for Bird Protection (DBV, now NABU), conducted a white stork conservation campaign to tackle this species’ threatening decline. The main aim of the joint conservation and research project was to identify the migrants’ important resting spots and wintering areas, and thus create a framework for international protection measures (Schulz Reference Schulz1989a, 77). The project painted a bleak picture of the white stork’s future. A leaflet designed by the French branch of the ICBP, for instance, featured a drawing of a white stork being shot in the back by a hunter, who is carrying the wings of a second bird, while armies of locusts march past the fallen body (see figure 1). “The white stork population has diminished dangerously in four European countries, including France, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark,” the leaflet read, followed by the exhortation, “help us,” in which “us” can be understood as the makers of the poster, or as the storks themselves (Terrasse Reference Terrasse and Hölzinger1986).

Figure 1. Front of the leaflet by the French section of the ICBP (Terrasse Reference Terrasse and Hölzinger1986). With kind permission of Michel Terrasse, Marc Thauront, and Landesanstalt für Umwelt Baden-Württemberg.

Figure 2. Migration pattern of the white stork Caesar via Turkey, Syria and Israel, tracked by satellite transmitter in late 1994 (Van den Bossche et al. Reference Van den Bossche, Berthold, Kaatz, Nowak and Querner2002, 55). With kind permission of Willem Van den Bossche, and Bundesamt für Naturschutz (BfN).

The leaflet presented the white stork as a victim of human violence. This violence was geographically rooted. The painted landscape suggested that the stork was hunted not in its European breeding areas, but in places it visited during the European winter. With its grim and moralized message, the leaflet captured, in pictorial ways, a similar narrative to that of the WWF and ICBP white stork research projects from the 1980s, which firmly focused their conservation efforts on the African continent.Footnote 1

Currently, the European white stork (ciconia ciconia) is listed on the Red List of Endangered Species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in the category “least concern” (Species Factsheet: Ciconia Ciconia 2024). The low urgency is, however, a recent development, resulting from European breeding programs and a slow recovery after a period of steep decline observed since the early postwar years in both eastwards and westwards migrating storks (Kronenberg, Andersson, and Tryjanowski Reference Kronenberg, Andersson and Tryjanowski2017; Tree Reference Tree2020). European stork censuses have been conducted nationally and internationally since 1934. These early efforts were spearheaded by the Bird Observatory Rossitten in East Prussia, founded in 1901. After the Second World War, the political borders within Europe shifted significantly, and new census data on white stork populations became difficult to interpret. Nevertheless, it was generally understood that the numbers attained during the international census of 1958 demonstrated a clear decline in overall counts, especially in northwestern Europe. Ornithologists in the Netherlands and Denmark, former strongholds of stork research, counted up to 80 percent fewer storks, while Switzerland and Sweden had already recorded a total collapse of their stork populations by the early 1950s (Schüz and Szijj Reference Schüz and Szijj1960).

Numerous national and regional protection initiatives emerged in the 1950s and 1960s (Kuhk and Schüz Reference Kuhk, Schüz and Steiniger1956; Brinkmann Reference Brinkmann1960), and by the 1970s the decline of the white stork was recognized as a Europe-wide problem. A growing number of European conventions focused more or less directly on birds, and by extension white storks. These included the bird protection regulations under the European Community, and the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats from 1979, which aimed at the protection of biotopes, including those recognized as white stork breeding areas. Internationally, the Bonn Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), which was opened for signature by the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) in 1979 and demanded regional treaties for border crossing animals, became important for stork protection efforts (Nowak Reference Nowak, Biber, Enggist, Marti and Salathé1995, 301–3). The urgency for such transregional treaties was yet again reinforced by the finding of the international stork census of 1984, which recorded further declines in both eastern and western stork populations. At the meeting of the CMS parties in 1985, the white stork was discussed as a priority case (Rheinwald, Ogden, and Schulz Reference Rheinwald, Ogden and Schulz1989, 12). With the backing of new transregional and international conventions, the 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of several European stork projects. Not all, however, shared the WWF’s and ICBP’s conviction that the main cause of the bird’s demise had to be sought in Africa.

In this article, I look at two approaches that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s to save the naturally occurring European white stork populations from extinction. Despite their shared objective of devising new, transnational, and science-based conservation measures, the two approaches’ geographical focus was radically different. While projects by the WWF and the ICBP focused firmly on the stork’s wintering areas on the African continent, a second group of ornithologists at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Ornithology in Radolfzell, the postwar successor of the Rossitten observatory, focused their interventions on the Middle East, a bottleneck on the birds’ migratory routes. The projects partly based their claims on different research methods and technologies, namely bird banding and satellite telemetry. It would be wrong, however, to seek the main reason for the different localization of international conservation schemes in the use of different tracking technologies alone. Based on archival research, interviews and correspondence with involved ornithologists, I show that at least as important was the self-representation of experts and their perceived relationship with the bird. Representations of storks and their problems were essential in this self-fashioning by ornithological experts. Yet, so far, they have been disregarded as lenses for investigating the professional politics of bird ecology and conservation.

In this article, I explore how representations of storks were used to undergird scientists’ self-representation and claims for expertise. In the history of science, animal representations have mostly been studied as stand-ins for particular ideas of nature or wilderness (e.g., Mitman Reference Mitman2012). The focus has often been on purposefully staged representations, part of carefully constructed aesthetic experiences for popular audiences, somewhat separate from the scientific work of experts. For instance, Stefan Bargheer has shown how twentieth-century birders in Britain and Germany used images of birds as diverse and rare or as useful and abundant to publicly justify different conservation strategies and emphases (Bargheer Reference Bargheer2018). Similarly, Jens Lachmund has studied representations of the collard dove as part of scientists’ public engagement, rather than as strategies to buttress their own scientific profile. Instead, in this article, I examine the representations of white storks, the birds’ migration ecology, and derived conservation hotspots, as part of the boundary work—the “ideological style”—used by proponents of both approaches to demarcate their scientific claims about stork migration and protection strategies in the creation of scientific and institutional identities (Gieryn Reference Gieryn1983, 781; Mahony Reference Mahony2013).

Boundary work, in the traditional sense, is the work that scientists perform to map their expertise vis-à-vis other knowledge claims outside of the scientific realm. Yet, boundary work is not limited to the science/non-science divide. It is equally present in the demarcation between different scientific approaches or orientations (Gieryn Reference Gieryn1983, 792). Boundary work between scientific approaches has been acknowledged as an important tool for environmental scientists, often dependent on political decision making and pressed for funds. Here, tropes of scientific neutrality and objectivity, for instance, have played an important role in asserting expert authority (e.g., Eden, Donaldson, and Walker Reference Eden, Donaldson and Walker2006).

