PRI's The World » biodiversity

Saving the Orangutan

The World — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:45:20 +0000

Bornean Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus)

There are only two surviving species of Orangutans in the world, one is endangered, the other critically endangered. These great apes are threatened by poaching and especially habitat loss, caused by logging and farming.

Their habitat happens to be in Indonesia and Malaysia but it’s limited to 2 islands. One island has the oldest rainforest in the world…the other is the largest island entirely in Indonesia.

Can you name them?

Rhinannon (left) and Madison

Sumatra and Borneo are the answers to our quiz: native to Indonesia and Malaysia, orangutans are currently found only in the rainforests of those two islands and the apes are in danger of becoming extinct. Two teenagers from Michigan hope it’s not too late to change that. Madison Vorva and Rhinannon Tomtishen are Girl Scouts on a mission. The’re working to make Girl Scout cookies more environmentally-friendly and save the orangutans at the same time.

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Conservation and the Spirit World

Elsa Youngsteadt — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 10:00:19 +0000

The most intriguing session I attended at this year’s AAAS meeting was led by Stanford ecologist José Fragoso. In it, Fragoso described how he and his colleagues are working with indigenous groups in Guyana and Brazil to find out how cultural change affects the diversity of species in the surrounding forests and savannas.

How consumers affect migratory birds

The World — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 21:12:43 +0000

Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with ornithologist Bridget Stutchbury about the problems confronting migratory birds and the role consumers play in harming or helping them. Download MP3

“Bird-friendly” coffee

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: That’s the sound of the Wood Thrush. It’s one of many migratory song birds on the decline. The bird spends its summers mostly in the eastern United States, but it winters in Central America where high-volume planting coffee plantations have been eating into its habitat. Coffee plantations though are not the only threat, and the Wood Thrush is not the only song bird that’s in trouble. Bridget Stutchbury has been chronicling the decline of song birds for years now. She’s a biologist at York University in Toronto. Professor, give us some perspective on the story we just heard from Diane Toomey.

Bridget Stutchbury: I think it’s hard sometimes to appreciate the full extent of tropical deforestation that’s going on when we hear figures like 10 million acres a year being cut down in Latin America. The consequence though is by having countries lose 70-90% of their forest cover; our birds that spend the winter in the tropics are declining dramatically in numbers. There are dozens of forest birds in trouble.

Mullins: Give us a couple examples.

Stutchbury: Birds like the Cerulean Warbler, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak, the Swainson’s Thrush, and the Western and Eastern Wood Pewees.

Mullins: And back to the Wood Thrush that we heard at the beginning of this interview, you and other scientists say that the Wood Thrush is on the decline. I just wonder how much uniformity there is on predictions like this though because the International Union for the Conservation of Nature still classifies as what they call a species of least concern.

Stutchbury: Well, certainly for North American birds the Wood Thrush is what I call the poster bird for a song bird decline that’s shown steep declines in every part of its range amounting to a 30% loss since the 1960s. And it’s kind of sobering, on the international scale there are so many other species even worse off that the Wood Thrush barely registers with the IOCM.

Mullins: What is the overall effect of losing say a Wood Thrush or other birds that are in even steeper decline in their populations?

Stutchbury: These song birds that I study play a critical role in the ecosystem. We kind of hear their pretty songs and enjoy them in our backyards, but they actually have important jobs in nature. They’re incredibly important for insect control. We have billions of birds that breed in North America in the summertime and their main job is to eat insects that would otherwise be eating trees. And they also help trees reproduce by spreading their seeds.

Mullins: So when we hear about things such as deforestation and habitat loss, they can sound very remote, but you have basically found that it’s not somebody else who’s causing trouble for the birds, but it’s things that we do and products that we buy. Now I have a feeling that none of us is going to like the answer to this questions, but what are the things that we do that can affect the population of these birds?

Stutchbury: Well, all of us can assume large quantities or paper products and a lot of the logging that happens on the breeding grounds is to create newspapers, to create paper towels, toilet paper. And many of these products are now available based on recycled paper. So we should be looking for recycled paper. And also to look for paper that’s certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Mullins: What else besides paper?

