Search Results

This chapter discusses seven trends and issues in global conservation: (1) the emergence of ecology as a science, (2) the proliferation and influence of nongovernmental organizations, (3) sustainable use, (4) the transfer of ownership of wildlife to the private sector, (5) game farming and ranching, (6) development of ecotourism and nonconsumptive uses of wildlife, and (7) the strategy of saving what is useful to human society. It argues that although we face many challenges in global conservation, not all the news about its current state of global conservation is bad. Some wildlife populations have recovered to nuisance levels (e.g., white-tailed deer, elk, turkeys). Because of advances in ecology and related disciplines, conservation has become based more on science and less on opinion.

This chapter discusses the human benefits from mangrove and seagrass ecosystems. Topics covered include direct and indirect uses of mangroves, coastal protection, ecotourism, sustainable management, hurricanes and typhoons, mangroves and pollution, mangrove rehabilitation, benefits and threats to seagrasses, and global warming.

Until the 1990s, the province of Palawan was the final ecological frontier in the Philippines. Its relatively intact natural resources and unusually rich biodiversity made it the focus of attempts to create a model for sustainable development, particularly through the development of ecotourism. In the memorable coastal town El Nido in the 1990s, local officials were unable to get the political support they needed to provide strict enforcement of the marine protected area. Eventually, corruption and the influence of powerful economic and political interests determined the direction that ecotourism developed. This chapter looks at the political and economic roles of the sex industry in the Philippines. It also analyzes the benefits and drawbacks of ecotourism as a development strategy.

By looking at nature through a social science lens, we can begin to see the natural world as an asset critical to our well-being and from that learn to appreciate its value. This appreciation can inspire more of us to protect nature as we pursue our own self-interests. Pairing anthropology with economics encourages people to see the connection between sound environmental stewardship and the flow of benefits we receive from that stewardship, ultimately challenging cultural attitudes towards biodiversity, ecotourism, and our natural heritage. To make these connections, this book relies on five North American animals to demonstrate how, by assessing their role as keystone species and assigning nature a value, people can change their own relationships with our natural world.

The ecosystem services model as a valuation tool for cultural capital relies on human well-being as the metric for assigning nature a value that makes sense in a world full of competing choices. If the entire added value of a forest that includes wildlife habitat, recreation, and carbon sequestration is calculated, its continued existence as an intact forest ecosystem can more effectively compete against alternative uses that could either destroy the forest or diminish its services to us. Without a measurable value determined through marginal cost-benefit analysis and the consumer’s willingness to pay, however, the forest ecosystem would be assigned a dollar value of zero, making development the easy default choice. Since outdoor recreation in nature contributes to our well-being, it becomes one of the tools we can use to assign nature value. Responsible travel as ecotourists involves taking visitors into natural areas to educate them about a region’s natural and cultural heritage, as well as to sustain the well-being of local people. Ecotourism can change our relationship with the natural world, as well as teach us how to be better tourists.

By assigning economic value to the manatee, the costs and benefits associated with conserving and protecting them and their habitat can more effectively compete in the marketplace. Just as the Endangered Species Act assigned value to social benefits or Eleanor Ostrom demonstrated how governing the commons could turn public goods into private ones, assessing the measurable benefits of a resource makes both environmental and economic sense. The manatee’s charisma, combined with a recognized economic value, has helped us maintain a better relationship with the species and moved the manatee and its habitat to the frontlines of Florida’s conservation agenda. Their increased numbers and expanding human fan base have made them the face for improving ecosystem biodiversity and water quality, as well as encouraging better land use decisions along Florida’s rapidly developing coastline. Effective branding by well-respected institutions like Save the Manatee Club and The Ocean Conservancy has made saving the manatee a cause that transcends the local and hopefully has made co-existing with the gentle giants in their habitat something each one of us will readily choose to do.

In recent years, with better education and a more transparent approach to public engagement, our knowledge and understanding of the shark have improved such that coastal visitors and locals alike are more likely to see the presence of sharks as not only an indicator of ecosystem health, but also as an economic opportunity. Human responses like those that occurred in 1916, or even in the 1960s, have changed drastically. Rather than rely on ignorance and the distorted “man-eater” myth and cinematic tropes of shark violence, people are beginning to recognize that the predatory nature of sharks is natural and that sharks have greater rights to the ocean than tourists do. The appeal of shark ecotourism suggests that even though sharks are feral and can be scary, our unfamiliarity with them makes our curiosity trump that fear. This amazing shift in attitude has made the move away from hunting sharks with dynamite, guns, and longlines to hunting sharks with cameras a logical one. By rebranding the shark and seeing it as natural capital, their presence in the world’s oceans can be understood as another asset we must tend to.