When it comes to boundary work in the history of conservation sciences, most scholars have focused on the ways in which experts used their observation skills and their mastery of technological tools to track and monitor wildlife to assert expertise over other epistemic communities (Benson Reference Benson2010, Reference Benson2012), to bolster national scientific prestige (MacDonald Reference Macdonald2002), or to reinforce international hierarchies in expertise, often against a colonial backdrop (Jacobs Reference Jacobs, Beattie, Melillp and O’Gorman2015, Reference Jacobs2016). Instead, this article looks at how representations of storks themselves, crafted with rhetoric and imagery, have been part of the argumentative repertoire in the self-fashioning of European ornithologists (Browne Reference Browne2003; Beiermann and Wesseling Reference Beiermann and Wesseling2020). By analyzing two representations of storks in approaches to science-based stork conservation that commenced in the 1980s, I demonstrate a shift in the persona of the European ornithologist—from authoritative expert to scientific diplomat. Moreover, by placing these two representations within the context of longer research traditions and expert cultures, this article contributes to an as-yet underdeveloped comprehensive scientific history of European, and particularly German, ornithology in the twentieth century (De Bont Reference Bont2010; Lachmund Reference Lachmund2015; Wöbse Reference Wöbse, Föhn and Rosebrock2017).

Rescuing storks by educating Africans

Migratory birds, such as the white stork, have played an important role in the work of the ICBP since its foundation in 1922 (Grimmet Reference Grimmet1987; Boardman Reference Boardman1981, 160). Alarmed by declining white stork population numbers in the 1970s and 1980s, the ICBP, together with the German branch of the WWF, initiated several projects that focused on the white stork’s stay in Africa during the European winter.Footnote 2 In 1981, the ICBP created the Stork, Ibis and Spoonbill Specialist Group (SIS-SG) to coordinate data gathering and understand the status and need for protection of these birds internationally (ICBP 1983). The SIS-SG was founded at a meeting at the German bird park Walsrode in West Germany. Walsrode, at the time the world’s largest bird park, was owned by Wolf W. Brehm, an important funder of research, protection and breeding programs of birds, whose Fund for International Bird Conservation began financing the SIS-SG’s activities in 1982 (Luthin Reference Luthin1986).

The connection to Germany was not coincidental. Since the early twentieth century, German ornithologists had been leading in migratory bird research, with a strong focus on the white stork (De Bont Reference Bont2010). In many ways, the white stork had become a mascot for German ornithologists, amateurs and professionals alike. In May 1983, just prior to the fifth international white stork census, the DBV organized a symposium in Baden-Württemberg in Southwest Germany, on the “threatening decline” of the white stork, the heraldic animal of the organization. According to the conference organizer, Jochen Hölzinger, the 76 percent decline in the number of breeding pairs in West Germany since 1934 could be explained by looking at the changes in the birds’ habitat. Since the Second World War, white storks had been victims of changing landscapes in their European breeding areas and, more recently, of landscape development in their wintering areas in newly independent African states, which lay outside of the scope of most European conventions. It was in Africa, Hölzinger explained, that chemicals and pesticides, promoted by local governments and international development agencies, paired with an ignorance of conservation principles, affected the birds directly or indirectly through the eradication of the insects on which they fed (Hölzinger Reference Hölzinger and Hölzinger1986, 7, 14).

In 1983, the ICBP, together with the International Waterfowl Research Bureau, launched a survey of habitat requirements within the Palearctic-African flyway system, the migratory trajectory annually followed by the European white stork. The concept of the flyway had emerged in the United Sates during the 1920s, in the context of the United States Biological Survey, as a way to connect and protect wetlands thought to be crucial for the protection of migratory waterfowl (Wilson Reference Wilson2010, 27–28). Rather than connecting habitats along the migratory route, however, the ICBP survey strongly focused on the storks’ wintering grounds on the African continent.

In the years 1984, 1985, and 1986, the questionnaire was distributed widely through the ICBP’s and the WWF’s networks in both Europe and Africa. The English and French questionnaire was sent to about 300 ornithologists, most of whom were white researchers “of European descent, or Europeans who know Africa,” asking them for their input on thirty-nine African countries (Grimmet Reference Grimmet1987, 1–2; 7–9). The survey focused primarily on land changes caused by resource extraction, agricultural intensification, pesticide use, and industrial infrastructure, such as dams or electric wiring, that were being rapidly developed in many parts of post-independent Africa (Grimmet Reference Grimmet1987, 3–4). Geographically, the questionnaire focused particularly on Sahelian Africa, defined as the region between 27°50’N and 30°50’S, between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea (Grimmet Reference Grimmet1987, 62). Mali and Sudan in particular were identified by respondents as important stopovers and wintering sites for migratory stork populations on the eastern and western routes, due to seasonal flooding and river deltas, which provided the water birds with sustenance in the form of fish and insects (Roux Reference Roux1990). Since the 1970s, both areas had been subject to unparalleled agricultural intensification, bolstered by foreign investment and technological aid by international organizations (O’Brien Reference O’Brien1981). According to the ICBP, the consequences of reckless development had been excessive pesticide use, and, in the case of Sudan, where, compared to Mali, local standards of living had improved only minimally, increased bird hunting by local farmers (Grimmet Reference Grimmet1987, 79–80, 95–97).

The survey was not the only ongoing project proposing that a focus on Africa was crucial for European white stork conservation efforts. In the 1980s, the focus on Africa was seemingly reconfirmed by advances in data analysis, which allowed a new evaluation of historical ring finds. From the early twentieth century onwards, the territoriality of the stork had been a question of scientific interest for ornithologists in the European centers of bird banding. By the 1920s, stork banding had become a popular pastime among European amateur ornithologists, yet with little transregional or transnational synchronization (Schüz 1930; Reference Schüz1938b; von Lucanus Reference von Lucanus1919; De Bont Reference Bont2010). The standardization of ring records began in the 1970s, when the European Union for Bird Ringing (EURING) established a European databank for ring data.

In 1977, an attempt was made at computerizing historical data going back to the 1920s. In 1982, these efforts were advanced with additional funding by the European Community (du Feu et al. Reference du Feu, Clark, Schaub, Fiedler and Baillie2016). The synchronized data, and the evaluation and analysis of more than 10,000 white stork ring recoveries that had been collected in the framework of the EURING project, including new rings returned between 1963 and 1983, seemed to show that almost three quarters of the white storks ringed in France and recaptured in French West Africa had been shot or trapped (Thauront Reference Thauront1986, 10). These findings seemed to reconfirm that European white storks were mainly threatened during their stay on the African continent.

