The Bull, the Bear, and the Bumbley Bee!

The bull, the bear and the bumbley bee,
Sat in the shade of a Gulmohar tree,
Said one to the two, and two to the three,
What lives do we lead, persecuted or free?

I live in the forest, eat termites and ants,
I sleep in my den through the heat of the day,
But I can be grumpy if woken too early,
Surprised or disturbed and I don’t like to play.

Should I be chased for not being cheerful?
Don’t you feel the same when woken too soon?
I’m happy to share the forests and grassland,
I’ll come out at night, by the light of the moon.

Some of my cousins have freedom to wander,
To graze in green pastures, no shackles, no chains,
One brother I have in the Banni,
Fed on crops grown in sweet summer rains.

How different for those in cities and towns,
More buildings built, more green fields lost,
A cow in town must scavenge on garbage,
The city grows bigger, the cow pays the cost.

You both talk of freedom, of cities, of forests,
Loved or revered, you both have your place,
I live here too, am I not important?
I’m so very small and take up little space.

Without me no honey, no flowers, no blossom,
No food for birds, no flutter-byes bright,
I’m sorry to sting, but when we are threatened,
To defend my sisters I’m willing to fight.

The bee, the bull and the snuffly bear,
Were common but now are increasingly rare,
So ask one another would not it be fair,
To live and let live in the country we share?

This article is from issue

10.1

2016 Mar

Conserving diversity: biological and institutional

Most people love nature, and marvel at its incredible diversity. Even an ecosystem patch as small as a tiny pond can contain hundreds of different kinds of species, with complex life systems working at multiple levels, that have evolved over millennia. We admire this complexity, are amazed by it, and deeply appreciate the need to save it. Witness for instance the ongoing discussion in the Indian media about the crisis of the fast disappearing tiger, India’s flagship conservation species, and the depleting diversity of the dry tropical forest habitats where it has a large home range.

It is quite surprising to observe the almost total lack of similar awareness of the incredible institutional diversity that exists across the world, and the deep connections between this kind of institutional diversity, and the conservation of biological diversity. From Africa to Alaska and India to Iceland, traditional tribes and local communities have developed complex, multi-level, astonishingly detailed and varied systems of rules and norms that have enabled them to conserve and sustainably use the natural resources with which their lives are so intricately interwoven. Some of these institutions have a documented existence of time scales spanning several centuries. From forest-specific rules that include a ban on the killing of specific species during the breeding season, to complex multi- level irrigation systems that specify when downstream and upstream farmer groups engage in maintenance activities, to spatially and temporally varying guidelines for pastoral grazing communities that move across hundreds of kilometers and many ecological regimes, these communities have developed innovative, complex and constantly adapting approaches to deal with the varying challenges that they face while nested in a certain ecology.

For those who have interacted with local communities governing ecological commons in any part of the world, it is easy to see that the “natural” environment in these contexts in fact exists as an interconnected social-ecological system. Social and institutional rules are modified in response to ecological condition, while at the same time acting as a major force shaping ecosystem change. Yet, many policy makers, governments and administrators, conservation agencies, and even the average city dweller, tend to be unaware of the vast history, heritage, learning – and potential-of community institutions.

Elinor Ostrom’s pioneering work has done much to change this situation, but there is still a long way to go. As the articles in this special issue indicate, her research has made a substantial case for governments to involve local communities in conservation, by providing a substantial body of evidence that affirms the capacity of local communities to sustainably manage natural resources. In Latin America, Asia and Africa, governments have initiated policies of decentralization that attempt to return some degree of control over forests and other local resources to communities. Yet, Ostrom’s reasoning is far from prescriptive or naïve—she clearly warns of the dangers inherent
in rapid decentralization without effective controls, and lays out a clear set of principles that indicate conditions under which communities are likely to be successful managers of common resources. She cautions that a large part of the reasons why communities are successful is that they have the freedom to craft diverse rules that apply to their local context, and to modify these rules based on their real life learnings, and in response to changes in the condition of the natural resource over time. Unfortunately, many governmental, regional and international policies—even those aimed at engaging with local communities—fail because they tend to be prescriptive, assuming that one approach to conservation, with a few simple rules (such as the need to raise money for more guns and more guards) will always work. She also argues eloquently for the need for polycentric institutions—those with multiple levels of administration and decision making, national and local, government and community—working in synergy for better management at all appropriate scales. Thus her work does not pit community against state, but asks for better and closer engagements between these two sets of actors, with greater trust, and opportunities for participation at an equal footing.

