It is now widely recognised that conservation is as much about people as it is about the rest of life on Earth. Writing earlier this year, Inger Andersen, Executive Secretary of the UN Environment Program, said: “The conservation of biological diversity is, at heart, a social issue, cutting across the political, economic, social, and cultural spheres of human life.” If conservation is a social issue, it follows that the social sciences can play a valuable role in helping us understand the dynamics of how humans interact with, and seek to conserve, non-human life. Indeed, the last few decades have seen the emergence and gradual coalescence of the new field of ‘conservation social science’. The quote from Andersen above is taken from the foreword to a new book by that name.
Bennet and colleagues, writing in 2017, identified multiple different ways in which the social sciences, ranging from economics to anthropology, can add value to conservation: for example, by helping us to diagnose the aspects that create challenges as well as contribute to successes, stimulating periodic reflection on how and why conservation occurs, assisting in the planning and management of current programmes and so on. In other words, the social sciences can provide a multidimensional understanding of conservation by serving different functions. Through these various contributions, social science can be ‘for’ conservation in support of its normative aims, but also ‘on’ conservation, helping to understand conservation practice (and practitioners) as a social phenomenon.
Until the end of the 20th century, social scientists working on and/or for conservation were few and far between. However, as the recognition of the need for conservation social science scholarship has grown, so too have the number of researchers taking up the challenge. Various specialist degree programmes have sprung up, and conservation organisations are increasingly looking to hire trained social scientists. As a result, there has been a recent wave of early career social science professionals studying conservation issues and often working to implement conservation practice.
Bringing together these two trends, this issue of Current Conservation seeks to highlight the important role of scholarship on the human dimensions of conservation, with a particular emphasis on showcasing the work of early career authors who are conducting critical social science research on conservation. The articles in the issue represent a wide range of different approaches to studying the social tensions and relations that influence conservation discourse and practice. However, they are united in their willingness to ask difficult questions and to engage with the political dimensions of conservation, rather than adopting the ‘apolitical’ stance usually found in scientific studies of biodiversity loss, protected area effectiveness and so on.
Opening the issue, Rogelio Luque Lora makes a fresh attempt to answer a fundamental question: What is conservation? His approach seeks to identify what distinguishes conservation from related concerns such as the welfare of individual animals, and how conservation is concerned with maintaining life forms over particular time scales. On the other hand, Diana Vela-Almeida and Teklehaymanot Weldemichel remind us of the well-established reservations about protectionism even as we mull over the newly agreed Convention on Biological Diversity 30×30 target. More fine-grained accounts are presented by the rest of our contributors: Revati Pandya describes why local women engage with tourism projects around the Corbett Tiger Reserve, which is one of the most well-known protected areas in India. While conservationists may believe (eco)tourism is all about saving the tiger, local women confess that their personal reasons vary from finding relief from wage labour to retaining connections to ancestral land and a desire to sidestep patriarchy. Ramya Ravi continues the theme of diverse perspectives within communities in her article on the Maldhari voices in the Banni—in reality they are not one but 21 pastoral communities! Different governance regimes operate simultaneously in this landscape and Ramya shares an overview of how the different sections of Maldharis negotiate for access and rights to resources. Next, Trishant Simlai and colleagues direct our attention to the difference between popular portrayals of forest guards as singular heroes or villains versus the social complexity and inequity such frontline workers themselves contend with as they labour to implement conservation policies.
Together these articles showcase how the social sciences deepen our conceptual and empirical understanding of what it means to engage in conservation. They remind us that as much as we speak about biological diversity, we need to remain conscious of social diversity along with all the richness and tensions that brings to the table.
Finally, and in contrast to the early career contributors, we hear the perspectives of Bill Adams, a founding father of political ecology research on conservation, captured in an interview by Hari Sridhar. As Bill observes, “The world remains a strange and complex place—wonderful, mismanaged, and unjust.[…]. You need to go well beyond ecological science, to learn how people think and how societies and institutions work, if you want to understand how nature is exploited, why conservation is needed, and why it succeeds and fails.” He goes on to build a thoughtful case for why we need to do political ecology in particular, although he admits, “it is a bit like Banksy’s art—we know what it is when we see it, but we don’t know who is doing it.”
We hope this special issue of Current Conservation gives readers a glimpse of some of the fresh voices in this field and their attempt to go beyond simplistic narratives of conservation.
Further Reading
Bennett, N. J., R. Roth, S. C. Klain., K. Chan, P. Christie, D. A. Clark, G. Cullman et al. 2017. Conservation social science: Understanding and integrating human dimensions to improve conservation. Biological conservation 205: 93–108. doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2016.10.006
Miller, D. C., I. R. Scales and M. B. Mascia. 2023. Conservation social science: Understanding people, conserving biodiversity. 1st edition. West Sussex, UK: Wiley.
The last decade saw heated disputes about the proper goals of conservation. Many conservationists have placed increasing emphasis on the value of nature for human beings, framing the benefits provided by nature in terms of ecosystem services and natural capital. For others, this amounts to a betrayal of nature’s ‘intrinsic value’: its value for itself, regardless of its contributions to (or detractions from) human interests.
Other controversies have focused on how conservationists should relate to changing ecological conditions, particularly changes brought about by human activities. Should conservation try to arrest anthropogenic change, by trying to keep ecosystems in as close a state as possible to a supposed pre-human baseline? Or should they embrace these changes and promote whatever resulting values they produce, such as novel ecosystems and the potential to adapt to climate change?
Even more recently, advocates of so-called ‘compassionate conservation’ have helped foreground the tension between conserving ecological wholes (such as species and ecosystems) and protecting the wellbeing of individual animals. The core controversy here relates to the suffering and death brought to individual animals by certain conservation interventions, such as predator control and the eradication of non-native species.
All these debates have been underlain by the more basic question of what conservation is, and indeed who can be considered a conservationist. But so far, definitions of conservation have either been exclusively narrow or excessively broad.
Historically, narrow understandings of conservation as proper hunting ethics (in the times of the British Empire) or the preservation of biological entities and processes (in recent times) have served to exclude those who do not view the living world and their relations with it on those terms. On the other hand, attempts to broaden our understanding of what conservation is in the interest of inclusivity have sometimes cast the net too wide, and thereby not allowed us to distinguish conservation from other ways of relating to the natural world, such as human development and the protection of animal wellbeing.
What is needed is a conceptualisation that is sufficiently wide to accommodate diverse forms of conservation, but also sufficiently contained to delimit conservation from altogether different ways of relating to the living world. What follows is my attempt to build such a conceptualisation.
Conservation in extended human time
Even if many conservationists disagree about why the living world is valuable (whether it is valuable owing to its contributions to human wellbeing, or valuable independently of those contributions), all conservationists agree that something of value exists in the living world. In other words, all conservationists agree that the living world is valuable, despite their disagreements over what this value consists of. This is the first step in building the definition I propose.
The second step has to do with the kind of harm to valuable things that most concerns conservationists. Conservationists have frequently disagreed about which harms are most important. While many have blamed the activities that directly harm wildlife, such as agricultural expansion and unsustainable hunting, political ecologists have typically pointed their fingers at the underlying political and economic structures that support those harms.
But what distinguishes conservationists from other groups is their overarching concern with irrecoverable loss rather than with temporary harm. As I view it, conservation is centrally preoccupied with the avoidance of extinction and other forms of permanent damage. This is why I think conservation is about promoting the continued existence of valuable things, rather than just their temporary states.
The third and last step in my proposed definition seeks to identify the right timescale for conserving valuable things. Attempts to conserve individual animals and plants (except extraordinarily long-lived ones) is generally futile from the human point of view: individual beings are born and destroyed too quickly for it to make sense to conserve them. But ecological wholes, such as species and ecosystems, can far outlive human generations, and so their conservation—from the human standpoint—is feasible, at least in principle. As Ishmael, the narrator of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, concludes his assessment of the sustainability of 19th century whaling practices:‘We account the whale immortal in his species, however perishable in his individuality.’
On the other end of the spectrum, though, even the conservation of species and ecosystems is futile. On geological timescales, ecological wholes also come and go on a continuous basis. On these scales of time, even their conservation is finally futile. This is why I propose that the right timescale for conservation is ‘extended human time’: stretches of time longer than a single human generation, but short enough that humans with whom we can identify still exist (humans who might be able to understand, perhaps even share, some of our ethical motivations and aspired relations with the living world). It is at this temporal scale that humans are able to find meaning in their endeavours, and it is at this scale that conservation is intelligible.
Taken together, these three steps allow me to propose that conservation is the promotion of the continued existence of valuable things in the living world in extended human time.
Conservation, ecological change, and the wellbeing of nonhuman beings
Viewing conservation as unfolding in extended human time helps shed light on the tensions between conserving ecological wholes, on the one hand, and caring about the welfare of individual plants and animals, on the other. The fact that, as Ishmael perceived, species can outlive the individuals that compose them, is why I think that conservation has mostly focused on ensuring the continued existence of ecological wholes rather than individual beings. In and of itself, concern with the welfare of individual animals is not, I think, conservation.
By disentangling conservation goals from the protection of animal welfare, we can gain a better understanding of the relationship between the two.
At times this relationship is positive. In my experience, both in the field (mostly in Chile) and in the office, many conservationists care sincerely about the goods and evils experienced by sentient beings. On many occasions, protecting individual animals can advance conservation goals: for instance, protecting individual whales generally benefits whale species as a whole. In turn, protecting habitats and ecosystems often benefits the individual plants and animals who make those places their homes.
At other times, harming or culling individual beings is necessary to ensure the continued survival of certain species (think of the eradication of rodents on oceanic islands to save the seabirds on whose chicks the rodents predate). In this context, viewing the welfare of those beings as conceptually separate from conservation can also help clarify our aims. Where this harm is truly inevitable, and where it is gauged that saving a species justifies the harm involved, conservationists should strive to inflict that harm with a heavy heart, aware of the tragic choices they face. At times, they may even decide to forsake conservation goals in the interest of not causing widespread damage to individual animals and plants.
Seeing conservation as primarily concerned with promoting the continued existence of valuable things can also clarify the relationship between conservation and the adaptation to, or even embrace of, ecological change. In many cases, embracing change is a good strategy to boost the chances of certain ecological entities to survive broader changes, such as those to do with land use and climate. Assisted migration is a good example of this: rather than trying to keep everything as it is, helping species relocate to more favourable habitats can help avoid their extinction.
Another way of seeing the embrace of ecological change as enhancing the continued existence of valuable things is to focus less on ecological entities (such as species and ecosystems) and more on ecological processes (such as evolution and nutrient cycling). Embracing some forms of ecological change can help promote the continued existence of these valuable ecological processes. For example, changing biological and climatic conditions create new evolutionary pressures that can—eventually—result in the appearance of new species.
There are important limitations to my proposed definition of conservation. For one thing, I have elaborated it by drawing largely from Western debates about what matters in conservation, and by using concepts, such as ‘the living world’ and ‘human time’, that are grounded in a Western view of the world. In this sense, my definition can rightly be challenged by those who do not view conservation and the living world on the same terms as me.
For this reason, the definition I have proposed can never pretend—and should never pretend—to be universal. Rather, the main political motivation behind my retracing the boundaries of conservation has been to bring at once openness and clarity to the question of what conservation is and what it is not.
This is a bold and ambitious task, but I hope that by proposing that conservation is chiefly concerned with avoiding permanent loss rather than reversible damage, and by arguing that conservation unfolds in timescales longer than a single human generation, but shorter than geological time, my proposed new definition can help shed light on what conservation is and what it is for.
Further Reading
Luque-Lora, R. 2023. What conservation is: a contemporary inquiry. Conservation and society 21(1): 73–82.
Sandbrook, C. 2015. What is conservation? Oryx 49(4): 565–566.
“A rainbow has seven colors, no one color is the same. A hand has five fingers, they’re all different. That’s the way of things. Banni is no different. No one monsoon is the same, no one year is the same, not every Maldhari is the same. Even the landscape changes all the time, it’s dynamic. That’s its way, Banni’s way. Our way.” – a Maldhari elder
I have spent a large part of the last decade studying Banni grassland for my doctoral work. It is a landscape that I have come to love for its veiled beauty, dynamism, and complexity. An arid grassland system, Banni is an important wildlife habitat spread across 3857 sq. kilometres in the Kutch district of Gujarat, India. The grassland has a unique community of 40 species of salt and drought-tolerant grasses. The landscape supports an array of Palearctic and Central Asian flyway birds—upto 273 resident and migratory bird species—serving as important foraging, roosting, nesting, staging and wintering grounds. Meanwhile, the grassland is among the few in the country where all four species of wild canids found in India co-occur. Banni is, therefore, ecologically quite significant.
The grassland is also home to centuries-old traditional pastoralist communities, the Maldharis (Maal = livestock, Dhari = owners). Known for their animal husbandry, the Maldharis have specially bred the Banni buffalo and Kankrej cattle that are drought tolerant, and are highly productive despite climatic vagaries. The Maldharis’ lives, identity, and economy is intricately tied to these vagaries. A good rain can boost the milk economy of these communities, and an above normal rainfall can lead to floods, displacing people and animals alike. A single drought can affect income for the year, whereas a prolonged drought can force members of this now semi-sedentarised pastoralist community to sell their livestock, migrate, and have lasting effects on the wellbeing of poorer pastoralists. These challenges, however, are not unknown to pastoralist cultures that are built around scarcity. A major reason why pastoralism has persisted for as many centuries, lies in the ability of pastoralists to adapt and sustain diverse environmental and social challenges. The Maldharis are no exception to this. Nonetheless, Maldharis are quite vulnerable—as are the grasslands they depend on.
“Banni is now changing, has changed. It changed when things around us changed. The land changed. The people changed. Our traditions have also changed. As pastoralists, we’ve changed. Is change negative or positive? We’ll know, probably. It will depend on how close or far we are from that point.”
Despite its resilience, the Maldhari way and the grassland is showing signs of wear and tear. Colonial regime, market forces, and privatisation, along with extreme climatic conditions (that are typical to this arid system) intermingled with climate change, have heightened a sense of vulnerability in this deeply entwined human and natural system.
How exactly, you may wonder that the ghost of colonialism haunts conservation management approaches of grasslands, and by extension, its people—the pastoralists.
Let’s rewind back to circa 1860 when the Indian Forest Department was created, to address concerns for the denuded state of Indian forests from overharvesting of timber, and leading to the introduction of scientific forest management across the British Raj. With revenue generation as the principal goal of this department, forest resources began to be ‘conserved and protected’. Forests provided timber, and timber was a valuable resource that drove colonial expansion. Meanwhile, grasslands, devoid of timber, were categorised as ‘wastelands’.
Common to forests and grasslands, however, was the exclusion and criminalisation of forest-dependent communities and pastoralists from these landscapes. This categorisation was also a reflection of the colonial viewpoint of pastoralism as a pre-agricultural, primitive way of life that needed to be sedentarised and integrated with agriculture.
Colonial records describe the province of Kutch as a ‘bare country’ with no trees. The rulers of Kutch, who were completely aligned with colonial power, remedied this situation. They created forests with drought-resistant trees, existing forests were heavily guarded, and grasslands, locally called rakhals, were closed off to prevent grazing, taxes were imposed to regulate grazing and livestock impounded. Partly used as game reserves, rakhals were used as grass farms that fed the royal stables, and were sites of extensive reforestation policies.
The new policies saw a permanent change in pastoralists’ relationship with natural resources. Villagers and pastoralists resented these new policies, and several Indian papers of the time were reported to have criticised the Maharao for prioritising his ‘passion for wildlife over people’s needs’. Over time, these policies were normalised, but this new normal also presented new problems. The protection offered to the animals within these ‘artificially preserved’ spaces led to complaints and accusations from people and local leaders that ‘panthers, wild pigs, and deer’ were steadily working their way through cattle and crops. Gaming rules were relaxed, meaning that rakhals were also thrown open to wild grazing, with the effect that indiscriminate hunting led to an alarming decrease in wildlife. This in turn led to the reinstatement of previous regulations—only tighter.