The new ring data was also used to underpin theoretical reflections and additional research into the hypothesis that nutritional shortcomings in Africa were at the core of the European stork problem. In 1985, a second Walsrode symposium on international stork conservation, convened jointly by the ICBP and the WWF, discussed the work of two Dutch ornithologists, Hans Dallinga and Martin Schoenmakers, which suggested exactly this (Rheinwald, Ogden, and Schulz Reference Rheinwald, Ogden and Schulz1989, 229; Dallinga and Schoenmakers Reference Dallinga and Schoenmakers1984). According to the two ornithologists, it was unlikely that breeding conditions in Europe were the cause of the decline in population numbers. If that were the case, they argued, there would have been no difference between the populations of eastern and western storks in places where breeding areas overlapped (Dallinga and Schoenmakers Reference Dallinga and Schoenmakers1987; Reference Dallinga, Schoenmakers, Rheinwald, Ogden and Schulz1989, 237). However, the western population had declined more rapidly, and reasons therefore needed to be sought in the distinct wintering areas of the two populations. According to Dallinga and Schoenmakers, fluctuations in plague intensity—the availability of locusts and other insects—in wintering areas of the eastern white stork population, located in East and South Africa, corresponded clearly with fluctuations of stork numbers in the breeding grounds of eastward-migrating birds in Schleswig-Holstein and Oldenburg. Similar correlations could be found for the western stork population, breeding, for instance in Southwest Germany (Dallinga and Schoenmakers Reference Dallinga, Schoenmakers, Rheinwald, Ogden and Schulz1989, 239–43). Hence, for Dallinga and Schoenmakers it was “obvious that we must look first to Africa for the main causes, in view of the large influence of conditions in the wintering areas on the annual fluctuations in numbers” (Dallinga and Schoenmakers Reference Dallinga, Schoenmakers, Rheinwald, Ogden and Schulz1989, 250). Similar conclusions were drawn at the Walsrode symposium.

It would be wrong however, to assume that the focus on Africa resulted chiefly from newly analyzed ring data from the 1970s and 1980s. This becomes clear when looking at the ways in which new findings simply revived a representation of the European white stork that had been present in leading ornithological circles in Europe at least since the decline of the population had first been noticed. This representation was not born in the 1980s, but merely gained new significance in the context of European conservationists’ criticism of rash and presumably ecologically unsound development in the global South.

The origins for this place-based problem definition can be found in a long tradition of European centers for ornithology and their difficulties in connecting to the peripheries of their networks, which after all, accommodated the birds half of the year. From the beginning, banding efforts were firmly rooted in Europe. Although largely based on amateur participation, ornithology had, for a long time, been linked to the prestige of European scientific communities, with fewer links to colonial Africa. This was perhaps most visible in Germany, where, by 1932, the network of licensed ringers counted more than 50,000 members.Footnote 3 In these ornithological networks, Africa had long been a “dark continent” (Schüz Reference Schüz1948). From the limited correspondence with a handful South African birders, not much was known about the wintering areas’ role in the healthy return of the European white stork.

From the 1950s onwards, with the postwar revival of ornithological affairs and the first registered declines in population numbers, the lack of knowledge about the storks’ condition during the European winter became a topic of concern. This concern was reinforced by stories about local hunting traditions and the sighting of “arrow storks,”Footnote 4 which, since the nineteenth century, not only seemed to provide evidence for the location of the storks’ wintering areas, but also encouraged ideas about African hunting as a major threat for the winged European travelers (Schüz Reference Schüz1948; Jacob Reference Jacobs, Beattie, Melillp and O’Gorman2015).

Hunting was one explanation for the storks’ decline; low quality nutrition was another. In the 1950s, Ernst Schüz, the former director of the Rossitten observatory, suggested that “disturbance years,” years with lower counts of breeding pairs, could stem from parasites in locusts, consumed by the birds during their winter stays (Schüz Reference Schüz1959). Other causes about which Schüz speculated were shooting for pleasure and locust poisoning, two problems similarly linked to the birds’ African winter range (Schüz and Szijj Reference Schüz and Szijj1961; Schüz Reference Schüz1948, 15–16). Like Dallinga’s and Schoenmakers’s conclusion from the 1980s, Schüz’s 1959 analysis posited that solutions “to the decrease in numbers in many places must be sought in African parks.” In his case, however, he based his conclusion on the argument that, in Europe, the birds were protected from harmful activities by “the Christian and Mohammedan religion” (Schüz Reference Schüz1959, 338–39).

Stork research in the first half of the twentieth century was not limited to European ornithologists. A handful Africa-based ornithologists, though few in number and predominantly linked to white, colonial networks, tried to counter the accusations by birders based on the European continent. In fact, since the 1940s, a number of South African ornithologists have researched storks’ digestion of invested or poisoned locusts to prove that their ingestion had no negative health effects (e.g., Milstein Reference Milstein1966; Jacobs Reference Jacobs2016, 116–18). Up to 1970, the former British colonial officer and ornithologist Reginald Moreau maintained that human land changes had not been detrimental to Palearctic migrants, and that some migratory bird species, adapted to human land changes, might even have benefitted from them (Moreau Reference Moreau1970, 95–103). However, the concerns by Europe-based ornithologists about the African condition remained.

These concerns were not limited to German birders. In 1966, the well-known British ornithologist David Lack, after examining stork data from Oldenburg in northern Germany, suggested that main factors causing the decline in European stork populations should be sought in Africa. Lack could not detect any noticeable difference in the numbers of young annually produced per breeding pair during the previous thirty-one years of data. Mortality, he concluded, occurred either in young birds, in adults, or in both, and “this almost certainly means that the critical mortality occurs in the [European] winter in Africa” (Lack Reference Lack1966, 228). At the very least, Lack proposed, “these findings suggest that one should seek first in Africa for the factors causing the current overall decrease in the numbers of the White Stork in Europe” (ibid.).

In the 1980s, the synthesized banding data, and climatic changes in the Sahel region especially, seemed to reconfirm these older representations of European birds as victims of a generalized African state of affairs. In the autumn and winter of 1986 and 1987, Holger Schulz, a German ornithologist, conducted field research on white storks wintering in Africa for the WWF. Schulz had been the chairman of the ICBP/IUCN world working group on bustards, and had spent several months in Africa on a project for the United Nations’ German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), working on “pest bird control.”Footnote 5 In 1986, he was asked by the WWF to instead study the effects of insect pest control on birds.

Schulz visited South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Kenia, Tanzania and Sudan, where he worked with Wilhelm Kühle from the WWF Germany and the Sudanese conservationist Ahmed Elmalik, whose work Schulz knew from the 1985 Walsrode symposium. During the expeditions, Schulz and his colleagues observed the behavior of white storks with binocular telescopes. In Sudan, Schulz, Kühle and Emalik also interviewed twenty-three herders and farmers. Farmers who had hunted storks were interviewed independently to obtain information on their methods. In addition, the team collected samples of tissue of dead storks to test for the presence of pesticides (Elmalik Reference Elmalik, Rheinwald, Ogden and Schulz1989).Footnote 6

Reporting on the results, Schulz reconfirmed that threat factors in Africa, including hunting, droughts, and pesticide use, had a significant effect on regional stork populations. In particular, Schulz explained, hunting threatened storks resting in the West African Niger delta, where only a few hundred western storks remained each year. On the eastern route, hunting was a problem in Lebanon, Syria and Sudan. In Sudan, farmers and herders caught resting storks with “primitive means” such as boomerangs, canes, stones, and snares.Footnote 7 While bird conservationists and ornithologists condemned the hunting of migratory birds within Europe as well (e.g., Greer Reference Greer2020), here, concerns about hunting became part of a larger campaign to highlight the need for European ecological expertise on the African continent post-independence. Schulz stressed, for instance, that in Sudan hunting had only emerged with the intensification of state sponsored sorghum agriculture from the 1960s onwards.Footnote 8 Due to changes in the climate, noted Schulz, the storks’ risky migration across Sahara and Sahel was becoming longer, while the availability of locusts became less certain. This explained why the western population was affected more strongly on average, as eastern storks could usually follow the annual rain fronts further south. Yet, Sudanese farmers, too, reported having seen hundreds of dead storks near seared water holes during drought years. A third factor which played into the decline of the western population was the control of locusts in West Africa, which had increased since the 1970s, reducing an important food source for white storks. Schulz’s expedition to the Sahel regions showed that eastern storks were affected by similar developments (Schulz Reference Schulz1989b, 12–13). Schulz’s project thus reconfirmed that hunting, drought, and pesticide use were the biggest problems for wintering storks in Africa.

