Swallows in Nigeria

Swallows that summer in Europe spend their winters far away in parts of Africa. Migratory birds like swallows are in the unfortunate and vulnerable position of being dependent on not just one isolated habitat, but on large swathes of the earth for their survival. Though their habitat in countries like Great Britain may be improving because of the efforts of conservationists, in other stretches of habitat along their migration routes they are under threat. Recently I was listening to the BBCs Natural History Radio and was struck by how the story of these swallows illustrates the disparity and unfairness in resource distribution among humans in the world today and how this inequality threatens natural systems.

First of all you have the British who, seeing declining populations of the swallows in their region, discovered the source of the decline to be in the winter home of the birds. In Nigeria, a country rich in oil and also the location of many migratory roosts for the birds on their long trip to South Africa, the majority of the population is so poor that these tiny birds have become a food source. An Italian team of ornithologists found that the swallows were being caught and sold as food by poor people in the region where the birds have returned to roost for thousands of years. As many as 200,000 swallows are being captured and killed each year in one small area of Nigeria. This episode of Natural History Radio focused on the success story, how conservationists were able to stop local people from catching and selling the swallows.

The solution was ecotourism. When swallow enthusiasts traveled from the rich world to see and study the roosts of the swallows in Nigeria each would have to pay a tax, the proceeds of which would go to the local population. This would give the locals a reason to allow the birds to live, because the swallows would be more valuable to them alive than dead.


Sounds like a great program, but no one in the show asks the question of why in an oil rich country people are so hard up for food and income that they have to resort to killing tiny birds. The bigger irony is that people in rich countries like Britain have likely been contributing to the deaths of the swallows because they have been benefiting from the oil exploitation in Nigeria. If the Nigerian people were able to reap any of the profits from (or even just to use) the oil taken from their own country they might not have to be killing tiny swallows to have enough to eat.  As it is, corporations like Shell and the Nigerian dictatorship reap all the proceeds from oil exploitation in Nigeria, and of course, the people in rich countries get to enjoy an abundant supply of cheap oil.

To sum up the situation, the rich, who benefit from the theft of the resources of the poor, have to experience some repercussions of their actions—the decline of the songbirds they like to see. So instead of figuring out a way the poor can benefit from the sale of their resources to the rich, which might lead the poor to a better life and one in which they wouldn't need to eat tiny wild birds to survive, the rich establish a means by which they can increase the value of the tiny birds by taking vacations to see the birds and paying a tax that will put a few dollars in the pockets of the locals. Meanwhile, the situation of the locals is nominally improved and the theft of resources to provide cheap fossil fuel to the rich, is continued.

There are many similar examples, but this one perfectly illustrates the hypocrisy of pointing the finger at the world's poor for the destruction of habitat caused by supposed overpopulation.