This must sound familiar, right?
After the accession of the princely rule to the Republic of India in 1948, forest management policies from the colonial era continued. Banni was primed for the same afforestation policies that were broadly considered successful in other parts of Kutch. Under independent India, pastoral communities not only had to contend with a fully ingrained wasteland discourse and related policies that barely accounted for pastoralist challenges and realities, but they also had to contend with the loss of traditional rights.
As a wasteland, the administration of Banni was under the Gujarat Revenue Department. But after being declared a Protected Area in 1955, the administration also came to be with the Gujarat Forest Department. This puzzling arrangement continues to this day. Banni is managed by both departments, which makes it a grassland, a wasteland and a protected area, all at once! And, because these are legitimate categories in government records, the battle for community rights under Section 3(1)(i) of the Indian Forest Rights Act (2006) remains unresolved to this day.
Despite the resilience of this centuries-old pastoralist system, the increasing fear of eviction has already strained the traditional patterns of resource sharing. Moreover, lingering uncertainty over the future has pushed several villages inside this grassland to privatise this commons land, raising tensions among the Maldharis. When the Maldhari elder remarked that not all fingers on a hand were the same size, he was referring to the embedded diversity of the landscape. Banni is made up of 19 panchayats and 54 villages with 21 different pastoral communities that are grouped under this one Maldhari identity. These communities are diverse in their social classes, family sizes, livestock holdings, a range of income sources, and a host of responsibilities that make up the tapestry of each household. From uneven development to unequal access to government relief measures, these 21 different communities have to contend with a diverse set of circumstances. The wear and tear is beginning to show in how the commons land is viewed in Banni now.
“Under the forest law, boundaries were drawn where none previously existed. We have no rights, we are strangers in our own land. Banni is ours. We have been here for centuries. Why should an outsider—like these private companies—occupy our land? Why should the Forest Department restrict us? If we don’t privatise it, these people will. Otherwise, we will lose it all.”
A sentiment that is widely shared by several old and young Maldharis. With the question of rights, or lack thereof, looming large over the landscape, there has been an alarming rise in privatisation of the landscape. Redirection of commons to rainfed agricultural parcels or tourist resorts (that service the annual winter festival— the White Rann festival) has affected the traditional ties that bind this heterogeneous community. This is evident from the counter claims of three panchayats that would prefer revenue rights, rejecting claims for commons.
But alas, Banni is a protected area, and non-forest activity is not permitted. So, a bid was made in 2018 to halt privatisation or ‘encroachment of forest land’ by filing a case against the encroachers with the National Green Tribunal in 2018—a Banni vs. Banni situation. The following year, the Tribunal ruled against the encroachments and ordered the immediate removal of all non-forest activity. While there was celebration that Banni is finally being recognised as a forest land and the Maldharis well on their way to get their rights, ugly scenes of conflict between the Forest Department and people were unfolding across Banni over removal of the encroachments, and revival of enclosures that would keep people out. As Karl Marx once said, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”
This unending sequence of events lead me to ask the question: whose grassland is this anyway? Maldharis’? Revenue Department’s? Forest Department’s? Or the wildlife?
Tellingly, conservation concerns have taken a backseat. If conservation needs to be addressed, then the locals need their rights to facilitate co-existence. But in continuing to alienate them, Banni has become another site where conservation goals remain elusive. Is there hope for the grassland, this unique yet frustratingly complex system that several of us love? Perhaps. Instead of making the sweeping generalisation that local people are always the best custodians of a landscape, I would say that they remain the best bet in the absence of more successful, cohesive and inclusive approaches.
And it’s about time we trashed that wasteland discourse!
Identity and access are multifaceted and tied to questions of equity and justice. This piece is set in the context of wildlife conservation and (eco)tourism at Corbett Tiger Reserve in Uttarakhand, India. Nature guides and labour for hotels are two common forms of (eco)tourism work for villagers. I offer two vignettes or snapshots from the field that capture the lived experiences of such villagers. They speak of the impacts of (eco)tourism, and more specifically the different people’s engagement with (eco)tourism in the context of their everyday lives that confront rural realities, identities, and conservation. Albeit snapshots, these instances are playing out in the same context and offer insights on how differential engagement or villagers’ relationship with (eco)tourism is, particularly when their identities differ.
The elephant in the village and forest
It’s dark inside the room and I hear my name being called out through the window. I open my eyes, disoriented but rapidly gaining awareness that there must be an important reason for my being woken up at what feels like the middle of the night. I’m about to open the door when I hear “elephant, elephant!”
I run out of the room and follow family members of the house where I am living in Kumer* village. We walk carefully and swiftly through the early morning fog, on a narrow path that connects their home to other homes and farms in the village. We all feel a combination of excitement and fear at the likelihood of spotting an elephant close by. I am told that we need to make sure that the haathi (elephant) doesn’t go further inside the village—it could damage more crops, property, or life. The key is to make loud sounds in the hope that the elephant can be rerouted to the forest. Not having seen any signs of the elephant in the village, we assume it has returned to the forest.
We return home and survey the damage to the paddy crop. This is a seasonal phenomenon: elephants love the paddy flowers,and annually raid the paddy fields. It is a constant challenge for the villagers to protect their crops from elephants, and other animals including nilgai, and sometimes boars.
This village, where I was living, lies close to the Corbett Tiger Reserve (CTR) located in the northern state of Uttarakhand. In 1973, Corbett Tiger Reserve became one of the first areas designated to be set aside for tiger protection. Since then, villages around the protected area have been significantly influenced and impacted by the tiger reserve. One of the major influencing factors has been (eco) tourism. Ecotourism is promoted as a means for educating tourists about nature and wildlife, providing employment to local people, and contributing to the protection of wildlife or forests. Ecotourism is meant to be low impact and create minimal disturbance to the landscape and people. However, CTR’s proximity to the National Capital Region—which encompasses Delhi and several districts surrounding it from the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan—makes it more accessible, which has also contributed to the growth of all kinds of other tourism. One of the most common forms of ecotourism at CTR is safaris.
So how is the elephant incident relevant here? For most tourists visiting this landscape, at least one jungle safari is part of their itinerary. Jeep safaris are led by a guide and a driver both of whom are generally from the nearby villages. Spotting elephants and of course tigers is a sign of a successful safari. Tourists in safari jeeps passing one another ask whether they have spotted a tiger, or any other majestic wildlife.
During peak tourist season (winter months) there can be over 200 safaris per day. And the hope—for the jeep drivers, guides, and tourists—is to spot a tiger, or at least an elephant. The guides or drivers often have their own crops damaged by elephants, yet the value of spotting an elephant or other wildlife during the safari ties into the material benefits they gain. But for the villagers outside the CTR boundaries, spotting a tiger or elephant in their villages has no benefits—it only brings crop loss, property damage or loss of life.
Women’s work and precarity
“I helped build that hotel. I would walk up two and three floors with a load on my head. Today, no one will speak up to say who built that hotel.” In conversations with women whose families are unable to own land due to disadvantaged class and caste, (eco)tourism work has a different level of precarity. Another woman who works as farm labour adds, “There is more land sold and less farm work for us. There will be more and more hotels, and villagers will go away. The villagers have their land, our daily wage often comes from farming on their lands. So, if they have sold their lands, where will we get work from?”
These are only two of the hundreds of stories of women who work as labour in the village, households, and (eco)tourism, and whose work remains invisible. As some villagers have become entrepreneurs and shifted away or reduced farming, such women have reduced access to traditional livelihood work, or they become part of the (eco)tourism economy. The face of the tourism enterprise, households and land is men, yet a significant amount of labour work is put in by women. Women who come from landowning families have been able to engage with the (eco)tourism market in the form of homestay work or administrative work in hotels. For some, (eco)tourism-based work provides marginal mobility with continued precarity. This is true of all tourism-based work.
Women continue to walk a tightrope as they try to tap into forms of agency, while navigating the realities of the patriarchy. Their involvement with the market offers an avenue to understand how culture, market values, and agency coexist and contradict each other. It is in such spaces of women’s work or guides’ decision making towards their land use, that one could locate where and how agency can be expressed and amplified.
Negotiating (eco)tourism
The Corbett landscape is notorious for the contentious use of land for tourism and infrastructure influenced by powerful actors. All these factors have contributed to changes in livelihoods and change in the physical landscape. The rural landscape around CTR has several hotels, guest houses, resorts, restaurants, shops, and tea stalls. While farming and livestock keeping have been common livelihood practices here, (eco)tourism has become a common avenue for diversifying household incomes or shifting away from traditional livelihoods.
Simultaneously, there is a common understanding of the symbolic value of land, beyond the material. Socio-economically well-off villagers have been able to set up their own enterprises and engage with tourism as owners or managers rather than labour. Despite the seasonal nature of tourism, engaging with (eco)tourism is a matter of surviving market dominance, and one way to continue to live in their homes rather than out-migrate.
This was the context for my doctoral research: examining how local people are negotiating and responding to Corbett Tiger Reserve (eco)tourism. Using a critical feminist political ecology lens, it was important to understand how and why people are engaging with (eco)tourism. This lens helped locate the complexities of peoples’ responses, which were shaped by their socio-economic identity, and the extent to which they can navigate a changing rural landscape.
The landscape is thus riddled with contradictions and shifting positionalities as villagers, over the years, have learnt to negotiate and engage with the (eco)tourism market. The benefits or losses from tourism are variable, and it is precisely this complexity that calls for more attention. The focus on identity in my research was a result of the variations in access and abilities to engage with the market or continue farming. Identity is also tied to agency, and for conservation governance, it is crucial to understand who is affected by conservation policies, why and how, if we are to work towards equity and justice.
Pandya, R. 2022a Intersecting identities and altered relations: Locating the material and symbolic factors shaping local engagement with ecotourism at India’s Corbett Tiger Reserve. PhD thesis, Wageningen University. ISBN: 978-94-6447-406-0 DOI: https://doi.org/10.18174/577012
Pandya, R., Dev, H.S., Rai, N.D. and R. Fletcher (2022) Rendering land touristifiable: (eco)tourism and land use change. Tourism geographies 25(4): 1068–1084.
Pandya, R. 2022. Micro-politics and the prospects for convivial conservation: Insights from the Corbett Tiger Reserve, India. Conservation and Society (20)2: 146–155.
Pandya, R. 2022b. An intersectional approach to neoliberal environmentality: Women’s engagement with ecotourism at Corbett Tiger Reserve, India. Environment and planning E: Nature and space 6(1): 355–372.
“The biggest challenge for all frontline forest staff is our 24 hours duty. No other public department has this kind of working hours, the police and even the army have shifts. We have no shifts! Our work never ends!”
The quote above was a lament by a frontline forest worker from the Corbett Tiger Reserve in north India to one of the authors during their PhD fieldwork. Such perceptions about the realities of ranger work remain invisible in popular narratives about rangers working in biodiversity conservation.
Recent conservation social science work on rangers highlights the importance of rangers as the primary actors in doing the work of conservation in protected areas. Such work thus positions rangers as both the most important as well as the most vulnerable actors in addressing wildlife crime, including but not limited to illegal hunting and poaching, illicit logging and collection of non-timber forest products. Rangers more broadly are on the ground, engaged in protecting and conserving wildlife, forests, and achieving intertwined social and ecological objectives of conservation and human development. Yet, despite the multifaceted nature of ranger work and the political economic and socio-cultural contexts they operate in, rangers and their work are often portrayed in simplistic terms.
Mainstream discourse in conservation natural sciences and policy, for example, often tends to portray rangers as heroes fighting against villainous poachers. On the other hand, some critical approaches in conservation social science, like political ecology, can be quick to point to rangers as wielders of unjust violence in pursuit of conservation objectives. While we recognise that rangers do often use violence and are also important actors in conserving biodiversity and saving particular species, any binary or simplistic portrayal of rangers and their work risks glossing over more complex realities that are important to understanding the challenges and opportunities in supporting rangers, and the broader social and ecological objectives of biodiversity conservation that their work underpins.
The social and political dimensions of conservation labour
A recent survey conducted by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Ranger Federation of Asia revealed that ‘rangers’ in Asia work in dangerous conditions with low pay, poor facilities, and spend long durations away from their families. The survey collectively refers to all frontline conservation staff as “rangers”, which includes forest guards, foresters, wildlife wardens, scouts, and watchers. However, in frontline conservation work particularly in the Global South, rangers often work under rigid social hierarchies, often shaped by caste, class, gender, and race.
For example, during our fieldwork across several national parks in India, we found that indigenous and lower caste persons were usually employed as daily wage workers with little job security. They have also been conceptualised as “vulnerable chowkidars” (see Further Reading section) as well as forest watchers working in precarious working conditions without fixed term contracts. In our research with rangers in India, we find systemic caste discrimination and exploitation in frontline forest work, where upper caste forest guards coerce lower caste daily wage forest watchers to do chores associated with their caste occupation, such as clean toilets and wash clothes.
Additionally, dominant popular conservation discourses surrounding illegal wildlife trade and poaching often draw on unhelpful, simplified, and often racialized binaries of helpless dead animals killed by “bad” people (read poachers) who are then caught and some times killed by conservation heroes (read rangers or other law enforcement or security personnel). The realities of poaching and the work of rangers to address this are often much more complex and contextually situated.
As highlighted by geographers studying labour, the social and political conditions in which work is done is fundamental to the processes that define power relations between workers (rangers, in this case) and those whom they work for. The same conditions also shape and limit the ways in which workers are able to struggle to improve the terms and conditions of their employment.
We thus need to pay close attention to power relations, social hierarchies, working conditions, and related political and social conflicts (e.g. strikes, wages, working contracts and salaries, levels of informality and insecurity). However, scientists, practitioners and policymakers invested in designing and implementing biodiversity conservation policies have still to embrace these insights, leading to a limited understanding of how people are put to work for conservation, under what conditions they work, and how conservation affects labour dynamics and related conflicts, and vice versa. Consequently, the lack of attention to labour in conservation research, practice and policy can contribute to inadequate and poorly designed conservation policies, initiatives and projects.
For example, conservation interventions in India concerning frontline labour have been limited to providing equipment, such as jackets, shoes, water filters and solar cookers, without focusing on systemic factors of labour exploitation and oppression, such as low wages and lack of social security. Most daily wage labour in protected areas across India is done in contravention to the Factories Act, 1948, which states: “No employee is supposed to work for more than 48 hours in a week and 9 hours in a day. Any employee who works for more than this period is eligible for overtime remuneration prescribed as twice the amount of ordinary wages.”
This example alone highlights a set of questions that are usually neglected in conservation research, advocacy, and policymaking: To what extent are conservation workers systematically exploited and/or overworked? And what are the consequences for them and the conservation work they do? Do labour relations in conservation exist outside of formal labour regulations, and if so, how and why? How do conservation initiatives benefit economically from, and at the same time depend on the exploitation and informalisation of workers? What are the spaces for mobilisation, organisation, and protest that exist for conservation workers and how are these spaces constrained and undermined?
The militarisation of conservation
Our own preliminary research in South Asia and Eastern and Southern Africa indicates that the current militarised approach to conservation is reshaping the priorities of rangers’ work, how they are trained, and ultimately what their roles and responsibilities as frontline conservation workers are.
Militarisation of conservation, for instance, inevitably leads to the militarisation of conservation labour, affecting how rangers are trained and who does this training, along with shifts in their roles, responsibilities and daily priorities.
For example, in some conservation areas of South Africa and Mozambique, rangers have been increasingly engaging in more dangerous, narrow, paramilitary anti-poaching work with very little to no core ecological and conservation work, such as vegetation and species monitoring, landscape assessments or community engagement. Organisations supporting rangers have documented increased levels of trauma and PTSD-related mental health challenges as a result of this change in their work. This new form of labour is often supported by the use of surveillance technologies, weapons and counterinsurgency training for frontline conservation workers, and through the involvement of ex-military personnel or war veterans as part of the changing conservation labour force.
