Questions for Frank Cézilly, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Burgundy (Dijon, France)
What were your personal and professional ties with Alan?
I met Alan back in the summer of 1983, when I arrived at the age of 20 as a young trainee at the Tour du Valat. My ornithological knowledge at that time was pretty limited, whereas Alan, as “Mr Flamingo”, was a star member of the birding community. In the family-like atmosphere of the Tour du Valat, we quickly became friends through our daily activities, conferences in France and abroad, and also enjoying a good meal in the evening. Alan had a benevolent and slightly amused regard for my fierce desire to become a researcher, and I was very happy that he was present when I defended my thesis in Marseille in 1989.
A year and a half later, I was hired as a researcher by the Tour du Valat to assist Alan in the analysis and publication of data on the demography and behavioural ecology of flamingos. Our skills were absolutely complementary, and we were lucky enough between 1992 and 1997 to be able to publish a certain number of papers in major international journals, several of which are still regularly cited. After I left the Tour du Valat in 1996 to become a professor at the University of Burgundy, my relationship with Alan was not affected because we had already been working on a big project together: co-writing a monograph on the Greater Flamingo, which would highlight all the scientific results that his exceptional work had obtained. To Alan’s great satisfaction, the book finally came out in 2007, after a long gestation period.
Then, in 2012, I bought a house in Le Sambuc and we became neighbours, which enabled me to have regular discussions with him about his research into flamingos. That was how we developed our last joint research project, investigating one phenomenon about which Alan was concerned: the loss of Darvic plastic bands by certain flamingos.
In your opinion, what was Alan Johnson’s personal contribution to the conservation of the Greater Flamingo, both in the Camargue and on a larger scale?
Alan’s greatest contribution in the field of conservation was clearly the successful breeding of the flamingos on the Fangassier islet and maintaining it for all those years. At that time the species’ sporadic nesting in the Mediterranean Basin was a major preoccupation; no one can say what its future would have been at the regional level without the major operation that Alan carried out so brilliantly.
In what ways was Alan Johnson’s scientific approach innovative with regard to the Greater Flamingo, and more generally in terms of the conservation of biodiversity? And how could it remain relevant today, several decades later?
The originality of Alan’s approach was to consider the conservation of the Greater Flamingo as a problem incorporated in the broader issue of the protection of Mediterranean wetlands. In parallel with his research into flamingos, Alan also worked on the aquatic fauna in the saltpans in order to understand better how that unique ecosystem operates. He also quickly understood that the Greater Flamingo could act as an ‘umbrella species’.
For example, the work Alan carried out in the late 1980s showed that the flamingos nesting at Fangassier may feed in areas 70 km away from the colony. Protecting the species therefore involves conserving or restoring a very large habitat, with consequent benefits for a very large number of other aquatic species. The conservation of a species as popular as the Flamingo thus contributes to the protection of its entire ecosystem.
Alan was not a trained researcher: he was a joiner and a keen birdwatcher. To what extent did that influence his scientific and human approach to flamingo-related issues?
Alan was always a prudent and pragmatic person. He wanted to acquire more knowledge in order to protect better, and placed his trust in the scientific method to increase that knowledge. But, nonetheless, he was never ‘dazed’ by fashionable scientific theories and did not have preconceived ideas about the results he should obtain. The only thing that counted for him was the hard objectivity of the results. In that sense he showed exemplary rigour.
His modest background and the fact that he had not been to university made him a very humble person, but also someone who was very open to contact with other people, whether they were distinguished researchers, young trainees still unsure of themselves, keen amateur ornithologists, or simply inhabitants of the Camargue, who liked him very much. Alan was open to all those who wanted share with him their interest in flamingos and the Camargue.
What do you think it was that linked Alan and the Camargue, where he lived most of his life?
I think that Alan felt a sort of aesthetic affection for the Camargue. Although he travelled a lot until the end of his life, curious to discover the world, he never tired of the Camargue landscapes, through which he loved to roam on his bicycle together with his wife Sylviane. His arrival in the Camargue was probably the most important event in his life. He remained infinitely grateful all his life to Luc Hoffmann for having welcomed him so warmly to the Tour du Valat, and also to the people of the Camargue who adopted him so quickly. Alan had become one of them.
Do you have an anecdote to tell us that you feel is typical of Alan?
As I already said, Alan was both prudent and enthusiastic. I remember that the first time I suggested taking blood samples to measure certain physiological parameters of the flamingos, he started by being rather reticent. Organising ringing campaigns is always complicated and Alan wasn’t very keen on upsetting established plans … But he let himself be convinced in the end, and the blood tests went ahead without any problem. After which he said to me: “Excellent Frank, we should have done that before!”.