The ecosystem services model plays a critical role in explaining how natural resources can be turned into wild or natural capital. The logic of economics relies on weighing the measurable values of competing choices when making decisions. Through that process, if we value the functions and products of ecosystems that benefit humans or yield welfare to society, we become better stewards of the natural world. For this book’s purposes, ecotourism as a cultural service clearly demonstrates how consumers of outdoor recreation see value in activities like wildlife viewing or hiking in nature. For wild nature to persist, however, it must be part of a larger system that is bound not only by biological ties, but by economic and cultural incentives as well. Since the boundaries that determine human and wild nature’s space are rather fluid and rarely entirely isolated from the other, using ecotourism to help assign nature value is logical. By offering individuals the opportunity to see nature through a variety of lenses, nature can be protected and preserved in different degrees. If nature and wildlife remain outside our human experience, however, inspiring the love and concern necessary for its survival becomes more and more difficult.

This chapter explores the possibilities of increased forest conservation and an increased role of local-community participation in it. Despite increased demand for forest resources and increasing population, tighter rules, incentives, democratization, and financial and technical support from donors can help in minimizing the forest loss and concentrating the plantations on agricultural wastelands or cut-over degraded forests. Various substitutes of fuelwood and agroforestry systems that produce fuelwood as a byproduct can also help in reducing the pressure on forests. The increased importance of nongovernmental organizations, reduced political clout of traditional timber tycoons in developing countries, and increased media attention would also help in reducing corruption in the government and thus help in the formulation of more community-centric sustainable forest-conservation policies. The increased awareness of the people regarding environmental degradation, along with the fast-growing ecotourism sector, is also expected to play a positive role in the conservation of forestlands.

Researchers interested in remote locations have developed monitoring schemes, sometimes called “Watchful Eye” monitoring, that use a time series of remotely sensed images to assess changes over time to a protected area or habitat. For instance, the European Space Agency (ESA) and UNESCO have set up repeat analyses of satellite imagery for World Heritage sites. The first area for which they developed this technique was the habitat of the critically endangered mountain gorilla (Gorilla berengei berengei) in the Virunga Mountains in Central Africa, including the Bwindi and Mgahinga National Parks in Uganda, the Virunga and Kahuzi-Biega National Parks in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the trans-boundary Volcanoes Conservation Area. The project developed detailed maps of these inaccessible zones so that protected area managers can monitor the gorilla habitat. Previously, available maps were old and inaccurate (at times handmade), did not completely cover the range of the gorillas, and did not cross national boundaries. Because there was no systematic information from the ground regarding changes over time, researchers also used remotely sensed data to complete change detection analyses over the past two decades. Using both optical (Landsat series) and radar (ENVISAT ASAR) satellite data, researchers were able to quantify rates of deforestation between 1990 and 2003 and relate these rates to human migration rates into the area resulting from regional political instability. Researchers constructed the first digital base maps of the areas, digital elevation models (DEMs), and updated vegetation and land use maps. They faced significant problems in both field and laboratory activities, including lack of existing ground data, dense vegetation cover, and fairly continuous cloud cover. They therefore used a combination of ESA ENVISAT ASAR as well as Landsat and ESA Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) optical data. The radar images allowed them to quantify elevation and distances between trees and homes. Landsat and MERIS data helped identify forest cover types, with Landsat providing finer-scale images at less frequent intervals and MERIS serving lower-resolution images more frequently.

This chapter looks at Costa Rican texts which pick up the story of Latin American environmental history in the mid- to late twentieth century as the republics of the isthmus embraced agricultural export economies and neoliberal policies associated with globalization. It explores three Costa Rica novels which investigate the regional, economical, and environmental history of the state. The central point of these stories revolves around culture, land usage, and politics in Costa Rica.