Recent research on the impacts of surveillance technologies, such as ranger-based law enforcement monitoring software, suggests that such technologies result in both empowerment and disempowerment, deskilling and upskilling, control and autonomy of labourers and the labour process. For instance, younger tech savvy forest guards in the Corbett Tiger Reserve find the introduction of smartphones and digital methods of data collection as upskilling, while older forest guards and forest watchers believe that their traditional or tacit knowledge of natural history is rapidly getting deteriorated when data collection or patrolling are done with a smartphone.
We are in a key moment for the future of biodiversity conservation. The establishment of protected areas for biodiversity conservation is set for major growth in the coming decade with the passage of 30×30 targets. This is positioned as a lynchpin of integrated and global environmental action and finance that aims to protect species, respond to climate change and achieve a ‘green’ post-pandemic economic recovery. Conservation workers will play a frontline role in implementing these highly ambitious, controversial and conflict-laden goals. Understanding who works in conservation, in what capacities, how this is changing with and responding to shifts in conservation policy and practice is vital. A stronger understanding of the changing role and nature of labour in conservation is thus crucial for advancing a theoretically relevant and socially just conservation science, design, practice and implementation. To this end, a transdisciplinary approach is necessary, combining conservation social science with labour studies from but not limited to geography, sociology and economics.
Further Reading
Runacres, A. 2021. Doing chowkidaari: Vulnerability in village-forest relations and the compulsion of forest work. Conservation and society 19(4): 271–281.
William (Bill) M. Adams is a geographer who worked in the University of Cambridge from 1984 to 2020. Bill got an undergraduate degree in geography and, in the course of his PhD, made the shift from being an ecologist to a social scientist. His research interests lie at the intersection of conservation and development, viewed through the lenses of political ecology and environmental history. Bill has written a number of books on these interests, of which the most recent, co-authored with Kent Redford is called Strange Natures: Conservation in the Era of Synthetic Biology. In this conversation with Hari Sridhar, Bill talks about the origins of his interests in geography and conservation, the ‘political ecology turn’ in his work and thinking, and his views on what political ecology has to offer to our understanding of questions around conservation and development.
Hari Sridhar: You did a BA in Geography and an MSc in Conservation. Looking back, how would you trace the origins of your interest in these two disciplines and their intersection?
Bill Adams: I have spent most of my adult life researching or teaching in the discipline of geography. It is an amazingly interdisciplinary subject, stretching right from the humanities through the social sciences to natural science. Its focus is the Earth, how human society and the natural world interact, and all the different patterns and outcomes of that interaction. I had an inspiring geography teacher at school, Don Pirkis, and I remember him on a field trip, standing on the chalk hills south of London and explaining how the landscape laid out below fitted together—geology, water, soils, forests and fields, settlements, roads and retail parks: places emerging, evolving and changing over time.
Geography had recently undergone a revolution, changing from a descriptive subject to an analytical one. At university, I had to study everything from glaciology to development theory—the degree required us to understand both social and physical processes, with all that implied in terms of different kinds of theory and different methods, from the analysis of historical archives to counting pollen grains in sediment cores. Since then, Geography has gone through a succession of intellectual revolutions, but it is still recognisably the same: turbulent, diverse, and restless. Geography attracts and rewards the curious. The world remains a strange and complex place—wonderful, mismanaged, and unjust.
When I finished my Geography degree, I wanted to find work in the environment or conservation (after all, this was the 1970s, the decade of Limits to Growth and the Stockholm Conference). I eventually got a place on the MSc in Conservation at University College London. Postgrad courses in the environment were few and far between in those days, and disciplines like Conservation Biology didn’t yet exist. The UCL course had its roots in ecology, but was very interdisciplinary. It seemed a natural extension of a Geography degree. I met an amazing and iconoclastic group of fellow students and staff who had the time (and inclination) to talk and argue, and a host of visiting speakers from the practical conservation world. I started to understand how the nature conservation movement had emerged, how it worked, and why it might sometimes make enemies of the people whose lives it impacted. In the 1970s, the UCL course was strongly focused on the UK, but the breadth of its approach to conservation has been just as relevant everywhere else I have worked since.
Above all, my Masters began to show me the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to understanding conservation—one that combines an understanding of species and ecosystems with knowledge of communities, landowners, businesses and policy-makers, and the conflicts they are too often embroiled in. You need to go well beyond ecological science, to learn how people think and how societies and institutions work, if you want to understand how nature is exploited, why conservation is needed, and why it succeeds and fails.
HS: When we reached out to you about doing this interview you said political ecology is “a bitlike Banksy’s art—we know what it is when we see it, but we don’t know who is doing it.” For someone who is hearing the phrase “political ecology” for the first time, could you explain this a little more? When would you say your own work started taking the “political ecology turn”?
BA: Well, that was not a thought-through comment! I think what I had in mind was that political ecology is recognisable when it is done, but it is not a tightly-regimented discipline. People come to political ecology from a lot of different homes across the natural and social sciences and the humanities: anthropology, conservation biology, ecology, geography, history, political science—the list is potentially endless. This gives the field a characteristic hybridity which is an important source of its energy. And it does not matter how people get into political ecology— what matters is what they do when they get there. As a field, political ecology is wonderfully rambunctious and diverse. It can be messy and is often passionate, but (in my opinion) rarely boring—and sadly that is not something that can be said for all academic study! Most political ecologists have no degree entitled “political ecology”, and while there are specialist journals (like the delightful Journal of Political Ecology), research gets published in a lot of different places.
Political ecology emerged as a field in the 1980s, when radical social scientists started taking environmental change seriously—political economy meeting ecology. I first came across it in work, mostly by geographers, on drought and famine in the Sahel. Between 1972 and 1974 the rains failed in the Sahel, and many people starved. The conventional explanation of the drought was neo-Malthusian, that it was the result of biogeophysical feedback caused by human population growth and overgrazing.
But scholars like Keith Hewitt showed the political dimensions of so-called ‘natural disasters’ such as famine (for example his 1983 collection Interpretations of Calamity), while Mike Watts (in Silent Violence 1983) challenged the conventional story of human ‘misuse’ of West African drylands, pointing to the history of colonial exploitation and agricultural commercialisation.
It is now conventional to observe that there is a politics to hunger, to the way land is allocated and used, and to degradation of the environment. Piers Blaikie’s 1987 book The Political Economy of Soil Erosion neatly caught the political ecologist’s argument that the state of the environment is as much the result of political processes (who owns land, who has the power to shape its management) as of variability in natural systems. The core question addressed by political ecology—how the powerless and the powerful (smallholder or corporation) interact to shape landscapes and human futures—is as important in industrial zones as drylands.
It is easy, looking back, to assume that the evolution of academic ideas is seamless, and obvious from the first. For myself, I began to use the term political ecology (as opposed to its way of thinking about society and nature) in the 1990s. I remember reading a review paper by Raymond Bryant in Political Geography in 1992 (“Political Ecology: an emerging research agenda in Third World Studies”), and thinking ‘Oh—so that’s what I do!’. Recognition of the field (for example in Liberation Ecologies, edited by Richard Peet and Michael Watts in 1996) slowly began to make the study of the environment and development more academically respectable.
Since then, the evolution of political ecology has been rapid and continuous. Political ecologists have analysed the way power is exercised to shape nature, and how that shaping intersects with questions of human justice, in many different contexts—in the industrialised as well as developing world, in cities as well as rural areas. They have also explored the ways ideas about nature, or about the categories of ‘human’ and ‘natural’, shape non-human lives and the struggles that emerge between people for justice and livelihood. Political ecologists have argued repeatedly that questions of nature are always and everywhere political.
HS: Right from the beginning, a major emphasis in your work has been around the politics of water in Africa. How did you get interested in that, and how has your work and emphasis in this area evolved over time?
BA: I became interested in the politics of water during my PhD, which was on the downstream impacts of a dam on the Sokoto River in northern Nigeria. My original plan had been to look at impacts on natural ecosystems, but the floodplain of the Sokoto was no ‘wilderness’ in need of conservation. It was densely settled by farming communities, intensively cultivated and seasonally grazed. So, whereas I had imagined myself working as an ecologist, I quickly had to retrain as a social scientist.
The downstream impact of dams are often underestimated by dam planners, or ignored altogether. A big reason for this is that the impacts are complex and hard to understand. They require an understanding of hydrology (rainfall, runoff, the extent and duration of flooding), soils and crop ecology (what you can grow on a floodplain depends on sediment, topography and flooding, and these can change over very short distances), and of the people who use floodplain land (in the case of the Sokoto, this included seasonal grazing by Fulani cattle keepers, as well as resident Hausa farmers). The dominant discipline involved in dam planning is engineering, and even today engineers are not trained to have this breadth of insight. It is also a problem that the impacts of a dam can be felt many miles downstream, often in remote areas. Project planning contracts rarely mandate surveys in these areas: they are out of sight and out of mind.
In the case of the Sokoto, all the water in the river arrived during the short rainy season (June-August). The Bakolori dam was designed to hold this water back for irrigation in the long dry season that followed. The dam therefore delayed and lowered downstream peak floods, leaving both less water overall for downstream farmers, and making its arrival unpredictable in timing. This had a significant negative impact on rice farming and shadoof irrigation from shallow groundwater.
Meanwhile the dam had a range of other social impacts. The people living in the upstream floodplain, whose homes and land were flooded by the reservoir, were resettled, and promised irrigation water once the project was finished. The communities in the irrigation area itself, below the dam, had their land bulldozed as irrigation canals were put in, but had to wait until the dam and supply canal were finished before getting it back, or receiving water and starting to farm again. It was a long, hungry wait, and there were angry blockades of the dam inprotest and an undocumented number of protestors were killed.
Nor were these negative impacts offset by economic benefits. The formal irrigation scheme that the dam was built to supply (like otherlarge scale irrigation schemes developed in the1970s and 1980s in Africa) proved uneconomic, offering lower yields and rates of return than had optimistically been promised in the cost-benefit analysis of the dam planners.
The most important thing that I learned about the politics of water development projects through this experience is that the key problem is not (usually) any failure of technical competence. The Bakolori Dam was technically sound, well-built, and completed more or less on time and on budget. But it was a well-built dam to do the wrong things. The dam was the result of a flawed process of river basin planning that saw the drought of the arid north of Nigeria as a problem that needed a sweeping solution. After a decade of drought in the North, dams and irrigation schemes looked like a perfect development solution, a one-shot miracle of modernity that would transform the country. Dams are expensive and complicated projects to build, but in the 1970s and 1980s, the federal government was looking for ways to invest spiralling oil revenues. Moreover there were rich pickings, both legal and illegal, from contracts to design and build them.
After my PhD, I worked for an engineering company on a different dam project as a resettlement planner, seeing from the inside how near-impossible it was to do anything worthwhile once a project has begun. Then I moved to a lecturing job in geography, and did research for a number of years on smaller-scale farmer-managed irrigation schemes, in the wetlands of northern Nigeria, in Kenya and Tanzania. I was looking for examples of development projects that people planned and implemented themselves, in the hope that there might be an alternative model for water resource development. I hoped that small would be beautiful.
In 1992 I pulled my thinking together in the bookWasting the Rain. This had a passionate but (in retrospect) a rather naïve argument, contrasting the imposition of development from above in large scale water projects with the ingenuity of smallholder farmers to derive livelihoods sustained by the seasonal dynamics of rain and river. Floodplain people across Africa do not build dams (at least, not large concrete ones), but they build adaptively on the opportunities offered by river, soils and rain. Dam project designers promise economic ‘development’, and in its name they completely restructure the landscape to fit their blueprint. They try to lock future development into a straightjacket of concrete, and their plans too often do not work.
Sadly, not much has changed. The World Commission on Dams, which published its report,Dams and Development in 2000, set out an approach to dam planning that could have done away with unexpected negative social and environmental impacts. But it did not find favour with government planners or dam builders, and after a short lull, dam planning and construction surged across the developing world.
The news is not all bad. The negative impacts of dams are more widely recognised, and there are new frameworks to guide dam developers, such as the Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol. There is a growing awareness of the issue of risk to those providing capital for dams.
Yet dams are still controversial, and often have significant negative impacts, especially on floodplain people. People (and natures) are treated as eggs that must be broken to make the omelette of development. Dam planners act as if the ideas and wishes of those affected by dams were irrelevant to investment decisions, believing that their needs and interests can and should be traded off against national needs, or that somehow they will benefit from national economic growth. To those planning dams, it seems that the people they affect only become important when they have to be persuaded to move quietly off their land. Their dissatisfaction, and opposition, is treated simply as a project risk that needs to be managed. Compensation for losses is treated as a costly, necessary evil, to be minimized to protect the positive balance of the cost-benefit analysis.
HS: Would a political ecologist also argue that questions of nature are always and everywhere about capitalism?
BA: Well, certainly the grip of capitalism on nature has been a key focus in political ecology. Historically, capitalism’s search for cheap material and labour, its drive to open up and transform markets, has had radical impacts. Nature has been reshaped at every scale from the global to the sub-cellular, from the release of greenhouse gases to the manipulation and patenting of crop genomes. Indeed, with private sector space exploration we might need to start wondering how capitalism will change inter-planetary natures.
So, yes, nature is everywhere entrained by the juggernaut of capitalism: crushed, transformed, made to flourish or to die. But the scale of that transformation varies from place to place. In the Southern Ocean we might see a relatively discrete range of impacts, such as the unsustainable killing of seals, whales, fish and krill, and of course, anthropogenic climate change. Urbanised or farmed landscapes might reveal more profound human transformations of nature over long timeframes, and more diverse entanglement between capitalism and nature. To me, it is the complexity of the engagements between human societies and nature (the living and non-living more-than-human world) that is so interesting about political ecology.
But not all the politics around nature is necessarily the direct outcome of the workings of capital. You can find complex arguments about access to nature at a local scale, where the broader effects of global capitalism are no more than a distant buzz. There can be significant conflicts between men and women about water rights in locally-managed irrigation systems, between neighbours in reef fisheries, or between local dog walkers and conservation managers in popular nature reserves. Like larger conflicts, these can also range from the material to the conceptual, from disagreement about where people can go and what they can do, to disagreements about what ‘nature’ is and how it works. ‘Is this a hunting ground, a delicate ecosystem or a ‘natural place’?’ Ways of framing nature code directly into conflict.
HS: If questions around nature and the environment are always political, what about the sciences that address these questions, for example Conservation Biology? I ask this because science is viewed as impartial or neutral, and therefore one would think that conservation decisions based on scientific evidence will be apolitical.
BA: Well, Conservation Biology is interesting because it makes a foundational claim that it is (and should be) ‘mission-driven’. To me, this is inherently political—evidently, not everyone will agree with the conservation ‘mission’. The discipline’s ideological heart creates an inevitable politics as conservationists engage with others. I see nothing wrong with that.
In science, a huge amount of effort goes into making sure that experiments are free from bias. But most science takes place far from the classic environment of the laboratory, and in interdisciplinary fields like conservation, a lot of tricky issues can arise. For example, there is a politics to choosing which questions get asked, and to deciding how they are framed.
The identity of the people doing research is another issue to think about. The conservation literature is still dominated by white men working in universities in the Global North. This kind of narrow social base can lead to narrowly framed questions. In medicine, it is recognised that the assumption that all people are the same can lead to failure to recognise that diseases or treatments can affect women differently from men, or people of colour differently from white people. In conservation, too, the way research questions are framed may make the ‘scientific facts’ misleading. So, for example, if you are interested in the impacts of illegal hunting on declining species, you might ask whether illegal hunting is a significant driver of population decline, whether game guards extort money from rural households, or whether children in hunting households suffer protein deficiency. It is quite possible that the answer to all these questions might be yes. So the challenge is to decide which question to ask. The question you choose will shape how the ‘conservation problem’ is defined, and in turn what might be done to address it: is the solution poverty alleviation or more guns?