Stutchbury: Our birds are very strongly affected by the pesticides we use for growing foods, and both in the tropics and their breeding grounds by buying organic produce we can help make the environment safer for birds and for us. And during migration these birds unfortunately fly at night and they’re very vulnerable to light pollution. Literally millions are killed trying to fly through our cities during migration. By turning the lights out we can reduce the mortality and tragic deaths of these birds during migration.

Mullins: I wonder if you see any signs for optimism? I mean looking at the conversations going on about global biodiversity, the new global biodiversity deal that was just signed in Japan that many find encouraging, do you?

Stutchbury: I find it extremely encouraging, but it’s not nearly enough. The global biodiversity loss of mammals and amphibians and everything is just so steep that I think we need to mobilize consumers to take actions and not just sit back and let the governments take care of the problem for us.

Mullins: Is that a hard sell?

Stutchbury: I don’t think so. I think nowadays people are kind of embracing climate change as a big threat, and I think that understanding the severity of climate change has opened people’s minds more to understanding how we fit in with nature and how we depend on biodiversity and ecosystems.

Mullins: Bridget Stutchbury holds a Canada Research Chair in Ecology and Conservation at York University in Toronto, and she’s the author of the book “The Silence of the Songbirds”. Professor, thanks.

Stutchbury: Okay, thank you.

Mullins: And you can hear the calls of some of those songbirds and get more information on birds and coffee at The World dot org.

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Nations agree on steps to protect nature

The World — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 20:10:06 +0000

Nations agree on steps to protect nature (Photo: Sasata)

Nearly 200 nations agreed to an ambitious plan to protect endangered plants, animals and ecosystems. The BBC’s Richard Black shares the last-minute agreement at the UN’s biodiversity summit in Japan.Download MP3(Photo: Sasata)

LISA MULLINS: It was down to the wire in Nagoya, Japan, today. Negotiators at an international meeting on biodiversity had to work late into the night to hammer together a final, potentially ground-breaking agreement. The UN conference was called to address the alarming decline of ecosystems, and plant and animal species, around the world. There’s no disagreement that humans are responsible for the crisis. But as with last year’s climate change conference in Copenhagen, the devil was in the details of who should do what to help turn things around. The BBC’s Richard Black is in Nagoya. Sounds like a lot was done in the past two weeks specifically this last-minute deal which has been called historic. What is the deal?

RICHARD BLACK: Well, the deal really contains three main elements. One of them is an agreement on something called access and benefit sharing. This is aimed at preventing what’s called biopiracy where, for example, a Western pharmaceutical company goes to the Amazon rainforest or something, discovers a plant, develops a miracle drug, makes billions, and that Amazonian country doesn’t get anything for it. This agreement should stop that happening in future, although perhaps not actually with US companies because the US isn’t a party to this protocol. So that was one thing. Another thing is targets for protecting plants, animals and areas of the world. And a third thing was raising money, big sums of money, in future to help poorer countries do the conservation work that they say they want to do, but don’t have the resources to do.

MULLINS: So is this indeed a historic agreement?

BLACK: Well, I think it is in several senses. If you look for the single thing that to me marks a bit of a transformation it is that governments have pledged to phase out subsidies that harm biodiversity, but introduce economic incentives for things that protect biodiversity. Now that’s quite a change around when you think of all the things that governments do give money to at the moment which do harm nature.

MULLINS: So, it sounds like the message that was underlying all of these moves was that nature left alone provides a greater service than nature manipulated?

BLACK: Well, at least it was that governments ought to know what the relative value of those things is before they make a decision. So this was it. I mean this [INDISCERNIBLE] services, as its called, or valuation of natural capital, it won’t stop things that sort of damage the environment, but it will enable people to make better decisions about what to do and when to do it.

MULLINS: Alright. In terms of what to do and when to do it, in terms of the scale of the problem itself, what are biologists telling us about the rates of extension and erosion of ecosystems?