The WWF and ICBP projects tied in with a larger discourse that promoted the responsibility of conservation NGOs in Africa based on a long tradition of European expertise and moral authority in matters of international conservation (Grimmet Reference Grimmet1987). By referring to the work by Schüz and his contemporaries, ornithologists in the WWF and the ICBP placed themselves directly in this tradition. As it had in earlier projects, the focus on Africa served to highlight European competences. At the same time, creating images of storks as victims of African land development, in the context of 1980s development projects, stressed this need for European competences once more. In many ways, the focus on Africa, and other parts of what was considered the developing world, was part of a trend within international NGOs concerned with environmental protection, such as the WWF, which steadily increased their presence in the global South during the 1980s (Brockington and Scholfield Reference Brockington and Scholfield2010, 554).

The text of the Bern Convention of 1986 also strongly emphasized the integration of some African countries into the convention to protect European natural heritage abroad, which was celebrated by many European conservationists. For this, representations of the bird were used by ornithologists in their boundary work, their rhetorical style, to stress the need for the continued involvement of European experts. While the white stork had previously been protected as a close cohabitor of human landscapes, Hölzinger explained, the onset of modernized agriculture changed the ways in which the birds could live harmoniously with humans (Hölzinger Reference Hölzinger and Hölzinger1986, 7, 14). According to Hölzinger, not only storks, but also human landscapes, to which the stork had adapted, were being poisoned. The decline of the white stork seemed to represent the estrangement of people from their environment and their non-human cohabitants. The stork, in this regard, was both an indicator and a victim of this unhealthy process. This was captured on the ICBP poster in the form of an invasion of vermin following the killing of the birds, whose usefulness the hunter seemed to have forgotten (Rheinwald, Ogden, and Schulz Reference Rheinwald, Ogden and Schulz1989, 9). This representation too, however, predated the 1980s.

Already during the 1950s, in line with pessimist environmental visions of the postwar period, ornithologists like Schüz, to whom the 1985 Walsrode symposium was dedicated, had presented modern technology and growing discrepancies between human societies and nature as one of the main reasons for animal extinctions (Lorenz Reference Lorenz1950; Schüz Reference Schüz1953). Schüz promoted the idea that the decline and, in some places, the local extinction of wildlife on the African continent could only be stopped with far reaching educational campaigns (Schüz Reference Schüz1953). During an Africa trip to the Second Pan-African Ornithological Congress in 1964, Schüz continued to campaign for more educational work in Africa.Footnote 9

The language used by Schüz and his contemporaries is very similar to that found in published material from the 1980s projects. In a report on his work in the WWF project for the Austrian journal Vogelschutz in Österreich in 1989, Schulz explained that while in the European breeding areas, the recreation of nature areas was important for the recovery of the population, in Africa, educational work was required to convey to the human population the biology, usefulness and thus protection-worthiness of white storks (Schulz Reference Schulz1989a). The rhetoric in Schulz’s report closely recalls that used in the early twentieth century in Europe to convince farmers of the usefulness of certain bird species (Nowak Reference Nowak and Blab2005, 33–48).

The educational campaigns of the 1980s focused on designing information posters and leaflets. The ornithologist Gerhard Nikolaus, who, together with his wife, had been working almost continuously in Sudan between 1976 and 1984, designed a poster for the ICBP that was distributed, with the help of the Wildlife Conservation Forces Central Administration in Khartoum, after a Sudanese wildlife protection seminar in March 1985 (Heckenroth Reference Heckenroth and Hölzinger1986; Nikolaus Reference Nikolaus1987). Earlier in the 1980s, an educational campaign by the French branch of the ICBP was aimed at protecting the white stork in West Africa. In 1986, 15,000 French posters, leaflets and cartoons were sent to contacts in Mali, and 2,000 Arabic ones to contacts in Tunisia, Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Niger, the Republic of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), and Mauritania, in order to contribute to the protection of European, in this case French, national heritage (Terrasse Reference Terrasse and Hölzinger1986, 343). The underlying assumption conveyed by the posters, and the educational material (such as cartoons) that was distributed in leaflets, was clear. While African support seemed crucial to saving the European white stork, African conservation hotspots were in need of support by European conservationists to do so.

Overall, then, the projects that emerged in the 1980s to tackle the decline of the European white stork in Africa revived older representations of the white stork as a victim of African ignorance, and of European conservationists as invaluable experts. The estrangement of the African rural population from their ecological condition, this rhetoric argued, required the intervention of European bird experts and educational campaigns. This place-based problem entailed a clear representation of the role of the scientists and researchers involved in stork research and conservation as being able to restore disturbed African ecological relationships. The superiority of European expertise was highlighted by the suggested need for educational campaigns against rural hunting and the need for additional cooperation of European bird experts with international development NGOs present in Africa, which in part financed the use of pesticides and agricultural transformations.

Bridging Middle Eastern fault lines with migration ecology

In the course of the 1980s and 1990s, a change in the approach to stork conservation emerged, accompanied by a noticeable change in rhetoric. Again, German scientists, this time researchers at the MPI ornithological station in the German town of Radolfzell, took the lead. The geographical focus of the MPI projects was, however, not centered on African wintering areas, but on bottlenecks of migration, nodes through which the majority of migratory birds passed on their annual roundtrip. Such bottlenecks were deemed significant for studying migration ecology, including the birds’ requirements for resting and feeding, but also for research on physiological and behavioral questions related to the birds’ orientation and navigation.

In light of their significance, bottlenecks became important sites for observation and experimentation. One such site is the Kurish Spit, a Baltic salient, which became the location of the Rossitten observatory (De Bont Reference Bont2015). Another particularly important bottleneck for the eastern population was located in the Middle East, between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, allowing migratory birds, such as the white stork, to access the African continent over land rather than water.

The MPI ornithologists’ decision to focus their attention on migration pathways and en route stopovers rather than on wintering areas was based, in part, on newly available tracking technology, this time satellite telemetry, which allowed for the continuous tracing of individual birds. At the same time, however, the choice was also motivated by a wish to revive fundamental research into migration ecology and older visions of international scientific prestige. Envisioned research cooperation crossed the political barriers of the time, including the lifting iron curtain and the fault lines in the Middle East (Müller and Nowak Reference Müller and Nowak1992).Footnote 10 In this approach, representations of storks as true internationally migrating birds, interlinking continents and bridging political divides, were used to bolster the image of science-based conservation as a means of international rapprochement.