The issue of how research questions are framed is particularly important when conservation biologists study social issues. There is a lot of great conservation social science being done these days, but not everybody gets it right. It is only too easy to build questions that reflect simplistic ideas about how societies work, for example assuming that ‘cultures’ or ‘communities’ are standardised and unchanging things: bias can creep in if research questions are badly framed.
I worry sometimes about the enthusiasm of conservation biologists for ‘speed-feeding’ their work into policy. This is often seen as an attempt to avoid ‘politics’, as if politics were simply a way of wasting time. But by trying to avoid debate, scientists are in fact being deliberately political—bypassing wider interrogation of results, for example by people who might be affected. Unfortunately, the application of scientific findings is unavoidably political. The messiness of the policy processes can be very frustrating for scientists, but wide debate allows the answers to poorly framed questions to be seen for what they are, and it allows some kind of agreement to be reached on what should be done. Politics is fundamental to human freedoms.
So, yes, science is really important in conservation, but it is definitely not apolitical.
HS: This interview is being published in Current Conservation, a magazine that aims to “tell stories from the field of conservation in a manner that engages both scientific and non-scientific audiences”. As a political ecologist, what might be the questions that come to your mind in evaluating the influence of conservation magazines, like Current Conservation, that aim to reach a non-scientific audience?
BA: Magazines like Current Conservation have excellent coverage of conservation issues. The quality of photography is extraordinary, and there is some great writing. The ease of electronic communication also makes it more possible (in theory at least) to publish voices ‘from the ground’, rather than sticking to the old ‘explorer mode’, where a metropolitan writer (classically a white journalist) travels to an exotic place to view wildlife. I suppose that, as a political ecologist, I am more interested in the possibility of articles that go beyond the celebration of charismatic species and places, and beyond simplistic narratives of threat and protection. I value writing that is truly ecological—that looks beyond cute quadrupeds to describe less obvious species (termites? fungi? grasses? the microbiome?) and the complex connectivities among them. I also think that the way conservation stories include people as part of the ecological whole is really important. So much conservation involves making trade-offs between conservation and people. Indeed, all too often, conservation imposes significant social and economic costs on somebody, usually people who are poor and lack political voice. And to many people, nature is not always lovely—lions may look great if you are a tourist, but are bad news if your children are herding your livestock. So the diversity of relations between humans and other species (love, hate, collaboration, dependence, fear) is really important, as is the political question of the negative impacts that conservation may have (and how these might be dealt with).
Above all, I think, it is important for writing about nature to talk about the real world and not some imaginary Edenic version of it. No part of planet earth is wholly ‘pristine’ (if only because of climate change), and writing about ‘precious places’ or ‘the wonders of nature’ potentially distracts attention from the actual scale of human transformation of nature. So, for me, a critical challenge for biodiversity conservation writing is to explain the unsustainability of human society (at all scales from the rural hamlet to the mega city, and from a shack to a millionaire’s pad).
Capitalism, and its patterns of production and consumption, are the fundamental drivers of global biodiversity loss. Mundane questions of consumption are therefore important conservation issues whether palm oil or soya in the cooking pot, kerosene powering the ecotourist’s jet, mined rare earths in phones, or the burgeoning ‘internet of things’.
So it is really important for conservation writing to look beyond the surviving wonders of nature, to explore and explain the world we are creating—to look at biodiversity in industrial farming landscapes, in polluted and drying rivers and the sterile concrete and grass parks of cities. Here, too—in the environments where the majority of humans live—there is nature. Here too, conservationists work their magic to allow nature to come back and thrive. There are lots of exciting stories beyond threatened species and wild places.
Watching birds is an intensely absorbing and ancient activity. For instance, the tombs of the pharaohs of Egypt feature numerous paintings that could only have been painted by an earnest birder. Consider the chapel of Queen Itet: it is famous for its beautiful mural of three species collectively dubbed the ‘Meidum geese’. The mural dates back to 2575–2551 BC. Nevertheless, it is evident that some ancient artist clearly paid close attention to geese because the details are so accurate that contemporary scientists have been able to identify two out of the three species in the mural. One is the greylag goose Anser anser and the other is the greater white-fronted goose Anser albifrons. (The third does not match any species currently known to science and might well be a long-extinct one.)
In general, there were three common reasons why people watched birds earlier: to lure them into the cooking pot, to tame and add them to menageries, or to shoot and display them in personal or museum collections.
This changed in the 1600s due to the collaborative work of a pair of classmates from Cambridge—Francis Willughby and his mentor, John Ray. They built up an extensive collection of specimens, along with meticulous anatomical and field-based observations. After the former’s untimely death, Ray published their findings in 1678 under the generous title The ornithology of Francis Willughby of Middleton. The book was a path-breaking one because it presented systematic species descriptions. In addition, it contained a detailed classification system that laid the foundations of ornithology and inspired later scientists such as Georges Cuvier and Carl Linnaeus.
But birding as we know it today, i.e. observing birds in their natural habitat for recreational or scientific reasons, did not become a popular activity until the 1900s. In the United Kingdom, one of the pioneers of birding (I will resist early bird puns) was Harry Witherby, who from 1897 onwards, wrote a column titled ‘British Ornithological Notes’ for a magazine called Knowledge. Subsequently, in 1907, Witherby launched British Birds—an illustrated monthly journal that continues to be in print. He also went on to co-author The Handbook of British Birds in 1938, which enabled many a citizen to become an active observer of birds. Across the pond, in the United States, Edmund Selous is credited with having a similar impact with his book Bird Watching, which was published in 1901.
Selous wrote, “… the pleasure that belongs to observation and inference is, really, far greater than that which attends any kind of skill or dexterity, even when death and pain add their zest to the latter. […] Let anyone who has an eye and a brain (especially the latter), lay down the gun and take up the glasses for a week, a day, even for an hour, if he is lucky, and he will never wish to change back again.”
One could say that in this book, he made an eloquent case for watching birds and a sarcastic one for hunting them. (And therefore, managed to kill two birds with one stone?)
In the intervening decades, numerous others have written about birding, both as a simple hobby as well as a form of knowledge production that is enabled by certain configurations of class, gender, nationality, etc. For example, in Birders of Africa: History of a Network, Nancy Jacobs describes the colonial connections that enabled European ornithologists to take credit for ‘scientific documentation’ of birdlife, while the African guides and hunters on whose knowledge they heavily depended, often remained on the periphery as nameless ‘local informants’. However, one of the most hard-hitting accounts of how racial inequalities percolate birding is described in a short piece by Drew Lanham titled ‘9 rules for the black birdwatcher’. For instance, his rule number three is a terse “Don’t bird in a hoodie. Ever.”
If birding can provide such rich insights on social contestations of different periods, could fiction writers be far behind? There is, of course, Ian Fleming who famously named his Agent 007 after an ornithologist, James Bond, who studied Caribbean birds. Another old yet popular book is Carl Hiaasen’s Hoot, which describes the efforts of two middle schoolers who set out to save a colony of burrowing owls from a development project (their dedication to birds can be judged from the fact that the said project was the construction of a pancake house). But more recently, I came across a series by Steve Burrows which features a reclusive Canadian who is both a brilliant detective and birder. In the first novel, called A Siege of Bitterns, the clue that sets the detective on the right track is an apparent sighting of an American bittern in the marshes of Norfolk (UK). And lest you think this is a vagrant number, let me assure you that ornithological details continue to play a key role in the rest of this series (and contribute to beguiling titles such as A Foreboding of Petrels). The plots are also garnished with references to windmill farms, environmental activism, indigenous territories, carbon sequestration, eco-tourism, and all the other vectors that make conservation such a great pot-boiler of a topic.
The next book on my reading list is Stephen Alter’s Birdwatching, which despite the title is a work of fiction—the central figure is an American ornithologist who becomes a CIA agent and prowls along the Himalayas, collecting notes on birds and military intelligence (shades of Dillon Ripley spring to mind). However, I must admit the poets as always, capture the fascination and intensity of birding the best: “Among twenty snowy mountains,/The only moving thing/Was the eye of the blackbird.”
Further Reading
Birkhead, T. 2022. Birds and us: A 12,000-year history from cave art to conservation. USA: Princeton University Press.
Lanham, D. 2013. 9 rules for the black birdwatcher. Orion Magazine. https://orionmagazine.org/article/9- rules-for-the-black-birdwatcher/. Accessed on January 15, 2023.
Stevens, W. 1954. Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird. https://poets.org/poem/thirteen-ways-looking-blackbird. Accessed on January 15, 2023.
Imagine you live in a simple mud house you built with your family in a beautiful landscape that provides you with all that you need to live well. You have a small herd of livestock that you move freely depending on the season, from which you make your living. You have a few chickens that run around the yard and a small dog that plays with your children and guards the house. You have a good relationship with your community and you collectively decide grazing arrangements and manage your livestock in ways that do not deplete pasture. You lead a calm life, develop good kinship relationships with the people that live next to you and take from the land what you need to survive, while taking care of it.
One day, somebody from far away comes to tell you that you have to move from the place you have known your whole life and where you see yourself getting older. Leaving your home is mandatory, even though it is your homeland and you do not know anything else, you do not have the right to decide. They blame you for not taking good care of the wildlife that you and your ancestors have convivially shared the landscape with. They tell you that without you and your neighbours, wildlife will be better off. All your past and present connections to the land, the nature and the people are lost and they order you to reinvent a life somewhere else that you had never imagined living. If you reject this, you will be violently evicted, the government security forces will burn your house and they will threaten your life.
That was the story of Ole Sopia, a Tanzanian Maasai from Ololosokwan village near the world famous Serengeti National Park. His family along with hundreds of other families were evicted from their land by the British colonial administration in the 1950s. Six decades later, the area where Ole Sopia and his community lived is now designated as an important wildlife corridor and dispersal area of the national park. Despite ongoing violence by the Tanzanian security forces, his community continued to resist forced eviction. In August 2017, Ole Sopia was shot, his house set ablaze, and his livestock confiscated and publicly auctioned because of his relentless fight for access to their ancestral land and livelihood and for justice for pastoralists.
This was not an isolated case, there are plenty of cases of community leaders and environmental defenders being attacked, murdered and subjected to different forms of violence to protect their land. Many of these cases are consequences of global conservation initiatives that, perhaps well-intended, in reality do not contribute to further biodiversity conservation or prevent environmental degradation, but instead accumulate heavy violence and gross violations of human rights.
Why would untouched protected areas actually worsen environmental degradation, when their aim is to stop the harm? The answer lies in a kind of created separation that wedges human beings from their connection to and stewardship of a place. Conservation practice has been founded on a Eurocentric idea called ‘Cartesian nature-culture dualism’, which separated humans from the rest of nature and suggested that in order to conserve nature, we need to remove people from it. What we are not told is that there is a particular nature that gets to be conserved and there is a particular group of people that gets removed. This nature is normally located in tropical, biodiversity-rich regions and where poor, marginal and racialised communities live. These places are normally located in sub-Saharan Africa, indigenous US or Canada, the Amazon, and much of South and Southeast Asia.
For years, academics, policymakers and NGOs have labelled these communities as the drivers of environmental damage, when as a matter of fact, more and more evidence points to their role in maintaining biodiversity and nature in general. More often than not, access to land set aside for conservation is given to multinational corporations and local elites who establish high-end tourism businesses. In the process, communities that have historically lived in and protected the environment, have been dispossessed from their lands to create protected areas. This has been an ill-conceived policy idea that remains today.
The 30 by 30 conservation initiative
At the COP15 Biodiversity Conference held in Montreal, Canada, in December 2022, world governments reached an agreement to protect 30 percent of Earth’s lands, oceans, coastal areas and inland waters by 2030. This so-called 30×30 agreement is hailed as historic and is argued to secure the future of the planet’s living beings. This is not the first time that global bodies have put their conservation hopes in the creation of protected areas. The size of untouched or restricted-use conservation areas has significantly increased over the last several decades—from two percent in the early 1960s to around 17 percent today. Yet, this has been proven to fail in halting biodiversity decline.
What the agreement does not address is the ways that the expansion of protected areas to cover 30 percent of the earth’s surface will play out in practice. For the last several decades, human populations in biodiversity-rich parts of the world have paid a heavy price due to the expansion of certain forms of protected area that either led to extreme violence and forced displacements, or placed increasing restrictions on their livelihood practices. In Tanzania, where almost 40 percent of land is under some form of protection, government security forces continue to militarise conservation and forcefully evict, torture and abuse people living in areas that conservation experts and organisations suggest should be free of people in order to protect wildlife.
Another important feature of recent conservation initiatives that prioritise expansion of biodiversity spaces has been the call for increased involvement of the private sector, irrespective of their background and intentions. For example, multinational oil companies such as Shell, ExxonMobil, among others historically responsible for enormous environmental damage, have recently mobilised several millions of dollars in proposals for conservation around Nature Positive or nature-based solutions to offset the continuation of their carbon-intensive business as usual. Neither conservation organisations nor governments seem to strongly question the emergence of this private funding. The more concerning fact is that it is becoming quite common to see many conservation organisations working in close collaboration with multinational mining and fossil fuel corporations. But, can we tell whether they actually contribute to the solutions for biodiversity loss or climate change they have facilitated (if not caused) in the first place?
The 30×30 initiative reinforces mainstream efforts that blind us to work in dismantling the real causes of biodiversity loss: intensive industrial farming and large-scale extractive sectors. In other words, biodiversity loss is a consequence of greedy economic marginalisation and capital accumulation. That is why it is hard to celebrate supposed achievements that have already proven to create no meaningful change and even worse, distract us from fruitful transformative work that revolves around imposing structural limits to destructive economic growth. Other policymakers and actors would argue differently as they seem to benefit from the results. Perhaps they have major wins to celebrate as many corporations will be able to offset their environmental damages by financing the conservation of landscape patches. The solution is to be found somewhere else.
Ours is not an anti-conservation argument. There are countless areas inhabited and managed by self-governed indigenous peoples. Some communities in the Amazon, for example, use non-market oriented conservation schemes to protect their land against extractive activities. It is therefore necessary to study each policy initiative with utmost attention and each context with extreme care for the social implications of such policies for conservation.
How can political ecology contribute to conservation practice?
The contentious nature of such a global decision for conservation makes it important to focus on who decides certain actions over others or what type of social implications the 30×30 initiative or any other conservation initiatives have. Political ecology does precisely that—it helps us analyse the uneven power relations that are not necessarily proximal to the ecological symptoms, but ultimately create the ecological crises. This fundamentally helps us to challenge dominant narratives about the causes of environmental damage that tend to blame people like Ole Sopia. A political ecology lens enables us to question mainstream narratives that justify and enable land dispossession from communities to benefit a wealthy few.
For anybody that is interested in deeply thinking about the causes and solutions to the ecological crises today or in thinking about any conservation effort, the decision needs to be accompanied by a set of key questions such as: Which natures are being protected and which ones are discarded? Who can access and make decisions relating to nature? Whose ideas are recognised, who decides when, where and how, and who gets ignored? How do the affected populations put their lives, experiences, and knowledge at stake because of externally designed solutions? How are claims for environmental justice and social marginalisation articulated? And overall, who are the winners and who are the losers of any decision? These are questions political ecology offers as a way to clear the air between solutions that further social and ecological harm to people in nature and those that prioritise justice, self-determination and reparative relationships with nature.
Further Reading
Adams, W. 2017. Sleeping with the enemy? Biodiversity conservation, corporations and the green economy. Journal of political ecology 24: 243–257.