BLACK: There’s any number of statistics you can pull out really. We had here, as if to underline things, the announcement of 2010’s Red List of Threatened Species and some of the statistics there are pretty horrible. I mean you’ve got about 40% of amphibian species on the road to extinction, 20% of all species. You’ve got all the protection measure around the world doing some good, but not really very much. And above all you’ve got the things that are driving that decline still going on. Human population growth, expansion of agriculture, expansion of cities, pollution, climate change. Coming up to this meeting governments didn’t realize that you have to attack some of the things like subsidies that actually drive the things that are causing biodiversity loss.

MULLINS: Okay. Just one follow up. You were in Copenhagen for the climate summit a year ago. Nobody seemed happy with the outcome there. Are folks happier with the outcome right now in Nagoya?

BLACK: Hugely. Hugely. I mean some of the same people were in Copenhagen, as you saw here, and this was tense, you know. I mean with a day to go, it was not certain that anything was going to be done here. And there were a lot of glum faces. Reminded me a bit of those final painful days in Copenhagen. But by the end of the meeting here, massive applause, everyone patting each other on the back.

MULLINS: Alright. Thank you very much. The BBC’s Richard Black at the UN conference on biodiversity which just finished up in Nagoya, Japan.

Biodiversity as natural capital

The World — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 20:20:26 +0000

The Golden Toad (Bufo Periglenes) is one of many amphibians in decline.

One fifth of animal and plant species are threatened by extinction, a global study warns, but conservation efforts have pulled some back from the brink. Host Lisa Mullins talks with biologist Thomas Lovejoy about the economic value of biodiversity and intact ecosystems. Lovejoy is in Nagoya, Japan, for a global summit on the biodiveristy crisis. Download MP3

LISA MULLINS: The fate of the world’s animals, plants, and ecosystems is on the agenda this week at an international summit in Tokyo. Delegates are meeting there for the UN Convention on Biodiversity. They’re trying to stop a global wave of extinctions and ecological disruption. Host country Japan tried to jolt the talks forward today. It offered two billion dollars to help developing nations preserve endangered species. But the negotiations have been rough going. Thomas Lovejoy is the Director of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics & the Environment in Washington. He says people rarely pay attention to the free benefits we get from nature.

THOMAS LOVEJOY: Basically, we take it all for granted and then get surprised when it’s not delivering. One of the most interesting examples is the New York City watershed. And I grew up in the city and I remember how good the water was. And maybe 15 years ago or something like that, the watershed had deteriorated to the point where EPA was going to require the city to build a eight billion dollar treatment plant and then somebody said, hey wait a minute, maybe for a lot less we could just restore this watershed. Let biodiversity do the job it was doing before and then we won’t have to spend all that money.

MULLINS: So it was like a natural filtration system?

LOVEJOY: That’s right. So, it starts raining on a forest or some kind of wild habitat like that and it works its way through the system and comes out as just this gorgeous water.

MULLINS: So, the eight billion dollar water treatment plant…

LOVEJOY: Never had to be built. And for something like a couple billion dollars, there was a bond issue which basically bought up the development rights, and restored it to the natural ecosystem and restored the water quality. And it’s fixed forever.

MULLINS: There are examples of countries that have taken the ecosystem into account in terms of natural capital and maybe you can describe what natural capital is and where it’s being realized now?

LOVEJOY: I mean natural capital is recognizing what the biology of your landscape does for you. And one of the countries that have really sort of embraced that is Costa
Rica.

MULLINS: There’s an interesting case that you’ve written about, you say it’s a classic study concerning coffee plantations in Costa Rica.

LOVEJOY: Well, that’s right. I mean if you have a coffee plantation in Costa Rica and you happen to have it by a forest, you end up, because of the wild pollinators, getting maybe 20% more pollination. So you’re actual realized income is on average $62,000 a year more. And yet all that’s considered free benefit from the forest. So, now we need to figure out how to get that into landscape planning and management.

