Risk & Releases

[Martin Ellis]

Several of the pro-release partisans have asked the anti-release antagonists
to prove that there is a risk of disruption to local populations.

However, when the genetically modified organisms debate reared up a couple
of months ago most of us expected the firms involved to prove there is zero
risk.  Perhaps the companies should have countered by asking us to prove
that there was a risk.

This may sound like semantics, but there is a difference between hazard and
risk.  A hazard is the potential to cause harm - such as releases will
introduce a virus into a local population. It should be possible to prove
there is no hazard, but I suspect there will always be hazards associated
with releases. It is a lot harder to prove something doesn't exist than it
is to prove that it does.    A risk is the probability that the hazard will
happen (that the population will catch the virus).  If there is a hazard
there will always be a risk, though releases may create only a very small
risk to the local population. The only way to get zero risk is not to
introduce the hazard.

I agree that the release of 20 adults into almost any population will have
just about zero effect - but a mass release of several hundred could confuse
recorders.

For example, a country may have a species that is a rare breeding resident,
but turns up sometimes elsewhere as a migrant.  One day a recorder finds a
specimen of this species, lets say 100 miles from the nearest know colony.
Is there a new breeding population nearby or is it a migrant?  If the
species involved was found in the company of known common migrants it
indicates that the individual in question was probably a migrant, not a
local. However, what if the known common migrants had been released nearby
that day? Should the recorder go out and try to find the colony of the rare
resident or should he just put it down as being a vagrant?

Regards

Martin Ellis