Estrada, A., P. A. Garber, S. Gouveia, Á. Fernández-Llamazares, F. Ascensão, A. Fuentes, S. T. Garnett et al. 2022. Global importance of Indigenous Peoples, their lands, and knowledge systems for saving the world’s primates from extinction. Science advances 8(32):eabn2927. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn2927
Given biodiversity does not abide by borders between countries, conservation efforts have built an international system for cooperation across political jurisdictions all over the world. Such a system has been emerging since at least the early 1900s, and while it has not been sufficient to avert biodiversity loss, it has slowed it down. Along these lines, as conservationists and researchers, we are constantly following the negotiations of international agreements, such as COP15 at which the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was approved. However, what if we stop for a second to think that international cooperation is fragile and sometimes can go backwards?
With a few exceptions, world politics has been in a general trajectory of increased cooperation since WWII, particularly with the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. This process entailed the creation of the United Nations and other intergovernmental platforms that provided the mechanisms for the development of some important international biodiversity conservation agreements, such as the Convention on Migratory Species. Furthermore, the end of the Cold War meant that some ecosystems could finally be integrated across political borders, as in the case of the Arctic through the Arctic Council and its subsidiary biodiversity working group, known as Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF).
More recently, however, the Russian invasion of Ukraine launched in 2022 has tripped conservation efforts underpinned by international cooperation, with global implications. First, because Russia harbours biodiversity with global significance, and second, because Russia plays a key role in the international system. For instance, Russia provides breeding areas for over 500 species of migratory birds, travelling from as far as South America, and holds the largest extension of forest of any country. As far as international cooperation goes, Russia is among the countries that has signed the most international environmental agreements. Hence, the war at Russian hands has affected conservation efforts by: (i) isolating Russia from the international system, (ii) halting and delaying cooperation, and (iii) changing policy priorities.
Spoon-billed sandpiper aviary
The isolation of Russia from the international system has already impacted conservation efforts within Russia, with spillover effects. For instance, the Arctic Council, which brings together the eight Arctic Countries and their indigenous peoples, stopped all activities and meetings soon after the war broke. Subsequently, the Council has planned to resume some activities with the exclusion of Russia. This decision has affected the Arctic Migratory Bird Initiative, a project under CAFF focussed on migratory bird conservation. Furthermore, the recovery efforts of the threatened spoon-billed sandpiper, which migrates between Russia and Southeast Asia, have been affected, as the ‘head start’ breeding program in the Arctic has been halted. This program relies on international assistance that has now been suspended due to Russia’s disconnection from the SWIFT interbank system, as well as due to travel restrictions impeding the mobility of collaborators from abroad.
As Russia plays a key role in some international cooperation processes, important conservation initiatives have been delayed and halted. The conservation of habitats for migratory birds in East Asia has recently advanced through the inscription of coastal wetlands under the World Heritage Convention. However, additional efforts to expand habitat protection under this convention in this very region have been delayed because of the war. Russia was the Chair of the committee that oversees the acceptance of new sites at the time of the invasion, which resulted in a boycott by other Convention parties, who refused to operate either in Russia or under Russia’s leadership. Moreover, the conservation of migratory animals is underpinned by detailed ecological knowledge of their movements, so that habitats can be secured. The ICARUS Initiative is a large partnership that has turbocharged our understanding of animal movements, but its reliance on Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, brought it to a halt as Roscosmos stopped data sharing soon after the invasion started.
The war has also given prevalence to policy issues that are more pressing for governments than biodiversity conservation, such as food security. For instance, in the wake of food shortages in global markets, to which the invasion of Ukraine has been a contributing factor, the European Union has considered rolling back biodiversity-friendly farming policy to increase yields.
The war, being first and foremost a human tragedy, is a rapidly changing situation with no end in sight. Decades of work in diplomacy for biodiversity conservation are now at a crossroads with a country that holds globally important biodiversity and has a key role in international cooperation. For now, conservationists should hold the fort by keeping momentum on the importance of international cooperation in the rest of the world, even as relationships with Russia erode, while hoping for a Ukraine that is at peace and free.
Further reading
Gallo-Cajiao, E., Dolšak, N., A. Prakash, T. Mundkur, P. G. Harris, R. B. Mitchell, N. Davidson et al. 2023. Implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the governance of biodiversity conservation. Frontiers in conservation science. DOI: 10.3389/fcosc.2023.989019.
Change was already taking hold of the tundra. Lichens, moss, and grasses were breaking through from underneath a thick white blanket. The new growth forming patches of earthly colour across the stark landscape. New life, fresh and full of hope, unlike his own. Leaving the warmth of the timber research cabin, Osvald Mikhailo began the short trek across the snow towards the stand of dwarf willow. Nothing grows tall on the tundra, not even trees. It’s only a 100-metre walk, but the physical cost of Arctic life is high. The ache of cold air drawn in with every breath reminded Osvald that his body was not what it was when he took up this position thirty years earlier. He’d been full of hope and ambition back then—a young graduate presented with the opportunity of a lifetime. A remote research posting to study the most enigmatic owl in the world, Bubo scandiacus, the snowy owl.
He knew more about the snowy owl and this harsh habitat than any other scientist in the world. Moments of wonder blurred across decades of time and space. A snowy owl attacking a pair of Arctic wolves, a 10-foot polar bear lopping gently by, and countless fledglings barely a month old taking flight for the first time. Yet, a deep dissatisfaction had set in. This would be his last trek across the tundra. It was time to say goodbye.
Reaching the dwarfed forest stand, Osvald crawls into the hide. Through his binoculars he watches the familiar scene. There she sits ethereal and luminous guarding her precious clutch of eggs. She’s pressed firmly into a depression she scraped into the wind- swept rise only weeks earlier. Her mate flies close to the ground, gliding silently until he reaches the nest. Stopping in front of her, the male owl bows and offers his catch. With a slight head bob, she accepts the lifeless brown lemming and takes it in her beak. Care and nourishment, the drivers of all life. Unfolding his broad wings, he lifts gently back into the breeze. Last season the same pair had raised and fledged five chicks. Osvald wouldn’t see this clutch hatch; that privilege would be passed on to his replacement, who was probably, Osvald thought, travelling north on a light plane from Fort Yukon right now.
He wished he could thank the owl and the generations before her for all that they had given him. But new opportunities and a life less remote were all he’d been able to think of these past months. Noting the date and time against her leg band number on his data sheet, Osvald adds a description, male provides lemming for nesting female. Placing the sheet back inside his dry pack, Osvald lifts the binocs to his face. She swivels her head and squints toward the hide. She blinks, momentarily flashing a pair of golden eyes shining across the white space between them. Standing, Osvald turns away from her for the last time and trudges slowly back toward the cabin.
No, this does not refer to a house of sleep-deprived politicians at an all-night parliamentary debate. This is what a group of owls is called.
The English language has some wild and wonderful names to describe groups of animals. We use these words, referred to as collective nouns, when we talk about a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep. In school, we may be given exercises where we have to match or fill in the blanks: a____of lions, a____of fish, or a____of wolves*.
These are only a small taste of the descriptive terms used to describe groups of different kinds, the history of which can be traced back to the Middle Ages in England. The earliest known collection of terms of collective nouns, or ‘venery’ (an archaic term for ‘hunting’), is in the Book of Saint Albans, a kind of handbook for hunters first published in1486.
Included among chapters was a list of the Compaynys of Beestys and Fowlys, where many of these common terms made their first appearances—including pride of lions, flock of sheep, and herd of deer.
I have always been intrigued and fascinated by these collective nouns. I think that a gaggle of geese sounds just so appropriate, as does an army of ants (especially having once been literally attacked and badly bitten by a marching regiment of army ants).
Here are some delightful feathery ones! Imagine a parliament of owls which includes members from the following:
A murder of crows, a convocation of eagles, a deceit of lapwings, a ballet of swans, a siege of cranes, a conspiracy of ravens, a company of parrots, a murmuration of starlings, and a flamboyance of flamingos!
And what about our four-legged friends? Here are some quirky ones!
In the biblical story of Noah and the Ark, when Noah invited representatives of all animals onto his ark, he had to select a pair each from: an ambush of tigers, an array of hedgehogs, a bloat of hippos, a crash of rhinos, a rumpus of baboons, a shrewdness of apes, a singular of boar, a skulk of foxes, a sleuth of bears and a mob of kangaroos!
Not to mention the hoppers and slitherers from a colony of frogs, a knot of toads, a quiver of cobras, a bask of crocodiles, and even a culture of bacteria!
While serious scientists may not be amused at the attribution of human traits to describe animals, discovering new terms can be great fun for language lovers.
Even more fun is trying to coin one’s own terms! Here are some that I thought of: a cacophony of koels, a preening of peacocks, a menace of mosquitoes, and a buzzload of bumblebees!
* Answers: a pride of lions; a school of fish; a pack of wolves.
Why don’t you try your hand at coining some appropriate, and fun, words to describe groups of creatures that hop, skip, jump, fly, creep, crawl and more! Write to us at editor.ccmagazine@gmail.com and we will try to put it up on our social media channels!
How I miss you! That gust of wind came so suddenly I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye properly. Poof! And I was gone, blown away from the fluffy sphere of seeds we were once part of. I know I should be excited, but right now, I’m just homesick.
Home wasn’t always pleasant, it’s true. It was scary when the larvae would land on our leaves, and people would pick up our friends to blow a wish. I wonder why they do that—it’s not like we have any power over their wishes.
But I guess no one told them that. I remember hearing that once upon a time, they used to love us for all the things we helped them with. They ate us, used us for medicine, and then there’s the wish thing I was talking about.
Some people still eat us, but a lot of others don’t seem to like us very much. Not even just for food, but in general, it seems like they’re trying to get rid of us. I wonder why. Not that I particularly like the idea of being picked and eaten. But at least if they ate us, they wouldn’t want to get rid of us, the way so many people want to do now.
Did you know we were brought over to the Americas on purpose? Someone crossed all of the Atlantic Ocean with us, just to make sure we would be there too. And now they spray those awful chemicals all over their lawns, just to make them look greener, without thinking that those same chemicals are bad for everyone else, too. Don’t they know we’re good for the soil? That our roots bring up nutrients from the soil so other plants can use them too?
But I’m sorry for the tangent. You know how I get when I start talking about a subject I care about. Where was I? Oh right, I was being nostalgic.
I’m going to describe what our home looked like; if I write it down, maybe I’ll remember it for longer. It was a nice little patch of grass, somewhere in some city. It’s funny, I never bothered to learn its name. I guess it wasn’t that important. In a garden somewhere, maybe? Or a park? I just remember there being some big trees nearby. I hope they’re doing well.
And the plant we grew up on—aside from you, that’s what I miss the most. The more I think of her, the more nostalgic I become. It’s amazing, all the things she did. All the roots she grew (and they were long, too), the leaves that formed a little rose at the base of her stems. Because she didn’t just grow one, but two! Imagine the energy that must have taken. Two full flowering stems at the same time. So many of us little florets, forming the two flowers that (I hope) were her pride and joy. And both flowers supported by just a little hollow stem—so easily broken, and yet they stayed strong the whole time. I hope it was worth it. But then (without sounding too self-important), I suppose that without the flowers, she wouldn’t have been able to reproduce. That’s something to think about, I guess, when I’m feeling bad. Even this far away from her, we’re still helping.
When I think of the little florets we once were, yellow and bright and young, tears almost spring to my eyes (or they would, if I had any). We lived so happily, photosynthesising and chatting away. Remember the butterflies that would come for the nectar? It tickled so much when they took it that we would close up in the afternoon, just in case they came back. But they never did. I think they were on to us.
But time passes, as all things must. I remember being terrified of leaving home. I didn’t want to turn into a seed, I didn’t want to grow the beak and the pappus that allowed us to drift through the sky, I didn’t want to leave all that I had ever known. And I know, we only really lived as florets for a few days. But I don’t remember anything from before that, so those few days were my entire life. I bet you were scared too, no matter how brave you acted. But I really should thank you for that—if you had seemed as scared as me, I don’t know how well I would have handled this transition.
Not that I had much of a choice. The head of the flower, the part that held us all together, really, dried; the yellow petals dried; all that was left was us little achenes, the little fruits that were supposed to carry on our family thanks to the single seed we carried with us. Oh, how I trembled in those days—with every breeze I was convinced I’d be blown away. And then one day I was.
But I have to say, now that it’s happened, I’m quite happy about it. The voyage was exciting! I didn’t know where I was, or where I was going, but it was all new, all things I had never seen before. You know, I knew what spiderwebs were, and I had alwaysadmired how pretty they were, dewdrops glinting in the early morning sunlight. But I had never seen them close up, and on my journey I nearly flew into at least three. The spiders weren’t too happy, but I apologised and hopefully they’ll get over it. And there were so many houses, and people, and animals, and rocks and leaves and trees and flowers and so many more things that I’ve since forgotten! And I never would have seen them if it hadn’t been for thatparticularly strong gust of wind that separated us.
I drifted through the air like this for a long time. I’m not sure if it was hours, or days—after a while you stop keeping track. At least I did—was it the same for you? But eventually I landed on a little patch of grass, somewhere by a fountain. It’s not that different from where we grew up, actually, but it still feels so new. As soon as it rains a little I think I’ll send down a few roots. It’ll feel more like home, then.
What about you? Where did you end up? Are you still on our mother plant, or have you found your own way? I thought I saw you get blown away at the same time I did, but maybe I was wrong. Write back to me whenever you get a chance; I’ll let all the bees know where I am, so you can ask them for the address. In the meantime, I hope you’re doing well. It’s different now, with everything that’s happened to us, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing.
Have you ever seen a snake while you were out walking? Or maybe at the zoo? How did it make you feel? If you were scared, you’re not alone! Many people are convinced that they were born afraid of snakes. However, some scientists don’t believe that is the case—they think that we may learn to fear snakes when we are young partly because we are so good at detecting them. Read on to find out more!
Why might we fear snakes?
Everyone knows what a snake looks like: long, scaly body with no arms or legs, a distinct and sometimes pointy head. Our brains can pick out the long, sleek shape of a snake quicker than it can detect the shape of a mouse or a grasshopper because we know that the snake is a bigger threat. Think about a time where you may have mistaken a rope or stick for a snake and spooked yourself! This happens because we are really good at picking out shapes that could be harmful to us.
Our brains are masters of recognition. We can see shapes in clouds, words in word searches, and even faces in household objects! So it comes as no surprise that we can quickly recognise snakes and their movement. Long ago, our ancestors had to live beside snakes every day. Snakes can be dangerous if they are frightened, and venomous snakes posed a big problem for the first humans. The brain figured out a way to keep us safe from snakes by learning how to recognise their shape and the way they move, faster than we identify other animals and movements. This quick perception made us more prepared to learn to fear snakes.
But are humans scared of snakes from the time we are born? It turns out that babies are not scared of snakes, but they are very good at identifying them quickly and focusing on them. Researchers showed babies under six months old pictures of different animals and plants and noted their reactions. Though the babies showed increased focus and heightened awareness when viewing the snake picture, they did not seem afraid of the photo until they were shown a picture of a scared adult face next to it. This could mean that the babies only acted afraid of the snake when they saw another person who was scared. We can learn to be afraid of things like snakes and spiders by watching how other people react to them, or by having a negative experience with these animals.
We might also confuse being startled with being afraid. When you are startled by something, like when your friend jumps out from behind a door, you aren’t afraid of them—you’re just spooked for a second! That is similar to the way we feel when we first see a snake because we are quick to detect them. We jump because we see something that we weren’t expecting to, and we need to be prepared to protect ourselves. When we realise what spooked us, we either relax if it is something silly, or feel fear if it is something that we think could hurt us. The fear we feel after detecting a snake could be a reaction that we learned. Scientists think we might fear snakes partly because of how they are portrayed on TV or in books and magazines. Snakes are often “vilified”, which means that people make them seem scarier and meaner than they actually are.
Remember what I mentioned earlier about our brains being good at recognising snakes? This trait makes our brains more prepared to be afraid of snakes. We make the connections in our mind that make us relate how quickly we react to snakes with the possible danger they present. We are more likely to learn to be scared of things that can hurt us. When we learn from movies, books, or even other people that snakes are scary or dangerous, it’s easier for us to learn to be afraid of them.