MULLINS: What you’ve written is, we need to move from thinking of nature as just something set aside in a protected area in the midst of a human dominated landscape to a vision of humanity and its aspiration imbedded in the planet’s natural infrastructure. So, what’s the conventional line of thinking?

LOVEJOY: The conventional thinking of natural capital is that it doesn’t exist. That nature’s something nice, but you protect a little bit of it and put a fence around it and you do whatever you want in the rest of the landscape. The whole point here is that we need to think differently about what nature does for us and instead of letting all the mangroves in Vietnam be cut down and then having terrible flood damage, you restore the mangrove. It protects against flood damage.

MULLINS: Well, you know, having cheap shrimp growing in what used to be mangrove in Vietnam is an attractive thing for a lot of people. What would change the incentive there [OVERLAPPING].

LOVEJOY: For all we know, it is in the short term. But if you’re in the country of Vietnam, or some other country that’s considering ripping down more mangrove to do shrimp agriculture, you really do the economics of it and it’s really important in protecting the communities, important in terms of supporting the fisheries. If you actually start counting that up economically, you just would never do that.

MULLINS: You are in Nagoya, Japan right now for this UN meeting and I wonder what’s on the table for the meeting and whether or not you expect to see any progress?

LOVEJOY: So, one of the really interesting things that’s here but not on the table for negotiating is just the kind of accounting we’re talking about. In the meantime, in the negotiating room, there’s all kinds of picky negotiation going on and what could well get lost, but it’s not over yet, is having this meeting lead to some real action. The really great move on the table is to set targets for 25% of the land area of the planet to become [INDISCERNIBLE] protected areas and 15% of the marine areas. And that’s a bold suggestion on the table.

MULLINS: It is. A quarter of the land area being protected?

LOVEJOY: Well, that’s right. If you really think about what the planet needs to function and what humanity needs to benefit, it’s not unreasonable at all.

MULLINS: That’s Thomas Lovejoy, who’s the director of the Washington-based Heinz Center for Science, Economics & Environment and a professor at George Mason University in Virginia. He spoke with us from the UN’s biodiversity summit in Nagoya, Japan.

Searching for lost frogs

The World — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 20:10:27 +0000

A major scientific effort to search out frogs around the world is getting underway. Researchers will fan out across 14 countries as part of the U.N. summit on Biodiversity looking for rare frog and toad species that may be on the brink of extinction including the Gastric Brooding Frog. Anchor Katy Clark interviews Conservation International’s Robin Moore about the search for lost frogs. (Photo: David Crosse/Conservation Int.) Download MP3

KATY CLARK: Now let’s turn to endangered, or perhaps extinct, amphibians. We’re talking frogs, toads, salamanders and the like. Dozens of amphibian species haven’t been seen in decades. Today, a major scientific effort was launched to locate them. Scientists are fanning out to 14 countries around the globe. Robin Moore is a biologist with Conservation International. He’s heading up this international amphibian search.

ROBIN MOORE: It’s really an unprecedented search of this scale for so many species that haven’t been seen for so long. And really we’re relying on our global network of experts around the world to go and search for these species. These are people that know these areas better than anyone and know these species better than anyone. So, we’re relying really on a global team to go out and actually find these species.

CLARK: Conservationists are looking for species thought to be extinct, but which may just be hanging on. Is that right?

MOORE: That’s correct. The criteria for this list was that these species had not been seen in over ten years. So, we’re really hoping that some of these are hanging on.

CLARK: While remaining optimistic, suppose you find a few of these species. Then what happens?

MOORE: The interesting thing will be the follow-up really, because once we find them we need to identify whether they’re threatened, where they’re hanging on, are they in a protected area? And then take action to either protect the area that they’re hanging on in. And we also want to support some research to find out what may have caused the species to have declined, why the species has hung on where others around it have disappeared and really help us understand a bit better the global decline and extinction of amphibians around the world.

CLARK: I’ve read that amphibians are the most threatened animals on the planet. Why so? What’s going on?

