Illiteracy and Poverty; Conservation Adversary

I of course agree with your saying,I supose you agree that this is within certain limits. Often with increasing wealth, human populations pass from the utilization and contamination of local natural resources (wood, pastures, soil erosion, bad garbage disposal) to the use and contamination of more global recourses (use of automobiles, electricity, gas, plastics, air, etc.) - admittedly with a relief in the use of local resources, but contributing, for example, to global warming. Most of us conservationists belong to the second group of people - this is not bad - most of us probably do consume much less than an average wealthy person (ie. American). So I agree extremely poor people have to become richer - but we must not forget most of us at some moment will have to become poorer (consume less). On average, we need to reproduce and consume less - else the planet is not going to withstand our growing population. In the long run - nature conservation is about distributing resourse more evenly between present and future peoples!

I was very pleased to observe within the new Rufford Small Grants several projects attempting to protect and restore ecosystems. I believe that studying cute (and non-cute) animal species is very important and a good way to start our carriers in Nature Conservation (as I did myself) - but the conclusion of many (if not all) of these studies you will find is: “We need more healthy habitat”. So we need to move on to protecting healthy habitats and restoring the ones that have problems (to many disturbances, biological invasions, etc, etc.). This said, I believe it is often easier to study a cute animal than to protect a single hectare from urbanization, biological invasions, or human disturbances like fires or livestock browsing. And if you do not believe me, well, try!

Dear Drenison

I totally agree with you. People’s Need / demand will be changed according to living standard. Our (conservationists’) concern is that we have to separate poor and rich people at first and treat them accordingly. We cannot ignore those people who are fighting for food, cloth and shelter and it will not be the rationale to keep them out to use natural resource constructively as well as destructively. But, we can ignore those demand of those people who are destructing nature for comfortable life in average and also develop the charging mechanism and implement effectively.

We should not look through the same eyes to a poor who is destructing nature for livelihood (e.g. felling trees, fishing, hunting) and a rich who is destructing nature for becoming more rich (e.g. Industries, smuggling).

Suman Bhattarai
Team Leader
PARC/Nepal
Chitwan, Nepal

Dear Drenison

Really I am impressed with your view. Obviously, it is easy path to enter the conservation field and contribute effort, build career, devote oneself for rural poor people by emphasizing a species. The main reason is human’s (either conservationist/donor or other) behavior because their minds are leaded with sentiment of blood and death of animal rather than floral extinction. So people develop species focused projects.

Truly speaking; youth who have knowledge/ideas of conservation fields are not getting chance to engage or contribute their effort in conservation. They use to knock several organizations for work but chance is too small. They use to roam hear and there to update themselves otherwise they start to forget their knowledge and lose enthusiasm.

At last, they start to develop project and submit national and international donor. And most of donors accept species oriented project by referring IUCN red list. There is no doubt; conservation of species cannot be hoped without healthy habitat but to conserve the habitat it needs chunk of financial resource and donor cannot trust to young or single person. That is why; people start their project by focusing species and ultimately stabilize in healthy habitat creation.

((I have a memorable experience; there were 40 students (Institute of Foresty;Oldest and main government institute for Natural Resource and Wildlife)in my batch while completing bachelor degree (B. Sc. Forestry) in 2005. Among of them; 4 were from service quota who are still in job, 4 got chance to join job, 4 are roaming here and there and remaining have flown to third countries. New products of natural resource institute are suffering from this condition)).

Suman Bhattarai
Team Leader
PARC/Nepal
Chitwan, Nepal

Before it let me acknowledge the research team (Dra Annae Senkore, Dra Alice Massingue, Mr. Domingos, Mr. Antonio).
I hope that if both the poor and rich were able to understand the spatial relationships perhaps they could change their minds, having more responsability on conservation of natural resources. nature responsability increases the number of individuals and promote more ecological services and employment. I take one example of my field survey on precise distribution of walburgia sp (Chibaha). the sp is only found in maputland landscape, particularly in Southern Mozambique. From history the sp existed along the tembe river but precisely where, still in dark. along the river there are many human communities (Djabula, Manhehane, Cazmate, Hindane)composed by rich and poor people. From long time the paper-bark sp was sustainable utilized by indigenous people for medicinal purposes and indigenous rulers mantained the existence of the sp. Also the poor and rich had an idea of: if walburgia desappear the range of related deseases will attack them and as the medical unit was very far, they are also in risk of extinct. but with global markets access and constant demand of walburgia from our neighbours (south Africa) the walburgia sp extent started to shrink. the reduction of the sp differ between the communities. the Djabula community (more heterogeny) populated by newcomers and riches capable of acessing global markets only two to five patches of walburgia remain. these habitats are also of juveniles indicating the scope of sp recovering. while the Manhehane community (more homogeny)dominated by poor and indigenous dependent knowledge people with less access to market, the walburgia still existing and trees are found particularly near homes, yields. when the traditional authority was asked why is walburgia common found near yields and homes. He said listen to me my soon. I am honey collector.intact habitat attract more polinators for honey and fragmented habitat cause more vulnerability to floods from the tembe river.walburgia far home is vulnerable to poachers but near home and yield is safe and the costs of harvesting for family subsistence reduce. In addition, when we were mapping the distribution of the sp, each coordinate of remaining plant was taken. each plant was given a numeric code. And the traditional authority once again was happy by the activity and He said: now I see that conservation responsability of walburgia is in the place. once my fellows show you where is the walburgia plant located they also are compromised on showing its location in the future, however if it desappear the first to be judged is the neighbour(the one is closer and knows its distribution). Neighbouring analysis applied in Geographic Information System such as ArcInfo 9.3 are well known and applied by the poor and illiterate traditional authorities. in my point of view we modern educated people should carry out that technology and integrate to indigenous ideas and improve their vision of doing spatial anslysis.