Should you be afraid of snakes?
Since it was most important for our ancestors to avoid venomous snakes (those that deliver a harmful substance through their bite or sting—as opposed to poisonous animals, which are those that make others sick when eaten or touched) that could make them very sick, we might jump to the conclusion that any snake we see is venomous, and therefore dangerous. Venomous snakes can be found all over the world. Snakes with venom use it to immobilise their prey—or make it still enough to eat.
Venomous snakes can use their venom to protect themselves, too. Many times, when a venomous snake bites a human, it is because the snake was startled or was being handled by the human. Luckily for us, snakes do not usually bite unless they are threatened and have to protect themselves. Most scaly serpents prefer to slither away when something bigger than themselves comes near. This means that most of the time snakes aren’t going to chase you or even come near you. We’re also much larger than snakes’ normal prey, and they know that, too. So have no fear—there’s no way a snake will mistake you for a meal (unless maybe you smell like a mouse).
Even if you aren’t afraid of snakes, you may find them creepy! You are not alone in feeling this way. Maybe you think snakes are slimy. Or maybe the way they move and their lack of legs weird you out. We tend to not like animals that look very different from us compared to animals that are more familiar. Animals with four legs and fur are easier for us to relate to and form bonds with; snakes are neither furry nor four-legged, so we might find them too bizarre to like.
However, snakes may be more like humans than you think! Snake ancestors long ago once had legs, and some snakes have little pieces of those old legs hidden in their bodies. Snake scales are even made of the same material that our nails are made of: keratin. Though theyare scaly, snakes are neither slimy nor wet! Their shiny scales give the appearance of sliminess, but they are actually dry and smooth. If you want to know what a snake feels like, rub your fingernail!
Why should we like snakes?
Sometimes people want to harm things that they find gross or scary. Snakes are often harmed by fearful people for this same reason. It is important to respect snakes and protect them, though. Snakes are a crucial part of many ecosystems because not only do they eat other, smaller animals, but they are food to bigger animals as well. We can even benefit from snakes. Pesky mice and insects that creep into our homes can be kept at bay by a hungry snake in your backyard. Snakes are more helpful than harmful!
So, are you born with a fear of snakes?
Probably not, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t born with a readiness to be afraid of things that can hurt us. We know that our brains evolved to distinguish a snake in the grass more quickly than other creatures, and that happened because venomous snakes can be dangerous to humans when provoked or startled. We may learn through TV shows and books that snakes are scary, but we aren’t born being afraid of them. We are born with an excellent ability to recognise the potential danger snakes pose. So thank your brain for its excellent recognition skills and admire our legless friends from a distance!
I love trees. I love eating their fruits and smelling their flowers.And most of all, I love climbing them. I want to climb every different kind of tree in the world.
I want to climb a jackfruit tree. It has a thick trunk for a good footing, and strong, sturdy branches to hold my weight. But I will need to watch out for falling fruit!
I want to climb a chinar tree. In autumn, it glows with bright, red leaves, and becomes the best hiding place. But, in the winter, there are no leaves left to hide in.
I want to climb a betelnut tree.
Climbing would be easier if there were branches on the trunk. But I will take it as a challenge and hop, hop, hop to the top!
I want to climb a moringa tree.
It looks easy to climb, at least to me. But the trunk is so thin that the higher I climb, the more it will bend downwards.
I want to climb a mangrove tree, with its spindly branches and giant, exposed roots.
But to climb a mangrove tree, I will have to splash through muddy, crocodile-filled water first.
I want to climb a khejri tree. It would be tricky to climb the many thin, thorny branches.
But I will twist and dodge and avoid getting pricked.
I can’t wait to climb trees all across the country. Can you name the different trees in the pictures and mark them on the map?
As clichéd as that may sound, I mean it. I literally build a world for myself and for all the living things around me. Who am I, you ask? Let’s dive in to find out.
What comes to your mind when I say ocean? The large expanse of blue water, the schools of colourful fish swimming underwater, whales and sharks and octopuses, or the deep, dark waters? Or all of it?
Well, we know that fish and all kinds of marine animals live in the oceans of the world. But have you ever thought about whether the fish live in houses underwater? What if I told you that some of them did? And what if I told you I am their house!
I am responsible for the underwater housing colonies. I am a coral reef. And even though we cover less than one percent of the ocean floor, around 25 percent of all marine animals depend on us. That is why we are also called the ‘rainforests of the sea’.
When you first see me, you might think I’m an underwater plant. I do look like a plant, don’t I? The truth though is that I am not even related to plants. I am an animal! Can you guess which organisms I am more closely related to? The answer is sea anemones and jellyfish.
When I started off, I was tiny. My baby name was planula. I was born along with thousands of other tiny siblings. We swam through the ocean until we found solid ground—a rock on the seafloor. We can be quite picky about where we choose to settle down, because once we settle down, we never move. We need a good amount of sunlight reaching us and just the right kind of ocean currents.
Once settled, I turned from a planula to a polyp. And I am quite a good-looking polyp, if I may say so myself. I have a cylindrical, hollow body. Yes, you heard that right. I have a hollow body. Unlike the skeleton that’s inside your body, mine is outside my body! That’s why it’s called an exoskeleton. It’s like a protective shield for my body. It’s made of calcium carbonate—the same material as chalk, which your teachers use to write on the blackboard. I am known as a hard coral because of my exoskeleton, but you can also find soft corals in the ocean.
My mouth, located at the top of the hollow body, is surrounded by tentacles. And my tentacles have stinging cells! They help me capture food that is swimming or floating around me in the surrounding waters. That’s mostly for dinner. During the day, I have special friends who make food for me. That’s right, I have awesome friends! And not only do they make food for me, they also make me look pretty. Confused? Let me explain.
My family and I are known for our colourful appearance but we are, in fact, translucent! So where do we get our vibrant colours from? The same friends who make our food also give us our colour. We have tiny microscopic organisms living inside us called zooxanthellae. These single-celled organisms are what give us our colour. Just like plants, they use sunlight to make their food. They share this food with us, and we, in return, give the zooxanthellae space to stay. This kind of friendship is called a symbiotic relationship, where we both help each other.
I also have an extraordinary ability to multiply. Like a tree that has branches, I branch out forming a coral colony. Do you know where the largest coral reef on Earth is? It’s in Australia and is known as the Great Barrier Reef.
Coral colonies are found in many different shapes. Some of us look like a brain and are called brain corals. Staghorn corals look like the horns of a stag and sea fan corals are flat fan-like structures.
All kinds of marine life forms live in our colonies. We provide shelter and secret spaces to hide from predators as well as nurseries to rear young ones. Our colonies also offer a large variety of food for the larger fishes and marine animals. From the tiny pygmy seahorse, mantis shrimp, and Christmas tree worm to the parrotfish, octopus, turtle, and reef shark, the coral reefs are used and visited by a wide variety of animals.
But that’s not all. We protect the coastlines from storms and erosion caused by waves. We provide livelihoods and are a source of food for local communities. And on top of all that, we offer excellent recreation opportunities, like scuba diving and snorkelling, for tourists who come to visit us from all over the world. We love welcoming you and showing you around our colonies, but we ask that you do so responsibly and be gentle with us as you swim and walk around us.
Unfortunately, despite being so awesome, we are under serious threat today. We are very sensitive to changes in the ocean that are a result of irresponsible human actions. A rise in the number of natural disasters, such as hurricanes and cyclones, the warming of oceans due to climate change, and water pollution, are some of the reasons why corals are dying everywhere.
When the water temperature rises, the zooxanthellae living inside us leave. As a result, we not only lose our colour and become white, we also lose our food-making friends.
Now that you know about our extraordinary lives, you can help us by telling your friends and family about us and our plight. Learn and understand more about the human actions on land that affect us in the oceans. Be a part of Team Coral and help us stay alive and vibrant so we can continue to house the fish and other underwater creatures, provide food for everyone, and take you on spectacular adventures of the underwater world.
Editor’s note: We are excited to announce a new section of CC Kids: Emerging Voices, where we will feature submissions contributed by our readers. The piece below, submitted in late 2021, was previously shared online. However, we also wanted to feature it in print because it was the article that inspired us to create this new section. We hope you enjoy hearing from this emerging voice (from Devon, UK)—and encourage you to send us your own submissions. Please see our submissions page for more information on how to do this.
My name is Eben and I am 8, I love nature but fungi is my favourite thing! Fungi is so fascinating because there are so many different types to spot, there are more than 15,000 types in this country! They are so different too, they are different sizes, shapes, colours, and smells! People don’t normally notice them, which is sad! If you look closely, they are everywhere and so interesting. I saw 54 species in one trip to my local woods.
I have recently seen a Lions Mane fungus it is also called Bearded Tooth, it is extremely rare on the and protected by law because it is so special. It is illegal to pick or damage this fungus. It is special for making medicines for memory problems. It is so beautiful it looks like a beard on a tree. It grows on very old beech trees. It is endangered because too many people have picked it and we have to look after them. Fungus is so important because lots have medical properties, they are important recyclers and help decay leaves and other plants which is essential to the environment. If there weren’t mushrooms, we would be swimming in leaves!
I also recently saw an Octopus Stinkhorn or Devils fingers fungi it is outrageously stinky! It erupts from an egg like a normal stinkhorn. It looks like a pink squid! Its tendrils are spirally. This is a rare fungus, but I saw 11 in one go! It has been in the UK for about 100 years and is meant to be from the Southern Hemisphere.
I have written a book about Fungi, and it says the ones I have found near my town in Devon. I wrote it because the world is changing and to support Devon Wildlife Trust, it has raised more than £1750. I am writing another book about Fungi and also other plants and animals to spot. I hope more people will notice fungi and other animals and see how special nature is and help protect it too.
In an open field, two little kittens with bright eyes jumped over a length of rope. They tumbled and growled and bit and scrambled and they played in the dry, yellow grass.
One of the kittens, Bun, pounced on his brother Mango and hissed.
“Ha! I’m not scared of you,” said Mango.
“Your hiss isn’t scary at all!”
“Scarier than yours!” replied Bun and opened his mouth to hiss again, when “Ksksksksksksks” came an odd sound.
Suddenly, the rope came alive, looping around them soundlessly. It was a snake! And they hadn’t stumbled across any ordinary snake—this was a king cobra. The kittens huddled together in terror.
“You don’t need to be so afraid,” said the snake, “I won’t eat you.”
But she had a rather strange sense of humour, because she immediately squeezed the kittens very gently in her coils. Frightened, Bun puffed his fur out and hissed.
The snake laughed.
“What an adorable little hiss. You’d win awards for the cutest hiss of us all!” she said.
Bun was a bit put out, but Mango was curious.
“There are other animals that hiss?” he asked.
“Of course, they do! Why, your ancestors learned how to hiss from mine,” the snake replied. “Could you show us how you hiss please, Miss…um. What is your name?” asked Bun.
“You can call me Hannah,” said the snake. “But are you very sure you want to hear me hiss?” she asked.
Mango and Bun nodded eagerly. They’d never heard anyone else hiss before!
Hannah the king cobra looked at them, then began uncoiling. Slowly she rose, swaying gracefully, then she spread her hood, reared back, and hissed.
What a tremendous sound! A deep, loud growl built up and up from Hannah’s throat and swelled into a frightening hiss, like a steam engine rumbling along the train tracks. And those teeth!
Mango and Bun squawked and puffed up again in their fright. Hannah looked down at them, and immediately lost her hood as she collapsed into laughter. When she was done, Hannah bumped the kittens gently with her great head.
“Would you like to meet some more animals that hiss?” she asked.
Now, the kittens may have had a fright, but they had more curiosity than sense! They immediately nodded.
“We should head to the lake!” said Hannah as she uncoiled and slithered ahead. The kittens bounded after her.
Hannah made her way to a patch of shade and arranged her coils into the ground. The kittens ran up to her just as she disappeared into the grass.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked as soon as the kittens reached her.
She had rested her head on a coil, and her eyes were barely open. The kittens titled their heads quizzically, and if Hannah could have smiled, she would have.
“You don’t need me to take you around to the swans, do you? Go on. Introduce yourselves. I’m going to rest here,” she said, and closed her eyes.
But she was listening intently!
As soon as the kittens turned away and walked towards the water, her eyes flew open.
“Gross,” said Bun as he squelched along the banks of the lake.
Mango didn’t reply. He hated getting his paws wet. Hated it! But he shook his paws after every step and grumbled low in his throat, and kept moving.
The swans looked on with beady eyes as the kittens walked up to them. They were quite displeased. They had eggs to protect! This was certainly not the time for guests to drop by unannounced!
The male swan spread his wings out wide and flapped them.
“OUT!” he trumpeted.
The kittens froze in place.
“OUT!” he trumpeted again, flapping his wings. Then he opened his mouth, and hissed! The swan hissed like a pressure cooker on the stove, growing louder and scarier as he ran to the kittens.
Mango and Bun scrambled and fell and kicked at the wet ground, trying to get away. Mud flew everywhere, and it was quite a messy, breathless pair that finally tripped over Hannah’s tail.
“Had a good time?” she asked, laughing a little.
She had been watching the whole time! The filthy little kittens looked up at her balefully. They were too wet to be properly frightened of her anymore!
Hannah hadn’t been so entertained in years.
Suddenly, she darted out her tongue and lifted herself up, sensing something in the sky.
A spotted owl was flying above them, with something in its mouth. It circled slowly, before swooping down again. It was going to grab the kittens!
Hannah really did like the kittens, and she certainly wasn’t going to let an owl snap them up. She looped her coils around them protectively, and flared her hood out in warning. Abruptly the owl twisted and landed on a branch nearby, with a rat in its beak.
The owl stared them down, tossed the rat into its claws and bent its head. Then, it hissed.
If a sound was a hiss and a scream all at once, filled with all the hate in the world, it would be this hiss.
Mango and Bun clutched at each other inside Hannah’s coils. That didn’t sound like any hiss they had ever heard before!
They needn’t have worried. Hannah was a king cobra, and there are very few things that scare a king cobra. She lifted herself up and up and up, until she was face to face with the owl on its branch, and hissed her growly hiss right into its face.
Immediately the owl dropped the rat and flew away.
The rat fell near the kittens and scuttled around in place. It was quite confused and rather terrified.
Mango pounced before the rat even touched the ground. He batted it over to Bun, and they sent the shocked rat back and forth between them like a little ball. Mango cornered the rat into Hannah’s coils and was just about to send it over to Bun when he heard—
HISS! HISS! HISS!
Mango and Bun jumped right up, their fur on end. What a sound! Where did it come from?
It was the rat! High-pitched and surprisingly loud, the rat hissed and hissed some more, then scrambled away before any other animal could consider making it a snack.
The kittens tried not to be bothered by Hannah, who was laughing so hard that she wasn’t even making any sounds. Her coils shook in her mirth but the kittens were quite done. They weren’t leaving the safety of Hannah’s coils for anything!
Later, Hannah escorted them home, slipping away before their humans could see her. They were fussed over and bathed, and finally, they were tucked into bed.
“Imagine that Mango,” mumbled Bun. “A little rat. Hissiest of us all.”
But Mango didn’t reply. He was asleep! And somewhere outside, or perhaps in his dream, the deep golden eyes of a king cobra glinted in the light of the moon.
The Travancore reedtail (Protosticta ponmudiensis) is a damselfly. It was first described in 2015 from the Ponmudi hills in the Thiruvananthapuram district of Kerala, India, and soon forgotten by all. This is not an unusual fate for an odonate—the collective term for dragonflies and damselflies—in the prevailing conservation milieu. Although they were one of the first animals to conquer the skies, some 300 million years ago, many odonate species in India, including the Travancore reedtail, remain ‘Data Deficient’ in the IUCN Red List. Despite their important role in the food web as prime predators of invertebrates in most ecosystems, dragonflies and damselflies do not receive the conservation attention they deserve. I started studying odonates because they reflect the health of the environment. Their short life cycles coupled with sensitivity to anthropogenic disturbances, such as pollution and deforestation, make them excellent bioindicators. Officially, I study the diversity and ecology of odonates in the Kole wetlands, a Ramsar site in central Kerala. Unofficially, I chase after odonates wherever I can find them, including forests.