MOORE: Yeah, amphibians are more threatened than birds, more threatened than mammals. Around a third of 6,000 odd species of amphibian are threatened with extinction. One thing which has been impacting amphibians particularly badly is an emerging infectious disease. Now because amphibians have permeable skin, they’re particularly sensitive to changes in environment and also to attack from things like fungus. So, there’s a lethal cocktail of threats, habitat loss, this new disease and also climate change that are combining to really hit amphibians hard. And as a result, many species are suffering very rapid declines and even extinction.

CLARK: So why is this such a big deal? I mean why should we care about these frogs going extinct?

MOORE: Well, amphibians in general are of great importance to people because they play an important role in maintaining clean, fresh water systems. They also feed on insects such as crop pests and disease vectors such as mosquitoes which carry malaria. And they also hold a lot of potential biomedical properties that we can use. One substance isolated in the skin of a poison dart frog has been found to be 200 times more potent than morphine. Many such chemicals have been isolated from frogs. Potential cures for things ranging from skin cancer to HIV. So, there are really many more potential applications out there that we haven’t even yet scratched the surface of.

CLARK: Now, Dr. Moore, aside from the biologists who are going out into the field, can anyone get involved? I mean if there’s a biology class that counts bullfrogs in a local pond and snaps some photos, is that data useful to your survey?

MOORE: Yeah, it’s part of the campaign. Conservation International are inviting people to submit their own photos of amphibians. You know we’re not making this search exclusive. Who knows, one of these species may actually be found by someone who’s not a scientist. There’s nobody that knows their backyard better than the people who actually live there. So, we are really asking everyone to get involved and to take an interest in what is in their own backyard.

CLARK: Well, good luck with this. Are you going to be putting on your boots and heading out into the field yourself?

MOORE: Thank you. Yes, I’ll actually be heading to, first of all to Colombia, to search for four species that are on the list, including one that has not been seen since 1914. They’re often restricted to maybe one stream or one very small patch of habitat. And following that I’ll [INDISCERNABLE] Guatemala, Mexico and also to Haiti. So, I’ll be joining quite a few of these searches and hopefully we’ll come back with at least one positive result.

CLARK: Dr. Robin Moore of Conservation International. Again, good luck. Thank you.

MOORE: Thank you very much.

Life in the deep

The World — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:48:59 +0000

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The latest update on a 10-year census of marine life reads like something Walt Disney or Dr. Seuss might imagine. The report describes some of the thousands of species that oceanographers now say live in the depths of the ocean. Scientists have found tentacled, transparent sea cucumbers, and tubeworms that feed on oil. And then there are so-called “Dumbos,” with large ear-like fins. All these species live below 656 feet – too deep for sunlight to penetrate. Marco Werman talked with Jesse Ausubel, Program Director for The Census of Marine Life project.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. The latest update on a 10-year census of marine life reads like something Walt Disney or Dr. Seuss might imagine. The report describes some of the thousands of species that oceanographers now say live in the depth of the ocean. Scientists have found tentacle transparent sea cucumbers and tube worms that feed on oil. And then there are these beasts called dumbos with large ear-like fins. All these species live below 656 feet – too deep for sunlight to penetrate. Jesse Ausubel is program director for the census of marine life project. He’s in New York. So I’ve got to ask you first Jesse, an oil-eating tube worm? What’s that about?

JESSE AUSUBEL: Animals need food. Food can come from the surface, from the sun, but food can come from inside of earth. And of course oil and gas come from the interior of earth. Bacteria live on oil and worms like the worm that you refer to – the wildcat worm as we call it – feeds on oil that seeps out of the continental margins of 5000 or 6000 feet deep.

WERMAN: So that oil-eating tube worm is just one of many species now being catalogued at these extreme depths. How many do you believe are still to be observed?