Since the award of the Nobel Prize, broader awareness of her influential ideas has increased, and this is a good sign for the future of the world, and its indigenous peoples. Elinor Ostrom’s indefatigable energy has taken her across the globe several times over, traveling to meet with policy makers, governments and think tanks and explain to them the main message of her work, without losing out on the essential details of complexity, adaptiveness and change. It is a hard task, but one made more accessible by the energy and spirit with which she delivers her message. It is also a goal made more feasible by the rich body of resources she has developed over decades in the form of colleagues, networks, postdocs and students, who now engage with similar issues across the world, expanding on these ideas in a range of local contexts. This special section brings to you a glimpse of the work—theoretical and applied—inspired by Ostrom’s principles of the commons—in different parts of the world.

The challenge for our future is to apply these principles for effective management in a world impacted by urbanization, climate change and deforestation, where the scale and intensity of environmental and ecological problems are changing before our very eyes. Treating people as part of the solution, rather than just part of the problem, will have to constitute the way forward. The area of work initiated by Elinor Ostrom and her network of colleagues will provide a critical component in searching for new solutions to the emerging crisis.

This article is from issue

4.3

2010 Sep

Culture and Conservation

Folklore about the Tonkean Macaque (Macaca tonkeana) might be the reason behind an indigenous group in Indonesia tolerating this crop-raiding species, reports a new study in the journal Oryx.

Erin P Riley, a primatologist at the San Diego state university, conducted semi-structured interviews among the To Lindu, an ethnic group indigenous to highlands in Lore Lindu National Park in Indonesia to understand how these people conceptualize the Tonkean Macaque, a species which frequently raids their crops. Through a qualitative analysis of the data, she identified three main themes which characterized to Lindu’s folklore about the macaques.
01. Macaques were biologically similar and related to humans;
02. Macaques should be treated well even when they raid crops because otherwise they will do much worse things
03. Macaques act as guardians of Lindu adat or customary law.

These biological, cultural and ecological links to the Tonkean Macaque envisioned by the To Lindu has resulted in a taboo that prevents them from harming this crop-raiding species. Riley, uses this case study, to highlight the importance of including traditional knowledge and beliefs in conservation efforts but also adds the caveat that cultural reasons for conservation are probably context-specific and might not apply for a different species or even for the same species in another area. Moreover, people’s beliefs are not fixed and might change in response to external influences. For example, even among the To Lindu, another taboo against the felling of strangler figs is slowly vanishing seemingly in response to the rise of Christianity among its people. Given the tenuous nature of cultural reasons for conservation, it is therefore important that a suite of values, including ecological and economic benefits are used in justifying the conservation of a particular species.

Further reading
Riley EP. 2010. The importance of human–macaque folklore for conservation in Lore Lindu National Park, Sulawesi, Indonesia. Oryx 44(2) 235–240.

This article is from issue

4.1

2010 Mar

Joining the dots

Conservation research has traditionally focused on understanding how human-induced disturbances such as pollution and hunting directly affect wild species, leading to their extinctions. Little is known about how these extinctions might in turn influence other species living in the area. One would guess that these influences will be important because species are connected to other species in myriad ways – as food, as predators, as competitors for the same resource and as partners in mutually beneficial relationships. Ulrich Brose, in this conceptual paper, argues that visualizing species as nodes in a network might help us understand these secondary effects of species extinctions.

Take for example a simple food chain involving an eagle, a snake and a frog. The snake feeds on the frog and in turn is fed on by the eagle. Now suppose these snakes are hunted for their skin and over time become extinct, what might happen to the eagles and the frogs? What might also happen to the insects which the frogs eat and the other creatures that the eagles eat? Building ecological networks of these relationships will help us predict the answers to these questions.

Ecological networks are representations of the pair wise relationships between species in an area. While initially, these networks were almost entirely used in the context of food webs such as in the example describe above, more recently, other kinds of relationships such as competition and positive interactions (for e.g. between plants and their pollinators) have also been investigated. This paper highlights two particularly important uses of network building in the context of conservation:
01. To identify and prioritise for conservation, species whose extinction will have strong secondary effects on other members of the community.
02. To understand what features of communities make them vulnerable or resilient to disturbance. For example, it has been shown in numerous studies that the greater the number of ties between species in a community, the less susceptible it is to disturbance.

In spite of a great deal of research into the impacts of humans on species and biodiversity over the last few decades, global extinction rates are currently at an all-time high. This paper makes the case that this is due to a lack of attention to species interactions and that the next big step in conservation research will be to understand these interactions using ecological networks.

Further reading

Brose U. 2010. Improving nature conservancy strategies by ecological network theory. Basic and Applied Ecology 11(1): p. 1-5.

Hari Sridhar is a PhD student at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. Mail at hari@ces.iisc.ernet.in

This article is from issue

4.1

2010 Mar