Members at the MPI in Radolfzell, led by Peter Berthold, at the time the institute’s director, lobbied for the white stork’s integration as a case study in the framework of the CMS, in hopes of gaining financial support for an international project to study and protect the birds along their migration route.Footnote 11 From the beginning, the MPI’s proposals focused on migration ecology, resulting in a focus on the eastern population, in which the migration instinct was considered to be still intact. Breeding and reintroduction programs, focusing mainly on the western population, for instance in Switzerland, seemed to be interfering with the storks’ migratory habits, which were essential to the scientific endeavors of the MPI ornithologists.Footnote 12 The last 20,000 pairs of the western population were seen as interspersed with semi-domesticated, non-migratory, bred storks, which meant the end of “the natural population.”Footnote 13 This representation of storks put their long-distance migration center stage.

In a lucky turn, the German reunification allowed for a new cooperation with the ornithological station Loburg, which had been founded in 1979 in Brandenburg, East Germany, as a white stork rescue center.Footnote 14 At the same time, MPI researchers sought additional international cooperation that could give access to crucial migration bottlenecks. From the late 1980s onwards, the MPI established links with Israeli researchers. Israel was uniquely located “at the junction of three continents—Europe, Asia and Africa,” with “450,000 storks flying the country each spring,” and “in autumn about half this number.”Footnote 15 In 1989, Yossi Leshem, an Israeli PhD candidate at the University of Tel Aviv, reached out to Eugeniusz Nowak from the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) in Bonn. Nowak, an ornithologist with Polish roots, was one of the negotiators of the CMS, and a key contact for Berthold in German conservation politics.Footnote 16 Leshem’s work was concerned with bird-airplane collisions, financed with military money to save human lives, but in the coming years the Israeli military would finance studies on stork migration and coalition warning systems between Turkey, Israel, Egypt, and Jordan (Leshem Reference Leshem and Schulz1999, 550–51). While Nowak facilitated cooperation with the Eastern European countries through which the eastern population passed, the new cooperation with Israel soon became an important branch and flagship project in Radolfzell stork research.

According to Berthold, Nowak, and Leshem, the conservation of migratory birds required new research into questions that bird banding was unable to answer (Nowak and Berthold Reference Nowak and Berthold1987).Footnote 17 Stork conservation efforts connected to the WWF/ICBP projects were based on ring data. This meant the research focused on places of aggregation where many rings had been found, although it was known that migrants did not stay in any one place for long. Often, fieldwork based on ring data had focused on wetlands, where congregates of ducks and other water birds tended to gather for some period of time (Grimmet Reference Grimmet1987, 8). According to a growing number of bird ecologists, this was a faulty approach, as it revealed little about the actual routes that birds took and the feeding places that were most relevant for their energy budget, crucial especially for long-distance migrants, such as the white stork.

For both MPI researchers and their partners in Israel, satellite telemetry held the promise of overcoming these known biases in ring data. Telemetry, tracking birds with electronic senders attached to their backs in real time and by satellite, it was hoped, would help to identify important resting spots along the birds’ migratory routes, enabling more ecological research into the ground conditions of migratory stork trajectories in ways that ring finds, always dependent on the presence of willing human collectors, could not. Telemetry would make it possible to test whether areas believed to be important for white storks in Europe, Africa, and along the way, were as important as had been assumed.Footnote 18 Stork telemetry, Berthold suggested, could serve as a pilot project to underline the CMS’s interest in science-based conservation efforts across national borders. In these efforts, he envisioned the MPI to play a leading role.

Telemetry had emerged in wildlife management in the 1970s. However, early transmitters were bulky, heavy devices, and their use was confined to larger animal species, such as caribous and bears in North American national parks (Benson Reference Benson2010, Reference Benson2016). In 1984 and 1985, scientists at John Hopkins University conducted the first successful experiments with birds using two TIROS-N satellites and an Argos data recording system, with transmitters of about 200g (Benson Reference Benson2012). Research with Argos mini transmitters on birds was also conducted by Monty Priede at the University of Aberdeen. However, before long-distance migrants such as storks could be tracked, lighter transmitters with longer battery lives had to be developed. In the late 1980s, the MPI contacted the Technical University (TU) in Berlin to develop transmitters of 100g with solar recharging. At the same time, plans were made for ethological experiments with storks with dummy transmitters, to see whether the extra load would affect their behavior.Footnote 19 At the time, the TU Berlin was building a research satellite, TUBSAT1, which was to be launched into space in the summer of 1988. The project was delayed, however, after the Challenger disaster of 1986. The project was eventually rescheduled for the launch of the Second German Spacelab Mission, D-2, in April 1993.Footnote 20 In the meantime, the first German-Israeli telemetry studies commenced in Israel, following tracked birds by airplane.

In March 1990, four wild white storks were caught, equipped with transmitters and released.Footnote 21 In 1991 and 1992, stork tracking experiments were conducted with birds caught in former East Germany, migrating via the Middle East to their wintering areas in Uganda, followed by plane and truck. It was hoped that, in a few years, the processes of migration would be known for smaller populations in much more detail than banding had ever allowed.Footnote 22 By the mid-1990s, regular telemetry studies by satellite had finally commenced. For the first time, whole migration cycles could be tracked.Footnote 23 In each of the years 1994, 1995, and 1996, between ten and fifteen white storks were fitted with Argos senders that transmitted several locations per day. By now, the project was officially linked to the CMS.

The telemetry approach challenged several assumptions on which bird conservation as pursued by the WWF and ICBP projects had been built. Wouter Van den Bossche, a PhD candidate, supervised by Berthold in Radolfzell and working with Leshem in Tel Aviv, found that, contrary to previous beliefs, storks spent only short periods of time in one location during their winter migration. The data also revealed significant differences between individual birds, which further problematized the approach—based on banding data—to focus on sites with the most ring finds.Footnote 24 A tracked autumn migration in the fall of 1995, moreover, refuted that east and west storks returned home on similar routes to their outward migration, which complicated the notion of a single Palearctic-African flyway (Schulz Reference Schulz and Schulz1999; Schulz Reference Schulz1989b, 15). While storks on the outward migration rested only shortly and required only little food intake, they used every opportunity to feed on the inward migration from Africa to Israel. It was, moreover, unclear why most storks migrated back extremely famished when passing through Israel.

