I Understand it's Britain, but does a bird egg need this much security especially when the birds are in captivity? This sounds like something the current US administration would do with tax payer dollars! The first common crane egg laid in western Britain for more than 400 years has been given a round-the-clock guard, conservationists said. The nesting pair that produced the egg are part of the Great Crane Project, which has been rearing cranes in captivity since 2010 and reintroducing them to the Somerset Levels and Moors where they would have been found centuries ago. The egg laid at a nest at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust's (WWT) Slimbridge Wetland Centre is the first known to be laid by the project's cranes, which were hand-reared at the centre and the oldest of which only reached maturity this year. Once widespread in Britain, the species was driven to extinction as a breeding bird by hunting and habitat loss by 1600, although a small population has been established in the Norfolk Broads since 1979. The public can watch the nesting pair from hides, and a long lens video link has been set up to give visitors to the wetland centre and online a close-up view. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/20/rare-crane-egg-24-hour-guard
There is a school of thought that every species on Earth needs to be spared from the Darwinian process of selection of survival of the fittest.
CONSERVATIONIST: Sergeant, what happened to the egg you were guarding? SERGEANT: I don't know, I took a break and had Pvt. Gilligan on guard duty. Wait, here he comes now! PVT. GILLIGAN: Hey Sarge, want some of my omelette? It's fresh!
I know we preserve many wildlife in the states and a teeny little spider held up construction in one city. I don't recall what the name of the spider was but it was thought to be extinct. There will always be activists who believe certain we should continue to preserve habitats and wetland animals. I know that is some of the "pet projects" our U.S. used from our stimulus dollars to do some pretty darned silly things when we need to cut spending. Not sure about Britain and this crane egg.
The cranes are threatened not by a failure of natural selection, but by human stupidity. They were hunted nearly to oblivion by creatures that should have known better. There is only so much damage that we can inflict on the web of life before major parts come crashing down. Just as wiping out the buffalo herds has nearly wiped out blue birds, the loss of the cranes might be responsible for other failures of the eccosystem. By letting one species more go extinct, we may bring the fatal judgement of Darwin's law on ourselves.
It doesn't say armed guard (this is, as you point out, Britian). I suspect it'll be a bloke sat in one of the hides with a flask of tea and a pair of binoculars, not a full squad of Marines with rifles, a tank and a button to call the drone-strike. In that context, it seems a reasonable measure given this could the single starting point for re-establishing a viable population of these birds in the wild and that there are sadly some people out there would pay a silly amount of money just to have the egg like a trophy or piece of art and some people more than willing to break to law to get that money.