My passion has led me to a few amateurs who love observing and documenting odonates. I first met Reji Chandran—a professional event photographer—when I was trying to make field identification keys for odonates found in Kerala. He was a passionate ‘odonutter’, who lived in Aryanad village, adjacent to Peppara Wildlife Sanctuary. Reji’s backyard was wonderfully rich in odonate species thanks to its proximity to the Agasthyamala hills in the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot. He had recorded close to a hundred species from his surroundings. After months of fieldwork and discussions over the phone, we were able to make field keys for the identification of over 20 confusing odonate species.
Afterwards, I was unable to visit Reji’s village due to the prevailing COVID-19 travel restrictions. But there was finally a window of opportunity in September 2021, when I booked a train ticket to Trivandrum Central without thinking twice. Reji had planned an expedition to the Ponmudi hills in search of the Travancore reedtail. His previous (and frequent) visits had been unsuccessful, but he believed that with our combined effort, we would be able to find the skittish damselfly.
On the first day, I requested to see Reji’s ‘backyard’, which consisted of rubber plantations owned by his neighbours. The plantations had luxuriant wild undergrowth and a few streams flowing through them, and were separated from Peppara Wildlife Sanctuary by the Karamana River. Thus, we were hiking through an ‘ecotone’—the edge between two kinds of habitats. Ecotones host rich biodiversity because they attract species from both habitat types. Further, they support species which prefer such edges. No wonder Reji found more odonate species here than recorded anywhere else in Kerala— it was the ecological phenomenon called ‘edge effect’ in action!
I was amazed by Reji’s knack for locating odonates. He would brush aside some understorey vegetation, point to a dry twig on a tall tree and there it would be—a Goan shadow dancer (Idionyx gomantakensis). At the point where a stream met the Karamana River, he made me sit on my haunches and showed me a damselfly that gave me goosebumps—the red-striped bambootail (Elattoneura souteri). Both species are rare and endemic to the Western Ghats. Odonates show high microhabitat specificity and Reji knew exactly where each species could be found.
At the edge of the river in a Myristica swamp—tree-covered wetlands in the Western Ghats that are dominated by trees belonging to the family Myristicaceae—we spotted a brilliant blue pair of Myristica sapphire (Calocypha laidlawi) males engaged in an aerial fight for territory. The successful male would mate with a female, who would then lay eggs in plant debris floating in the slow-flowing water. In a few days, tiny aquatic predators would hatch out from the eggs.
Travancore Reedtail (Protosticta ponmudiensis)
Myristica swamps once formed a large hydrological network all along the Western Ghats, but are now fragmented and exist as small, isolated pockets. These threatened habitats host species like the Myristica sapphire, found nowhere else in the world.
Hours passed by as we gawked at one odonate after another and it was twilight by the time we started heading back to the village. Early next morning I woke up to Reji’s palpable excitement. Ponmudi was an hour away by motorbike. In a rocky stream halfway up the hill, we chanced upon a Saffron reedtail (Indosticta deccanensis)—a brightly coloured shade-loving damselfly, endemic to the Western Ghats. It was a close relative of the Travancore reedtail and with its saffron body and azure blue face, more attractive to the eyes. I was seeing it for the first time. Perhaps we would find the Travancore reedtail after all! The Saffron reedtail sighting awoke an intense sense of expectation in me. We followed the road uphill and arrived at a spot where the stream banks had a thick cover of shrubs and saplings. The flow of the stream was slower and the shade offered by the plants was denser. Here, we began a thorough search for our quarry.
Reji stepped with great precision, eyes scanning the undergrowth for any sign of the reedtail. My feet sore from the previous day’s leech bites, I limped after him. We had taken some twenty steps when Reji paused suddenly, turned around and gave me an “I told you so” look. It was the Travancore reedtail—a female, delicate and green-eyed beauty with a thread-thin body! The body was mostly black with bluish-white bands. We only managed to take a few photographs in the dim light before she was chased by a male. We gaped open-mouthed as they flitted away, across the stream and deep into the forest. We had just encountered one of the rarest odonates of the region. Since all its sightings have been from the Ponmudi hills, it could well be a spot endemic—found only at a single location on the globe.
Our mission accomplished, we thought of paying a quick visit to the famed hilltop of Ponmudi before returning. Though the ride through the mist and the panoramic view from above were mesmerising, we were appalled by the callousness of the large crowd of tourists. They were shouting, entering restricted areas, and dumping plastic waste in patches of once-pristine shola forest. None of them seemed to realize the ecological value of the Ponmudi hills. When we descended the hill, it was with mixed feelings. We were elated to have found the Travancore reedtail, but worried about its future.
from left to right: Lesser Blue-Wing (Rhyothemis triangularis), Saffron Reedtail (Indosticta deccanensis), Travancore Torrent Dart (Euphaea cardinalis)
Further Reading Gossamer Wings: Damselflies and Dragonflies of the Western Ghats. RoundGlass Sustain. https://sustain.round.glass/photo-story/damselflies-dragonflies-western-ghats/. Accessed on 18 November, 2021.
Corbet, P. S. 1999. Dragonflies: Behaviour and Ecology of Odonata. University of Edinburgh, UK.
I was sitting in a taxi be squashed in between Malagasy people, carrying my huge sketchbook full of hand-drawn diagrams, when I felt I had gained a little personal victory on my PhD journey.
September 2019: It was my second time travelling to Madagascar— a world biodiversity hotspot and dream destiny for many—for my PhD research. I was excited by the possibilities ahead. My research consisted of interviewing practitioners from nature conservation organisations to hear their views on conservation education programmes. Despite the widespread belief that conservation education is a panacea for a sustainable future, the practitioners themselves often wonder whether their programmes have long-term impacts. In turn, I was trying to understand how these education programmes, which often target children living close to protected areas, influence the conservation of biodiversity.
The challenge
I decided to rent a room in the country’s capital Antananarivo, or just Tana as people call it, because most of the big conservation organisations were headquartered there. Doing research in Madagascar as a foreigner born in Barcelona and studying in Finland, required being respectful and striving to understand the cultural context as much as possible. Thus, I embraced the Malagasy lifestyle. And that included using public transport: taxi be. Taxi be are large minibuses that travel all around the city and, according to the Lonely Planet guide, “they are of limited use to travellers because of the difficulty to work out the route and where bus stops are”. But I was not put off by the challenge. Who said that the PhD journey would be an easy one anyway?
Increasing knowledge
It was one of my first afternoons in Tana, and I was having lunch with my colleague Rio in the city centre. I explained to him my determination to use taxi be, and that I had been searching for printed maps and online apps to increase my knowledge before getting on the first taxi be. Of course, these didn’t exist. Fortunately, Rio decided to take me under his wing. We walked together to one of the main bus stops where, during rush hour, you had to run to be the lucky person to squeeze into the already packed taxi be. After we managed to hop on one, Rio patiently explained:
“There are always two people working in the taxi be: the driver and the collector. The collector collects the standard fare of 500 Ariary (around €0.11) and he is the one shouting the final destination of the bus, so people know if it is convenient for them to get on”. Soon, we were approaching my home, so when the collector asked “Misy miala?” (Is there someone getting off?), Rio replied loudly: “Misy miala!” (Someone is getting off!).
Collaboration with others
For a while, I was only brave enough to attempt the same route I had done with Rio: from the city centre to home and vice-versa. I was scared of not knowing where to get on and off the bus, or which line to take. But as I started to schedule dates for my first interviews, I realized that I would never master the art of using taxi be unless I conquered my fear. I also realized that I couldn’t do it alone. Hence, every time an interview was scheduled, I would also ask for directions to get there by public transport.
Despite my careful planning, things often didn’t go as planned (this is exactly why problem solving is a skill you learn as a researcher). Tana is sprawled across two main hillsides and is full of steep and narrow streets, which translates into huge traffic jams. I am not a punctual person in my private life, but I wanted to arrive on time for my interviews. I would often leave home well before my meetings, only to end up sitting in a taxi be for two hours, stuck in a traffic jam. Sometimes, tired of sitting, I would get off and walk for a while, hoping that the traffic jam would disappear and that I could get an alternative taxi be. This meant, however, that I needed to ask for directions in my poor Malagasy. Yet, slowly, I started to understand how to get around the city.
Changing perspectives and cultural practices
In my interviews, I wanted to understand practitioners’ assumptions about the role of education in conservation. This turned out to be a difficult task because for many of the interviewees, it was their first time reflecting on the linkages between activities, outcomes, and impacts. Due to this, I decided to use a participatory research method: instead of me asking questions and writing notes, we would draw. Well, maybe not exactly draw, but we would create diagrams to identify the pathways that connect their education programmes with conservation goals. That is how I ended up buying a huge sketchbook that I carried along to the interviews.
Despite being born in the Mediterranean culture, my perception of personal space had been strongly transformed after years of living in Finland. Personal space is essential for Finns. Often, on Finnish buses, people would rather leave a seat unoccupied than sit next to a stranger, to allow for personal space. That was absolutely not the case in Madagascar. Taxi be were often packed with people, and even the aisle would be transformed into a seat by placing a wooden plank across the seats on either side. The first few times, I felt uncomfortable and ashamed when entering with my huge sketchbook, silently apologising to others for taking up so much space. But, soon my perspective changed as I understood that the Malagasy idea of personal space was completely different. After this, I embraced—and somehow enjoyed—the trips being squashed between others.
Diversifying options
I was starting to feel confident about commuting by taxi be when I decided to venture outside the capital. Some of my interviewees were from smaller organisations that worked only in certain regions of Madagascar. For one of those visits, I travelled overnight by taxi brouse (minibuses that travel around the country) to the coastal city of Tamatave. On arriving, I received a call from Tsiry, the practitioner I wanted to interview. He asked if we could meet at their education centre, located 30 minutes outside the city. I thought to myself: If I can use public transport in Tana, why not in Tamatave? I left with my backpack and my big sketchbook without hesitation. After being directed to different bus stations, I managed to get the right bus, arriving at my destination exactly at lunchtime. Tsiry and their colleagues invited me to share lunch with them.
We conducted the interview after the meal. Then, Tsiry offered to give me a lift back to Tamatave on his motorbike. I happily accepted because I was exhausted, but I also thought it would be great to have another new experience under my belt. However, the motorbike suddenly stopped as we were riding. “How strange. This has never happened before,” Tsiry said, as he tried to fix it. No luck. Someone passing by stopped and gave it a shot too. Still no luck. Suddenly, a cyclo-pousse (a rickshaw pulled by a cyclist) came to a halt and offered to take us. Tsiry and I looked at each other—could a cyclist carry a motorbike? It was the moment to find out. We put the motorbike on top of the cyclo-pousse and clambered into the rickshaw ourselves. To our surprise, we slowly managed to reach the city. Tsiry repeated once again, laughing: “This has never happened before.”
Leaders of change
It was one of my last days in Tana. For two months, I had met and been inspired by passionate conservation practitioners working across the country. I was sitting in a taxi be, squashed in between Malagasy people, feeling proud of my own learning process with public transport. A whole range of strategies had helped me achieve my goal: from increasing my knowledge thanks to Rio, to asking others for directions, to changing my perspective of personal space and diversifying my transportation options.
In a similar way, the results of my research also showed that there isn’t a single way to achieve positive change through education, but rather that practitioners had different views on how the change was brought about. Five pathways of change emerged on the role of education in conservation across the 15 organisations I interviewed. For some, it was about increasing knowledge. Others stressed the importance of building an emotional connection to nature and changing certain traditional cultural practices. Others believed that change should happen at the community and societal level, highlighting the role of collaboration amongst stakeholders. And a few others emphasized that education approaches need to be accompanied by other structural solutions, such as access to alternative livelihoods and policy changes. Finally, many highlighted the importance of fostering future leaders: youth who would have agency over their natural resources.
It was time for farewells, and I was feeling a mix of emotions. I felt privileged to have met all those practitioners who were leaders of change themselves. People like my friend Lova, who worked persistently to implement conservation education programmes with boundless energy, despite the lack of time and resources. At the same time, I was doubtful about the practical implications of my research. It had not answered the question about whether education has an impact on conservation. But complex problems never have a straightforward solution. Yet, reflecting on the pathways of change was probably a first step towards a more comprehensive evaluation, and to be able to design transformative interventions. For years to come, education will probably remain a cornerstone of conservation initiatives. But, what if the end goal went beyond biodiversity conservation? What if education could also support and celebrate the richness of cultural diversity? What would those education programmes look like? Unfortunately, my time in Madagascar was up, so those would remain questions to explore in the future.
Further Reading
Brias-Guinart, A., K. Korhonen-Kurki and M. Cabeza. 2022. Typifying conservation practitioners’ views on the role of education. Conservation biology 36(4): e13893. doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13893.
Social relations have a strong influence on our behaviour. We often learn new things and change our views and behaviours through discussion with or observation of others—our neighbours, friends, family, and colleagues.
Sometimes the opposite happens, and we resist change because we worry about what others will think. Consider how wearing face masks has become the norm in many public places during the COVID-19 pandemic: many people wear them because they want to protect others or avoid disapproval.
Social scientists have made a lot of progress understanding how information, opinions, and behaviours spread (or don’t) through social groups. This insight is being used by marketers, public health officials, and many others to design more effective campaigns and communications. Yet, although conservationists increasingly draw on behavioural science, little research has been done about the role of social relations in shaping conservation behaviours.
I wanted to explore this in northern Cambodia, where birds like the giant ibis (Thaumatibis gigantea) are being threatened by pesticides contaminating the water ponds on which they rely throughout the dry season. My colleagues and I worked with partners in government, with community leaders, and with the Wildlife Conservation Society, to understand this issue and then designed a campaign to reduce pesticide pollution.
Our prior research showed us that many residents were unhappy with the pollution, which was caused by a minority of careless locals, but that they felt powerless to act and were worried about creating conflict. Our campaign thus focused on promoting a hotline that can be used to report pollution. We organised a community event with uplifting videos and speeches from respected villagers, and distributed materials with the phone number printed.
We used this event to conduct an experiment. First, we interviewed all 400 residents of one village and asked them about their social relations—who they spend time talking with. We then asked them questions about their intentions to report pollution, measuring willingness on a 10-point scale. We invited 40 people to attend our event. Two weeks later, we followed up with another village-wide survey to see who had learned about the campaign and if intentions to report pollution had changed, which we repeated again after six months.
We found that information about the campaign spread far and wide. After six months, at least 141 people knew details of the campaign and hotline. When we looked at their social relations, statistical models showed that people were twice as likely to know about the campaign if they lived with someone who also knew about it. Word of mouth was clearly important for spreading information.
Those who attended the event had also become more willing to report pollution, suggesting that the campaign was persuasive. Perhaps surprisingly, after two weeks, many people who did not attend had also become more willing to report pollution. Statistical models showed us that knowledge about the campaign did not influence people’s willingness. Instead, social influences were important, as people became more willing if their social relations were also more willing. But, after six months, the same influences had pushed average levels of willingness back to pre-campaign levels.
These results paint a complex picture, but they suggest that social influences are critical for changing conservation behaviour and are more important than spreading information. Just as with wearing a face mask, an individual’s willingness to report pollution depended strongly on what their social relations said and did. Eventually, villagers may have felt that reporting pollution was too socially risky if many of their friends and relatives weren’t also supportive of this action.