If the birds lacked protein, which would have had an effect on their breeding successes, and to some degree could explain declining numbers in Europe, this problem could not be solved by focusing on the availability of food in wintering areas alone, for instance by preventing the use of pesticides to eradicate locusts. Telemetry findings questioned the centrality of the need for refuges in the African wintering areas. They instead highlighted the necessity of paying attention to the “stepping stones” that the birds used to fill up their fat and protein reserves on the way to their breeding areas, requiring additional international and transregional cooperation with both Middle Eastern and Eastern European countries (Berthold et al. Reference Berthold, Bossche, Fiedler, Kaatz, Kaatz, Leshem, Nowak and Querner2001).Footnote 25

Based on these early findings, the German-Israeli project was extended into the early 2000s, to create a targeted conservation policy for the eastern stork population during their migration to their winter territories and back. The renewed project tracked between ten and fifteen white storks every year, using solar transmitters built by the company Microwave Inc. The localization of the birds on the migration out and in occurred at least once per day, via three satellites with a direct modem connection to the institute in Radolfzell, and via cars and light airplanes fitted with antennas in the larger Mediterranean region. Using bird aviaries in Radolfzell and at the stork station Loburg, the weight and fat reserves of wild, captured storks were measured during migration periods with the help of MRI scans. Blood tests were conducted to measure protein reserves. These measurements from captured birds were compared to data obtained from migrating birds tested in Israel during the outward and inward flights, and from birds that had returned safely to their breeding area.Footnote 26

This research suggested that storks migrated to Sudan within two weeks, without longer breaks to feed. They stopped only briefly in Turkey and Israel, where there was a need for undisturbed resting spots, but not necessarily feeding areas.Footnote 27 On their way back to Europe, wild storks of the eastern population required many stopovers in Northern Africa, especially Egypt, in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Mediterranean region. It was in these places that wetlands needed protection, while the role of Africa in filling up the birds’ protein storage was considered less significant (Berthold et al. Reference Berthold, Willem Van den Bossche, Kaatz, Kaatz and Querner2002; Van den Bossche et al. Reference Van den Bossche, Berthold, Kaatz, Nowak and Querner2002, 166–73). Moreover, the data collected from tagged storks did not suggest a specific problem of hunting in Africa. Instead, most casualties, the data suggested, occurred in Europe and the Middle East (Berthold et al. Reference Berthold, Willem Van den Bossche, Kaatz, Kaatz and Querner2002; Van den Bossche et al. Reference Van den Bossche, Berthold, Kaatz, Nowak and Querner2002, 166–73). This, of course, was a very different approach compared to the one followed by the earlier WWF-ICBP projects, resulting in partly contradictory findings.

Despite the new results provided by the telemetry data, it would be wrong to suggest that the differences in approach can be explained by the use of technology alone. Again, looking at representations of storks allows us to understand the long-term ambitions underlying the turn to telemetry. Some of the tagged birds received celebrity status. A female white stork called Prinzesschen, hatched at the Loburg station, was tracked for five full return cycles. In the 1990s and 2000s, Prinzesschen was followed by German television reporters, while her location could be tracked online by everyone with a computer and internet access. After her death in South Africa in the early 2000s, Prinzesschen was immortalized on a stamp, and in the form of a sculpture that has decorated the courtyard of the stork station in Loburg since 2010 (Berthold and Querner Reference Berthold and Querner2002).

Unlike the storks portrayed in the 1950s campaigns, “celebrity” storks like Prinzesschen, Peterchen, or Caesar were not presented as victims of an ecologically unsound progress. Instead, they were international voyagers, heralds for intercultural communication, scientific internationalism, and pioneers of tracking technologies. Yet, birds like Prinzesschen were more than mascots for telemetry. In many ways, the storks’ representation as diplomats, improving international understanding, mirrored the MPI scientists’ self-understanding, a self-image that predated the arrival of telemetry by several decades.

German ornithologists at the station in Rossitten were already internationally connected to birders, in other European countries and beyond, by the first half of the twentieth century. In the 1930s, the networks of birders and ringers were so extensive, that it was felt necessary to inscribe German bird rings in English and Arabic, to facilitate the international exchange of recapturing reports (Schüz Reference Schüz1934; Hornberger Reference Hornberger1943). International cooperation was not limited to networks of amateur observers. In the late 1930s, just prior to the Second World War, German ornithologists participated in white stork translocation experiments, working with British and Swiss stork experts to understand the birds’ strategies for orientation and the processes of their migration (Schüz Reference Schüz1938a).

Rossitten, operating as a member of the German Ornithological Society, had been part of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society since 1923, and as such was concerned with both research into bird behavior and migration and the protection of birds (De Bont Reference Bont2010). The white stork played a dominant role in this prestigious program. The scientific interest of Rossitten’s ornithologists in the species increased in the course of the 1930s, when local numbers of breeding pairs grew to 750 couples and sixty-two nests per 100km2, justifying a stork research project that involved the capture, banding, and release of local birds (Hornberger Reference Hornberger1943). Next to more descriptive endeavors, such as annual censuses and the mapping of migratory routes, ornithologists at Rossitten studied migration as an ecological phenomenon, researching, for instance, the ecological aspects of habitat choice, including ground and soil conditions, and quickly gaining international recognition for their work (Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg Reference Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg1936).

In the 1940s, Rossitten ornithologists were connected to German speaking stork researchers and volunteers through a wide network of observers, and were recognized abroad as international leaders in bird migration and behavior research. During the war, ornithologists like Schüz maintained links with other internationally known, German-speaking biologists, such as Konrad Lorenz, who in the 1940s led German efforts in behavioral biology (Schüz Reference Schüz1942, Reference Schüz1949). Even shortly after the war, Rossitten’s ecological research was praised by internationally renowned scholars, such as Ernst Mayr at Harvard University.Footnote 28

In the mid-1950s, when corresponding with one of his frequent ringers, Schüz stressed the international character of all stork research, noting that, “one has to demonstrate that political borders are unfounded in such questions.Footnote 29 However, in the postwar period, the German leadership in ecologically grounded ornithology and international migration research was lost, when territorial changes within Europe led to a shift in the German ornithological landscape and organization. The Rossitten observatory, located in East Prussia, was abandoned in 1945. A new station was quickly founded at Schloss Möggingen, Radolfzell, close to Lake Constance. In 1949, the station in Radolfzell became part of the newly founded Max Planck Society. Yet, with insufficient funds and staff, ecological research at this makeshift station did not proceed easily.Footnote 30

While German ornithologists lost their leading position in the field, orientation research, which had previously been conducted with wild, migratory birds, such as the white stork, shifted into smaller scale laboratory settings. The orientation instinct, unlike long-distance migration strategies, was studied with homing birds, such as pigeons, which were easier to breed and train (Yeagley and Whitmore Reference Yeagley and Whitmore1947). Both the stork and the station had thus lost their dominant position in fundamental orientation research.

Radolfzell ornithologists were aware of the loss. In 1955, Schüz explained that if the institute had so far not conducted more experiments for orientation and physiological research, it was because of a lack of birds, rooms, and employees, and because others had taken over leading positions in research topics such as orientation.Footnote 31

In the late 1950s, much was still unknown about the exact migratory routes of storks, for instance, their main migration routes down the Nile, where no direct observation had ever been recorded (Schüz Reference Schüz1959). Attempts to follow migratory birds by aircraft had been unsuccessful (Dorst and Schüz Reference Dorst and Schüz1948). In the second half of the 1950s, a new director, Gustav Kramer, who in the late 1940s had experimented with sun orientation in wild birds, was supposed to boost the station’s international image. However, Kramer unexpectedly died in 1959. Next, the Dutch behavioralist Niko Tinbergen, at the time already working at the University of Oxford, was offered the position, but declined. During the 1960s, Lorenz, located in Seewiesen, close to Munich, took over as interim director. Lorenz pushed for more fundamental research on bird behavior, yet with 220 km between Seewiesen and Radolfzell, Lorenz only traveled to Radolfzell on rare occasions.Footnote 32

In the early 1970s, Hans Löhrl was appointed director of the institute, and immediately concerned himself with strengthening its research profile. At the time, birding was often seen as amateurish, and Radolfzell, little concerned with fundamental biological questions, was not different in this regard. While some publications focused on new research into the ground ecology in particular regions along migration pathways (Schüz et al. Reference Schüz, Berthold, Gwinner and Oelke1971, 90), much of the station’s work was outdated. Löhrl wanted more European cooperation, more fieldwork, and a closer integration of laboratory and field methods.Footnote 33 For this, ecological research into long-distance migrants, such as white storks, was regarded as key.Footnote 34 When, in the 1970s and 1980s, new international conventions highlighted the need for the protection of migratory birds across country borders, ornithologists in Radolfzell, including Berthold, at the time on a postdoctoral fellowship under Löhrl, saw this as a chance to regain a new leading position in international migration ecology and white stork conservation (Nowak Reference Nowak, Biber, Enggist, Marti and Salathé1995, 303–6).