This chapter considers the availability of bamboo shoots in light of competition from humans, bamboo rats, and insects. It also investigates the population dynamics of predators (panda) and prey (bamboo). Bamboo supply appears more than adequate to support a several-fold increase in the panda population, so long as losses to rats, insects, and human harvest do not increase dramatically. A panel report reviews several important aspects of effective reserve management: reserve design, training of personnel, long-range planning, and implementation of effective protection programs. Participants identified the primary threats facing the reserves, as well as factors that limit the capacity of reserve personnel and the training needed to make them more effective. In addition, the participants devised a list of problems and priority-action items for the reserves. An opportunity for ecotourism related to pandas exists, but good examples of this approach cannot yet be found in China.

Although many students of island biogeography consider the midriff islands one of the world’s last major refuges of pristine desert-island biota, humans have been a part of that ecosystem for possibly 10,000 years or more. Humans have long affected the terrestrial and inshore marine biota, but the most serious injuries they have caused apparently began in the mid- to late nineteenth century with the start of guano mining on Patos, Rasa, and San Pedro Mártir islands. Since then, most of the major human impacts affecting the Midriff are related to rapid population growth in northwestern Mexico and increasing demands for the Midriff’s fishery and tourist resources. This chapter offers both historical and ecological perspectives on the human occupancy of the Midriff, so that a cultural-historical foundation will be available for ecological studies in the region as well as for land-use planning and conservation. The Midriff, located between 28° and 29°45´N and 112° and 114°W, includes the coasts of Lower California and Sonora and 39 islands and islets. Tiburόn, with an area of 1223.53 km2 and a maximum elevation of 1219 m, and Ángel de la Guarda, with an area of 936.04 km2 and a maximum elevation of 1315 m, are among the largest and most mountainous islands of Mexico. The other major islands of the Midriff, in order of decreasing size, are San Esteban (40.72 km2), San Lorenzo (33.03 km2), Smith (Coronado) (9.13 km2), San Lorenzo Norte (Las Ánimas) (4.26 km2), San Pedro Mártir (2.9 km2), Mejía (2.26 km2), Partida Norte (1.36 km2), Dátil (Turner) (1.25 km2), Alcatraz (Tassne or Pelícano) (1.2 km2), Salsipuedes (1.16 km2), Estanque (Pond) (1.03 km2), Rasa (0.68 km2), and Patos (0.45 km2) (Murphy, unpublished data). The entire region is extremely arid, and Tiburón is the only island that has permanent potable water, found in a few springs or in tinajas, although several tinajas on Ángel de la Guarda may contain water for long periods. The only island permanently inhabited since initial European contact is Tiburón, the historic stronghold of the Seri Indians or Comcáac, once a seminomadic, nonagricultural, seafaring, hunting, fishing, and gathering people.

In 1973, George Lindsay, one of Baja California’s most eminent botanists, visited the islands of the Sea of Cortés together with Charles Lindbergh, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Kenneth Bechtel. Lindbergh, one of the most celebrated popular heroes of the twentieth century, had become by that time a committed conservationist, interested in the preservation of whales and in the conservation of nature at large. Joseph Wood Krutch, a naturalist, had written The Forgotten Peninsula, one of the first natural history descriptions of Baja California. George Lindsay had helped organize a series of scientific explorations into the Sea of Cortés and the peninsula of Baja California, first from the San Diego Natural History Museum, and later from the California Academy of Sciences (Banks 1962a,b; Lindsay 1962, 1964, 1966, 1970; Wiggins 1962). Kenneth Bechtel, a philanthropist from San Francisco, had given financial support to the Audubon Society in the 1950s and 1960s to study the sea bird rookery at Isla Rasa, which had been decreed a protected area by the Mexican government in 1962. Bechtel was interested in showing the Sea of Cortés to people who might be aroused by its astounding natural beauty and who might help to protect it. For this purpose, he organized the trip and invited Lindbergh to visit the region. The group flew a chartered Catalina flying-boat that allowed them to get to small and remote islands. They landed in the water and then piloted up to the beach so they could have shade under the wing. They visited many of the islands, starting from Consag north of Bahía de los Ángeles, and ending up in Espíritu Santo, east of the Bay of La Paz. It was a wonderful and memorable trip. Two or three months later, both Lindbergh and Lindsay traveled to Mexico City to watch the Mexican premiere of a documentary film on the Sea of Cortés by the California Academy of Sciences that Kenneth Bechtel had sponsored (see chap. 1). Taking advantage of the opportunity, and also of his immense popularity, Charles Lindbergh requested to see the president of Mexico, Luis Echeverría.