AUSUBEL: We’re reporting on almost 20,000 forms of life that never come closer to the surface than 600 or 700 feet. But there may be tens of thousands more and if you look at really small things like microbes there could be hundreds of thousands of more. You know there can be 10,000 unique types bacteria in a gram of sand. There are about 20 grams in an ounce. So if you look at the really small stuff it’s just huge. But we’ve been concentrating as you mentioned on the bigger animals like an octopus that’s about six feet long and weighs 13 pounds – almost as much as your Thanksgiving turkey. You might meet one of those down in the abyss.

WERMAN: It’s interesting how you actually go about this research because presumably you have to look at these animals. So how do you do that? I mean do you use night vision goggles? And if you introduce these unknown species to artificial light do you spook them?

AUSUBEL: Our team has conducted over 200 expeditions and we use all kinds of technology. We use acoustics like sonars to take pictures with sound of the animals. We do bring lights down deep and take photographs and in some cases we try to capture the animals as well. Some of them are not easy to capture as you can imagine. Especially in the pressures, the darkness, the cold at 15,000 or 20,000 feet deep.

WERMAN: Now you spoke about the tube worms and the fact that they eat oil. A lot of the species down at these depths eat something called marine snow. Explain what that is.

AUSUBEL: At the surface of the ocean you can think of the existence of meadows that do harvest the sunlight and grow grass – the ocean’s equivalent of grass, phytoplankton. And then the phytoplankton are fed on by other small animals and these fall to the sea floor. And so the snow that falls to the sea floor is also a source of food for animals down deep. I should mention that big animals also fall to the sea floor. You may have wondered what happens to a whale when it dies. Well a whale also falls to sea floor and then it becomes a feast – in fact a feast for some new kinds of worms that we’ve discovered including one called the ocidax which sounds kind of like a heavy metal band. But in fact it feeds on whale bones.

WERMAN: Now that’s not the only stuff that’s falling to the ocean floor. There’s also pollutants and then you add to that over fishing and rising CO2 and nitrogen levels. I’m wondering how your research, how this census, sheds light if you will on what human beings are doing above the surface. How is that affecting the ocean at these depths?

AUSUBEL: In some places where we’ve explored, for example some parts of the Mediterranean, we found more trash than life on the sea floor even in 10,000 or 12,000 feet of water. So there’s a lot of trash going into the ocean and of course it has to have somewhere to go. Over the long term as you mentioned of course people worry that warming of the surface atmosphere and the surface waters could also penetrate to the deep and that would certainly change the distribution of life and the kinds of life that flourish there.

WERMAN: Jesse Ausubel, program director for the census of marine life. Thank you very much for your time.

AUSUBEL: Marco thank you.

Conservation Refugees: An interview with Mark Dowie

The World — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:57:38 +0000

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Photo: Sabine

We’re used to hearing that land conservation is a good thing, especially for the endangered species that often live on the land being protected. But what about the people who live on that land? Journalist Mark Dowie explores that question in a new book called Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native People. His verdict? Our host Katy Clark spoke with Dowie.

KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. Across the globe there is often a tension between preserving land and preserving culture. Environmental groups and governments have set aside vast areas of parkland, but in an effort to protect native ecosystems, they have sometimes evicted native peoples. Writer Mark Dowie harshly criticizes that practice in his latest book. It’s called “Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native Peoples.” Dowie writes that more than 12% of the land worldwide is now under conservation protection. That’s an area larger than the continent of Africa.

MARK DOWIE: In the course of protecting that land, millions of people have been displaced from the land in the appeared interest of conservation. People who have been living, for the most part, have been living on those lands for hundreds or thousands of years, clearly living in a sustainably or the conservation establishment wouldn’t be interested in preserving the land, and it’s turned out to be a mistake. And I think the conservation movement realizes now that it’s a mistake and are going to pretty impressive ends to rectify it.

CLARK: Give us an example of how conservation has negatively affected the people who live on the land, and I was thinking maybe about the Bahtera [PH] or the Pygmy.