The goal of developing a new method for stork migration research, which would deliver detailed data on the course of the migration, including exact time and location data, was embraced by researchers at Radolfzell.Footnote 35 Working with “true migrants,” birds flying distances of more than 1000km, would enable transregional protection, environmental research, and international cooperation with countries of what was then the first, second, and third world.Footnote 36 It was hoped that migration ecology, including stork telemetry, but also other methods, such as field observations and experiments with captured birds, would increase the support for this type of fundamental research. In the 1990s, with the development of smaller senders that could be fitted on the backs of migrating white storks, these long-term goals of science-based migration research and cross-border cooperation finally seemed realizable.

In 1995, Radolfzell’s Israeli partners, including Leshem, together with Tel Aviv University, founded an International Center for the Study of Bird Migration located at the Armoured Corps Memorial in Latrun in central Israel, halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, bordering the West Bank. Research conducted together with the MPI Radolfzell was one of the key tasks of the center. Real time information was transferred to aviation companies and the air forces of participating neighboring countries. MPI researchers, together with the scientists involved in one of fourteen associated field stations in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan saw themselves as promoters of the regional peace process (Leshem Reference Leshem and Schulz1999). As Berthold later recalled, “we were so successful in this Peace Process … that we for instance had permission … to organize a ringing workshop with Palestinians … in the rose garden of the Knesset [the State of Israel’s house of parliament].Footnote 37 Ornithologists had come to see themselves as politically neutral diplomats.

Stork conservation programs based on telemetry were also integrated in educational campaigns. However, these, and the representations of storks they used, took quite a different form compared to that of the WWF-ICBP projects aimed at educating African peasants. In education, too, the focus was on international cooperation. Berthold and his colleagues envisioned participation in a world education program, in which schoolchildren from different nations could follow tracked and border crossing migrants like Caesar online, using modern computer technology and learning about bird biology and conservation.Footnote 38 In Israel, Leshem shared these ambitions. With financial support from the William H. Gates Foundation (now the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) and the German Ministry for the Environment, Leshem set up a cross-cultural program called “Migrating Birds Know No Boundaries,” which, based on data produced in cooperation with Radolfzell, aimed at jointly educating schoolchildren from Israel, Palestine, and Jordan in bird ecology (Leshem Reference Leshem and Schulz1999). The project was an internationally celebrated, regional success, albeit only for a short period between 1998 and the beginnings of the Second Intifada in 2000.

Overall, then, the projects by MPI ornithologists and their Israeli partners not only focused on a different technology from that used by earlier ornithologists; they also represented a different set of ambitions. Many of the assumptions underlying stork migration research in Radolfzell and collaborating institutes dated back to postwar attempts to revive German ornithologists’ international standing and international cooperation in migration ecology. This becomes clear when looking at the ways in which researchers in Radolfzell represented migratory white storks. Images of storks as border crossing, cosmopolitan birds, in this regard, mirrored MPI researchers’ self-understanding and served their self-fashioning, placing the institute’s work in longer traditions of scientific excellence and international diplomacy.

Conclusion

This article has been concerned with representations of the European white stork, and how these were used by two groups of ornithologists in their attempts to protect the migratory bird’s declining population from the 1980s onwards. The two representations of the iconic bird differed significantly. Projects initiated by NGOs, such as the ICBP and the WWF, focused on white storks as part of European natural heritage, threatened by land-use changes in the global South. Representations of storks as victims were used to bolster the need for European involvement in African conservation questions. In contrast, researchers at the MPI in Radolfzell presented the birds as scientific pioneers in satellite telemetry-based ecological migration research, resulting in a focus on migration bottlenecks in the Middle East. Birds as border crossing diplomats were used to present ornithologists at Radolfzell as politically neutral experts, and as international leaders in the field of migration ecology. Both projects, and their respective representations, thus offer insights into the different ways in which migratory bird research has been anchored institutionally, intellectually, and geographically.

So far, authors in the history of science-based conservation have largely focused on the use of technological or observational skills in the boundary work of experts. Instead, this article has shown that looking at the ways in which European ornithologists represented the white stork as an object of conservation and research can help us understand diverging problem definitions and designated conservation hotspots, not as the outcome of technological choices alone, but as part of two longer research traditions. These traditions, in turn, were based on diverging ideas about the role of science and expertise in environmental conservation. At the same time, the changing representations of white storks as objects of research and conservation studied here reveal a corresponding shift in the persona of the European scientist, specifically the German ornithologist, in the last quarter of the twentieth century—from postcolonial authority to intercultural peace maker.

With its focus on stork representations as lenses through which to study the self-understanding of European ornithologists, this study adds to the history of science in at least one more dimension. It supports the findings of historians concerned with science and conservation in post-independence Africa, who have highlighted a rhetorical shift since the 1990s, from mythical visions of an Africa that needs defending “even against the people who have lived there for thousands of years” (Adams and McShane Reference Adams and McShane1997, xviii; Mavhunga Reference Mavhunga2018, 10), towards landscape and community-based conservation (e.g., Goldman Reference Goldman2003; Macekura Reference Macekura2015). Yet, while in the literature the focus has often been on the continuation of forms of fortress conservation in international projects on the African continent (Brockington Reference Brockington2002; Adams and Mulligan Reference Adams and Mulligan2003; Bluwstein Reference Bluwstein2018), this article shows that, at least within the white stork research community, the rhetorical change was accompanied by a change in the scientific persona of European ornithologists. The rhetorical and pictorial representations of European white storks, and the framing of stork conservation problems presented by the two groups, make this changed self-representation visible.

Animal representations, then, deserve more attention in the examination of scientific authority and self-fashioning. Looking at representations of animals, and that of the animals’ relationship with respective researchers, can provide new insights into integrated assumptions and visions about environmental problems, their localities, and hierarchies of knowledge, including values of accountability and culpability. They need to be recognized as part of the boundary work of environmental experts and the framing of conservation problems, including normative agendas for environmental governance, and the perceived role of science in political decision making.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the archivists of the Max Planck Society Archives in Berlin for their support, as well as my colleagues from the MUSTS research group for discussing an earlier version of this paper.

