The Moreau ecological overview

Biological conservation is increasingly concerned with advocacy and lobbying. But its practical politics must stand on a firm basis of scientific fact and understanding: about the behaviour and ecology of species and about the workings of the habitats that are their life-support systems. For Africa, a solid foundation was laid by R.E. Moreau in two scholarly analyses of the continent and its birdlife: The Bird Faunas of Africa and its Islands (1966) and The Palaearctic-African Bird Migration Systems (1972). Hence the title of this paper: a generation having passed, my objectives are to emphasize the salient observations of Moreau (1972), and to review subsequent changes in the face of Africa as they might affect migrant birds from the Palaearctic that winter there