DOWIE: Yeah, the Bahtera in Uganda, the Bahtera pygmies who were in 1993 evicted from the Boyndie, the impenetrable forest where they had been living for thousands of years clearly sustainably. That’s a very, very healthy forest. They actually after the area, the Boyndie, they were allowed to stay for quite a while. And it was rumor that was spread furthered by Dian Fossey that the Pygmy were killing the great apes, which they weren’t and that’s what led to their eviction and they now live in the Perimeter of the Boyndie in rundown squalorous villages and have had their entire livelihood and their culture taken from them.

CLARK: Have they been allowed back at all to their native lands?

DOWIE: Yes, they can get permits to go in and harvest honey. They can get permits to go in and visit their ancestors graves that are scattered through the Boyndie, but the Boyndie is guarded now by eco guards, armed eco guards who if they believe that somebody is poaching inside the forest, they’ll shoot them.

CLARK: I don’t want to ignore what’s happened here in the United States where when it comes to land conservation, we’ve had our stories of not treating native people so well either and I’m just thinking we’re talking on the heels of the Ken Burns’ TV documentary on the National Parks where Burns hit on the tension between preservation and use, but didn’t actually come down on one side of the issue or the other. Talk a little bit about what happened in this country.

DOWIE: He does acknowledge that native people have been evicted from American national parks. This whole model of conservation began here in Yosemite in the middle of the 19th Century, which was at the time occupied by Lewach [PH] Indians. And John Muir and the other people who were inspired to create a national park where Yosemite is, were not impressed with the Indians. In fact, Muir was revolted by them, and asked that they be removed from the Park and they were. That happened again in Yellowstone and several other American parks around the country. That became known as the Yosemite model of conservation, and was exported by the organizations that now dominate global conservation, all of which are American organizations.

CLARK: You describe your book as a “good guy versus good guy story.” So is there anybody in particular to blame for how this seemingly good idea has gone wrong?

DOWIE: It is a good guy versus good guy story. I mean, you’ve got to say that people who are trying to preserve biological diversity and endangered species around the world are on a good mission. However, I think it’s a misperception on the part of the early leaders of global conservation that native people were not good stewards of the land, which was based on their lack of textbook science really. And a disrespect for their traditional ecological knowledge which they had accumulated over thousands of years largely drive, of course, by food security, not by conservation.

CLARK: Explain a little bit more about what you mean by that.

DOWIE: Well, if you’re living in an area and you’re relying on what that area delivers to you in the way of sustenance, your primary motivation for protecting the natural health of that area is food security. It’s not some romantic notion about wilderness or it’s not a tourist industry. It is food security. That’s the primary motive.

CLARK: You want to make sure that you’re going to have food for your family and for your children’s children. That sort of thing?

DOWIE: Yes, exactly and strangely enough if a culture operates that way in an ecosystem, it seems to be pretty good for the ecosystem.

CLARK: So how do you propose we strike a better balance between what’s good for the land and what’s good for the people who live there?

DOWIE: Well, first of all, let the people who live there stay there when you grade a protected area. In Canada there has recently been two interesting developments. One in British Columbia where native people have been allowed to return to a national park, and then another in Quebec where a national park has been formed on Cree land and the Crees are going to stay there, continue their life ways and manage the park. I think that’s the future of national parks and the future of protected areas. Involve the local people in the conservation project and the management of it. And respect the traditional ecological knowledge that they’ve developed, which has kept the place as healthy as it is.

CLARK: Are there any examples of places that are getting conservation right from the get-go?

DOWIE: One place I think where the future of conservation is going to be severely tested is in Gabon. The reason I say that is the country very suddenly created 13 national parks recently all in areas that could easily have become forest concessions or mining concessions, all of which are occupied by indigenous people. So here is a test case now for a nation backed by the United States government, which put $56 million into this park system and supported by the Wildlife Conservation Society and three other big international conservation groups to do it right. I mean, to go in there and start negotiating right away, do what they’re doing in Canada with the Cree and let the native people stay there and be part of the management and protection of these areas.

CLARK: Mark, we’ve been talking about the native peoples of these lands that have been created into parks and how they’ve been kicked off that land and haven’t really done so well. Are there examples of these people who are gone now as a result of what’s happened?