Simone Schleper is assistant professor at Maastricht University. Her work deals with the politics of expertise, the history of international environmental organizations and policymaking, and the history of ecological fieldwork practices in the twentieth century. She is the author of Planning for the Planet: Environmental Expertise and the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 1960-1980 (Berghahn Books, 2019). Between 2019 and 2022, she was a postdoc in the project “Moving Animals: A History of Science, Media and Policy in the Twentieth Century” (project number VI.C.181.010), financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Footnotes

This study was part of the project “Moving Animals: A History of Science, Media and Policy in the Twentieth Century” (with project number VI.C.181.010; PI: Raf de Bont), financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

1 Although designed for school projects in Mali and other parts of French-speaking Africa, the leaflet was eventually used for fundraising campaigns in Europe, as it was considered too controversial for its original purpose. Marc Thauront, 5 November 2021. Conversation with Simone Schleper.

2 Holger Schulz, 29 January 2021. Interviewed by Simone Schleper.

3 Vogelwarte Rossitten, 5 May 1933. “Notizen über Arbeiten der Vogelwarte Rossitten, als Material für den Präsidenten der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, I/48/48.

4 Storks returning during the European summer with arrows or spears pierced through their necks, wings or bodies.

5 Holger Schulz, 26 January 2021. Email to Simone Schleper.

6 Holger Schulz, 1987. “Forschungsprojekt: Untersuchungen zur Gefährdung des Weißstorchs (Ciconia Ciconia) auf den Zugrouten und in den Überwinterungsgebieten. Bericht Forschungsaufenthalt Sudan.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, II/132/307/2.

9 Ernst Schüz, 1964. “Bericht über Afrikareise 17. August bis 24. Oktober 1964.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, I/66/4419/2.

10 Peter Berthold, 1999. “Antrag auf Zuwendung auf Ausgabenbasis des Bundesministeriums für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit (BMU) zur Durchführung von Forschungs- und Entwicklungsarbeiten auf dem Gebiet des Naturschutzes,” p. 6. Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, III/132/311.

11 Peter Berthold, 27 October 1988. “Letter to Ministerial Direktor Dr. Bobbert, Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, II/132/309/1.

12 Holger Schulz, 26 January 2021. Email to Simone Schleper.

13 Peter Berthold, 1999. “Antrag auf Zuwendung auf Ausgabenbasis des Bundesministeriums für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit (BMU) zur Durchführung von Forschungs- und Entwicklungsarbeiten auf dem Gebiet des Naturschutzes,” p. 7. Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, III/132/311.

14 Peter Berthold, 8 November 2020. Interviewed by Simone Schleper.

15 Udo Renner, Amnon Gianti, and Yossi Leshem, 1990. “Tracking Storks with Attached Transmitters in Israel for Future Tracking by Satellite,” p. 1. Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, II/132/310.

16 Yossi, Leshem. 23 February 1989. “Letter to Eugeniusz Nowak.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, II/132/309/2.

17 Peter Berthold, n.d. [late 1980s]. “Projektskizze: Deutsch-Sowjetische Zusammenarbeit im Bereich der Satelliten-Telemetrie für Zwecke des Natur- und Umweltschutzes,” p.1. Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, III/132/317/2.

18 Peter Berthold, 27 October 1988. “Letter to Ministerial Direktor Dr. Bobbert, Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, II/132/309/1.

19 “Forschungsvertrag TU Berlin und MPG,” Annex 2, pp. 2–6. n.d. [late 1980s] Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, III/132/309/2.

20 Manfred Keller and Berthold Schiewe, 26 July 1990. “Letter to Peter Berthold.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, III/132/309/1.

21 Udo Renner, Amnon Gianti, and Yossi Leshem, 1990. “Tracking Storks with Attached Transmitters in Israel for Future Tracking by Satellite,” p. 5. Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, II/132/310.

22 Peter Berthold, 5 November 1994. “Betr. F+E-Vorhaben ‘…Modellstudie am Weißstorch mit Hilfe der Satelliten-Telemetrie - Ein Deutsch-Israelisches Gemeinschaftsprojekt.’” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, III/132/311.

24 Willem Van den Bossche, 14 June 1994. “Letter to Peter Berthold.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, III/132/292/2.

25 Peter Berthold, 1999. “Antrag auf Zuwendung auf Ausgabenbasis des Bundesministeriums für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit (BMU) zur Durchführung von Forschungs- und Entwicklungsarbeiten auf dem Gebiet des Naturschutzes,” pp. 4–6, 8–9. Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, III/132/311.

26 Peter Berthold, 1999. “Antrag auf Zuwendung auf Ausgabenbasis des Bundesministeriums für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit (BMU) zur Durchführung von Forschungs- und Entwicklungsarbeiten auf dem Gebiet des Naturschutzes,” pp. 9–10. Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, III/132/311.

27 Peter Berthold, 5 November 2001. “Email to Annette Pahl.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, III/132/311.

28 Ernst Mayr, 9 October 1947. “Letter to Ernst Schüz.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, II/48/30/2/M.

29 Ernst Schüz, 1955. “Letter to Oberlehrer Gerhard Haas.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, I/48/29/2.

30 Ernst Schüz, 27 November 1956. “Letter to Gustav Kramer.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, II/48/29/4.

31 Ernst Schüz, 1955. “Arbeitsplan Vogelwarte Radolfzell-Rossitten Max-Planck Gesellschaft.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, II/66/4413.

32 Ernst Schüz, 5 September 1959. “Letter to Otto Hahn.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, II/66/4414; Konrad Lorenz, 1960. “Antrag auf Erweiterung der Vogelwarte.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, II/66/4414.

33 Hans Löhrl, 1971. “Antrag Förderung Feldornithologie.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, II/54.

34 Hans Löhrl 7 March 1968. “Letter to Jürgen Aschoff.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, II/54.

35 Peter Berthold, 5 November 1994. “Betr. F+E-Vorhaben ‘…Modellstudie am Weißstorch mit Hilfe der Satelliten-Telemetrie - Ein Deutsch-Israelisches Gemeinschaftsprojekt.’” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, III/132/311.

36 Peter Berthold, 1987. “Entwurf Antrag Telemetrische Untersuchung des Vogelzuges mit Hilfe eines Erdsatelliten.” Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, II/132/307/1.

37 Peter Berthold, 8 November 2020. Interviewed by Simone Schleper [author’s translation].

38 Peter Berthold, 1999. “Antrag auf Zuwendung auf Ausgabenbasis des Bundesministeriums für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit (BMU) zur Durchführung von Forschungs- und Entwicklungsarbeiten auf dem Gebiet des Naturschutzes,” pp. 9-10. Berlin: Archives of the Max Planck Society, III/132/311.

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Figure 1. Front of the leaflet by the French section of the ICBP (Terrasse 1986). With kind permission of Michel Terrasse, Marc Thauront, and Landesanstalt für Umwelt Baden-Württemberg.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Migration pattern of the white stork Caesar via Turkey, Syria and Israel, tracked by satellite transmitter in late 1994 (Van den Bossche et al. 2002, 55). With kind permission of Willem Van den Bossche, and Bundesamt für Naturschutz (BfN).