DOWIE: I would say not entirely gone, but I would say that the Basarwa, the Bushmen of the Kalahari. Their culture is seriously threatened by the fact that they have been removed and put into basically what amount to concentration camps. The Massai who for thousands of years have cultivated and ranged their cattle in the Rift Valley. They have been seriously decimated as a culture and I visited the Batlo [PH], and it was very sad to see how rapidly they are losing their song, their dance and their indigenous culture. Land is part of culture. Culture shapes place and place shapes culture, and if you remove people from the place where their culture evolved, they’re going to lose that culture and it happens in like less than a generation.

CLARK: Writer Mark Dowie’s book is called “Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native Peoples.” Mark, good to speak with you. Thanks.

DOWIE: Thanks, Katy.

Europe presses to ban bluefin tuna trade

The World — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:05:26 +0000

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European Union leaders are throwing their weight behind a proposed international ban on the trade in bluefin tuna from the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The prized fish is one of the world’s most over-harvested marine species. The World’s Gerry Hadden has the story.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. Earlier this summer we reported on the Mediterranean blue-fin tuna fishery. The prized fish which is part of a larger Atlantic blue-fin population has been over harvested for years and the fishery is in deep trouble. Well this week brought a ray of hope for the Atlantic blue-fin. Leaders of the European Union threw their weight behind a movement to ban all trade in the fish. The World’s Gerry Hadden reports.

GERRY HADDEN: Recent scientific studies have convinced European Union leaders to back a ban on the blue-fin trade. Other efforts to regulate the fishery have largely failed. EU researchers and others say it could collapse within three years if drastic action isn’t taken. Monaco first proposed the global ban on blue-fin trade earlier this year. This week the European Commission official got behind it. The commission’s Barbara Helfferich made the announcement in Brussels.

BARBARA HELFFERICH: The commission recommends provisional European Union support for Monaco’s proposal to list Atlantic fin tuna. The European commission shares many of the concerns about the state of stocks of Atlantic blue-fin tuna.

HADDEN: The ban wouldn’t prohibit fishing for blue-fin directly. Instead it would outlaw buying or selling the fish. Supporters say that makes more sense because the end result is the same. If you can’t sell blue-fin you’ll stop catching them. And says Aaron McGlocklin of World Wildlife Fund policing the seas has simply proven too difficult and costly.

AARON MCGLOCKLIN: The EU is spending on or around for the last two years $10 million Euros with satellites in the sky on surveillance at ever port. You know they’re spending tens of millions to try and enforce the rule of law in this fishery. McGlocklin says Europe should be applauded for rallying to the fish’s defense but he says unless the majority of the signatories to the Global Endangered Species Treaty follow suit the blue-fin is doomed. That’s because it isn’t just the European’s fishing for it. Other Mediterranean countries such as Libya have big fleets too. And McGlocklin says Europe has long complained that Libya doesn’t respect catch limits.

MCGLOCKLIN: So how are you going to manage it? You know whatever the Europeans did it wouldn’t rally matter because you’ve got half the fishery being controlled by you know Colonel Gadaffi’s son so you know the rational thing is to ban the trade.

HADDEN: Similar bans have worked before helping to save swordfish and sturgeon stocks from collapse. According to the website of the Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species a blue-fin ban would be at least a short-term blow to fishermen around the Mediterranean but hardest hit would be far away Japan. Japan imports 90% of the world’s blue-fin for use in sushi and other dishes. The Japanese company Mitsubishi controls the market. Mitsubishi officials would not agree to an interview but they did release a statement saying the company supports reduced-catch limits or even a moratorium if the current research calls for such measures. Mitsubishi has been preparing for such a scenario for a while. It’s already deep frozen thousands of tons of blue-fin should the market for fresh tuna suddenly disappear. The 175 members of the convention on endangered species will vote on the blue-fin ban in March. It needs a simple majority to pass. For The World I’m Gerry Hadden in Barcelona.