Conservationists can take this into consideration, drawing on proven strategies from other disciplines, such as using information about social relations to target key influencers in a community. We simulated such a strategy using our data and found that this is likely to be effective in Cambodia too. But this data can often be challenging and expensive to collect in conservation settings. For larger programmes that operate across many communities, conducting research on social relations in a small number of villages could help generate insights that apply across the programme. Cheaper and rougher methods, such as consulting local experts or discussions with community members, could still help to define important social relations, identify influential individuals, or understand relevant social groupings.
Keeping these questions in mind could help conservation campaigns overcome resistance, to instead be embraced by communities, and to generate new social norms. Campaigns can work with influential members of the community or encourage conservation-minded community members to share and discuss their motivations with others. As attitudes and behaviours shift in some parts of a community, campaigns will need to adapt to support and enable these groups as they influence other more resistant groups. Taking a social relations perspective means recognising that people are the greatest resource for conservation.
Map above: A diagram showing the interactions that make up the village’s social network. Using questionnaires, individuals in the village shared information about who they speak with regularly, and these connections are represented by lines in the diagram.
Further Reading
de Lange, E., E. J. Milner-Gulland and A. Keane. 2021. Effects of social networks on interventions to change conservation behaviour. Conservation Biology 36(3).e13833.https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13833
de Lange, E., E. J. Milner-Gulland and A. Keane. 2019. Improving environmental interventions by understanding information flows. Trends in ecology & evolution 34(11): 1034–1047.
de Lange, E., A. D. M. Dobson, E. J. Milner-Gulland and A. Keane. 2021. Combining simulation and empirical data to explore the scope for social network interventions in conservation. Biological Conservation 261: 109292.
de Lange, E., E. J. Milner-Gulland, V. Yim, C. Leng, S. Phann and A. Keane. 2021. Using mixed methods to understand sensitive wildlife poisoning behaviours in northern Cambodia. Oryx 55(6): 889–902.
“Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.”
– Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
We often think of extinction as happening out there, in far away wild places, but it also takes place right inside our minds, in our everyday conversations and on social media. Beyond biological extinction, which takes place when the last animal or plant of its kind dies, species can live on in our collective memory, traditionally transmitted locally through word of mouth, art and literature, and more recently through movies, television, and the internet. These memories can, almost paradoxically, keep an extinct species like the passenger pigeon, present in our everyday lives long after they are gone. But, tragically, the contrary also occurs.
When a species disappears from, or has never been in, our minds despite still existing across the Earth, this lack of collective knowledge and memories of the species can accelerate its physical disappearance.
Introducing societal extinction
As more and more species become threatened or extinct, they also become increasingly isolated from people. A growing number of people live in cities, and spend increasing amounts of time indoors, becoming isolated from experiencing the natural world. This leads to the extinction of experience—the progressive loss of our daily interactions with nature, a situation that has been further aggravated with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to contain it, such as lockdowns and remote work.
This process of disappearing from collective memory is what we refer to as ‘societal extinction’ in a recent paper—in contrast to biological extinction—and it often occurs gradually. Take, for example, the Japanese or Honshū wolf, which used to live on several islands of the Japanese archipelago, but went extinct by the early 20th century due to rabies and persecution by humans. Although it was once ubiquitous in the local culture, with many villages bearing its name, dedicated shrines, and representation in art and various traditions, its societal footprint is increasingly eroding because the only remaining source of new experiences are a few museum specimens.
Societal extinction can also progressively impact local ecological knowledge. Studies among communities in southwestern China and with Indigenous people in Bolivia have shown the loss of local knowledge and memory of extinct bird species. Such memory loss eventually led to people forgetting the names of these species and also what they looked and sounded like. Yet, species that have been forgotten in wider society can sometimes maintain their cultural presence in rural or Indigenous communities through traditional ecological knowledge. But when cultural losses of a disappearing species occur for Indigenous communities, it is likely to be much more acute if they have strong cultural ties to the species. Indigenous people are, therefore, key allies in the efforts to maintain societal presence and memory of such species.
The scale
Societal extinction can also occur locally. The Tasmanian tiger and the Tasmanian devil used to inhabit both Tasmania and mainland Australia. With their extinction on the mainland, they were lost from Indigenous Australians’ memories here. However, their memories continued to persist in Tasmania, where they remained an important part of the local Indigenous culture.
Yet, extinct species can also remain highly present societally, or even increase in their prominence long after their extinction. Some are even used as conservation flagships to appeal to a targeted audience to attract their support for the conservation efforts of extant species.
One example is the enduring popularity of the dodo; centuries after its extinction, it is still widely used in popular culture, in works of art, as a mascot, and even as one of the main targets of the movement for de-extinction—a process of recreation of once extinct species, mainly through genetic resurrection. Ironically, the dodo is more globally salient today than it was when it went extinct.
The drivers
Whether a species will become societally extinct depends on many factors, including its charisma, societal importance in terms of symbolic or cultural values, whether and how long ago it went extinct, and how distant and isolated its geographic range is from human settlements and activities.
Societal extinction can also occur in extant species, often due to different social or cultural changes, such as the urbanization and modernization of society that can radically change our relationship with nature and lead to the collective loss of memory.
For example, in Europe, the replacement of traditional herbal medicine with modern medicine, which is much more reliant on synthetic products, is believed to have degraded general knowledge of many medicinal plants.
It is important to note that a majority of species cannot actually become societally extinct, simply because they never had a societal presence to begin with. This is common in uncharismatic, small, cryptic or inaccessible species, and especially among invertebrates, plants, fungi and microorganisms—many of which have not yet been formally described by scientists or noticed by humankind. They suffer declines and extinctions in silence, unseen by people and societies.
Why it matters
The understudied phenomenon of societal extinction can considerably challenge efforts aimed at the conservation of biodiversity, as it can affect our perception of the environment and expectations of its natural state, such as what is normal or healthy. Societal extinction can distort perceptions of the severity of threats to biodiversity and true extinction rates, and thus diminish the public support for conservation and restoration efforts. It can also reduce our will to pursue ambitious conservation goals. For example, it could reduce public support for rewilding efforts, especially if the targeted species are no longer present in our memory as a natural component of the ecosystem. Bearing in mind the ongoing extinction crisis, as well as our growing disconnection from nature, it is highly likely that countless cases of societal extinction still lie ahead, and that this process is going to intensify in the coming years. If we are to mitigate the process of societal extinction and its consequences for conservation, it will be necessary to address the problem through targeted, long-term marketing campaigns, and conservation education, as well as support for indigenous culture and storytelling, to revive, improve, and maintain memory of societally extinct species.
How do we tackle it?
The rise of global internet connectivity has created the opportunity for large-scale conservation engagement efforts, but conservationists have yet to fully explore its potential. Wildlife already features in numerous aspects of our everyday digital lives, from Animal Crossing and King Kong to Tiger King to Guggimon. Wildlife is a major part of our culture, but that omnipresence is rarely purposefully used to positively influence how we feel about it and our actions as voters and consumers. This needs to change.
This is especially important in cases where there are very few or no living eyewitnesses of a species.
For example, each year on September 7, Australia celebrates the National Threatened Species Day. This day represents in fact the anniversary of the death of the last captive thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, in the Hobart zoo, and helps maintain and strengthen the memory of the species. The collective memory of a species should also be rekindled in reintroduction programmes, as a way to tackle extinction beyond its biological component.
Such a process could follow the same path used to strengthen cultural identity by resurrecting lost languages, such as Cornish, to highlight the historic links between society and the reintroduced species, and thus help increase public support for conservation efforts.
Further Reading Jarić, I., U. Roll, M. Bonaiuto, B. W. Brook, F. Courchamp, J. A. Firth, K. J. Gaston et al. 2022. Societal extinction of species. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2021.12.011.
In an article published in World Watch magazine in 2004, Mac Chapin critiqued the work and style of functioning of three big conservation NGOs—World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Conservation International (CI), and The Nature Conservancy (TNC)—especially in relation to their neglect of indigenous peoples living within their areas of work. Based on a variety of sources including published literature, conversations with NGO staff, and his own personal experiences, Chapin argued that the relationships of these NGOs with indigenous groups stems from conflicts of interest linked to their government and corporate funding. The article, as you will see below, created a storm, before and after it was published, and attracted both criticism and praise. 18 years after its publication, we asked Mac Chapin about his reasons for writing this article, the controversies surrounding its publication, and how he views the relationship between conservation NGOs and indigenous peoples today.
Hari Sridhar: What got you interested in the relationship between conservation and indigenous peoples, and motivated you to write this article?
Mac Chapin: I lived with the Guna Indians in Panama for three years in the late 1960s, with the Peace Corps. I became aware of the Guna’s close relationship with their natural ecosystems, and how they were threatened by colonisation from non-Indians and “modernisation” in general. That inspired me to study anthropology, and in the mid-1980s, I started working throughout Central America with Cultural Survival, an indigenous rights NGO. From the start, we focused on indigenous rights and conservation; and in 1992 we collaborated with The National Geographic Society on a bilingual Spanish-English map of Central America showing the forests and indigenous regions of occupation and use. There was a clear correspondence, and we began working on programmes that emphasised the two areas.
Some of the large conservation organisations (WWF and CI) expressed interest (TNC was not very interested) and we tried to work with them, but, unfortunately, collaboration was difficult, often impossible. They developed their programmes without consulting with us or, more importantly, with the indigenous peoples living in the areas they wanted to conserve. They felt they knew more about conservation than the Indians, who were excluded from their programmes; and beyond this, there was often hostility toward the peoples living in the areas they had singled out for their work.
This situation was coming to a head in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Indigenous peoples were getting organised in Central America and they began complaining—to us and to some of the private foundations that were funding the conservationists. Several of the foundations were meeting and discussing this at a gathering in California, and the Ford Foundation decided to hire an anthropologist who has worked in Mexico and an economist from India to do a study. I knew the anthropologist and we spoke, and he started feeding me material; he also got me in touch with the economist, and I started expanding my research. I had no thoughts of publishing what I was writing; I just wanted to clear things up in my head, and see how wide spread the problem was (it was very widespread).
I was very close to Ed Ayres, the editor of World Watch Magazine. Ed is very principled and stands firm for things he believes in. He phoned up one morning when I was almost finished and asked what I was up to. I mentioned my research and sent a draft to him. He phoned the next morning and asked where I was going to publish it. I said I had no thoughts about it, and he said, “Then we’ll take it.” It was obviously an issue that was on many people’s minds at the time, yet nobody was writing about it.
HS: Stepping back a bit, can you trace the origins of your interest in indigenous communities’ rights? What led to you spending three years living with the Guna Indians, as part of the Peace Corps?
MC: When I was young, I read many books about travel to exotic (for me) parts of the globe: Africa, Latin America, the Near East; both fiction and non-fiction. This interest grew out of my very early reading of comic books: Tarzan, Scrooge McDuck (who was always heading off to distant lands with Donald and Huey, Dewey, and Louie), Tintin, and so forth. I graduated to tales of Richard F. Burton and the search for the origin of the Nile, the adventures of hunters and animal collectors in Africa and the Amazon Basin, the British Empire, and on and on. This was my search for adventure, pure and simple. After my undergraduate studies (History of Medieval and early modern Europe), I began traveling myself, to Europe and Turkey and Israel. And in 1965, I joined the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic, where I spent two years working with small-holder coffee farmers. In 1967, I rejoined the Peace Corps, this time with the Guna Indians in Panama, and stayed there for three years as director of an agricultural school. On the strength of all this practical experience, with Caribbean Blacks and Central American Indians, I decided to study anthropology. With my degree in hand, I set out to apply my knowledge helping the indigenous peoples of Central and South America to hold onto their lands, natural resources, and cultures.
You will see that I began vicariously with literature that can only be described as “colonialist” and ended up somewhere on the opposite end of the spectrum. The heroes of virtually everything I had been reading and thinking about were white males of European descent (except perhaps the Disney Ducks—but they sure acted like White males); and the “natives” in the colonised regions of the world were depicted as submissive and not terribly bright—often like children needing a helping hand from the civilised and powerful. But of course, in this world things don’t work that way. The literature had a strong effect on me, and it took years to shed it, and only partially. At the same time, I strongly believe that the contrast between the two groups—rich and poor, First World versus Third World—allowed me to understand the ramifications, the scarring impact of the power differential. This didn’t happen all at once, like a flash of lightning. It was gradual, and after many years in the field and thinking and writing about rural development, and seeing the power differential up close, I believe I understand, to some extent, what is going on. At the same time, I have to catch myself from time to time from practicing what I don’t preach. No matter what, I am a member of the class that runs the world, and I often feel like Lady Macbeth, who, try as she might, cannot clean her blood-stained hands. But I try.
In this context, the actions of the large conservationist organisations are a prime example of the ugly face of this imbalance.
HS: What happened after Ed Ayres offered to publish the article in World Watch?
MC: In summary, a draft escaped, all of the conservationist NGOs got hold of it, and they contacted World Watch, trying to have it squashed. The editor told me: “This is the first time the shit has hit the fan before an article has been published!” He weathered the storm nicely, but there was a fair amount of commotion surrounding the issue of the magazine. A woman who had a small foundation had offered to give World Watch $30,000 to cover the cost of destroying the 30,000 copies of the magazine that had already been printed and republish it with an altered (sanitised) version of my article. This was done without informing the editor or me. It was a crazy, half-baked scheme and was abandoned soon after, but it had already become public. The editor stood up for me and in the end the magazine was distributed with the article untouched. The woman in the small foundation was trapped: she had been pretending to be on my side, but this exposed her, and she resigned shortly after. The following issue of the magazine contained 16 pages of letters about the article, most of them positive.
I think the article had a powerful impact. It opened up a needed debate; it ignited a broad movement among many indigenous organisations worldwide; and the recent environmental congress in Glasgow, Scotland, apparently pledged to support indigenous peoples on conservation issues. On the other side, the big conservation organisations—WWF, TNC, CI—have been trying to co-opt the issues raised in the article for their own benefit, with what they say are initiatives to help indigenous peoples. But at least it is out in the open, and indigenous and tribal peoples are taking up the cudgel and fighting for their rights—something they were not involved with to any extent before.
HS: In the 18 years since this article was published, have you seen any examples of conservation programmes that you think are “responsive to the needs of both biological and human diversity”?
MC: Just a couple of days ago , I was speaking with someone who continues working in this field and he said that in the recent gathering in Glasgow, people were talking about the need to work with indigenous peoples on conservation initiatives, and they were talking about tens of millions of dollars. This sounds like a move in the right direction. But how in Hades would this work? Who would handle it? Which indigenous groups would get the money, and for what? If those with the money and in charge of organising the distribution don’t do it “correctly” it will hurt indigenous peoples. It needs to be done carefully, sensitively, and responsibly—but I doubt that will happen. On the surface, it sounds like it will do more harm than good. Please excuse my cynicism, but I have seen this sort of thing before, many times.
HS: Why do you think it might “do more harm than good”? What might the “right” approach look like?
MC: I’m afraid, based on experience, that the donors (who are varied; largely private foundations in the United States, and a mixture of government and private donors in Europe) will want to throw lots of money at the problem. If they give oodles of money directly to indigenous organisations, things could go awry fast.
Few of them in Latin America, a region I know best, presently have the administrative capacity to manage money responsibly; they are learning, but they need help on this. The large conservationist NGOs see their role as working on conservation, not administration—or any of the other needs of indigenous organisations, such as land tenure and employment (“too political,” they often say). Also, we are in a transition phase, in which indigenous groups want to take more control of their own programmes, and many are increasingly seeing non indigenous NGOs that work with indigenous peoples as unnecessary, and their role is being questioned by both indigenous peoples and donor agencies. Into this mix, we find the largest donors wanting to do something big and fast (after all, the problems facing all of us are quite large) and this will never happen if they are forced to fund small, less sophisticated indigenous organisations. So, they stick with the large conservation NGOs. There are very few donor agencies that have experience with indigenous peoples, and too much money too fast can cause havoc. It can easily destroy the organisations they are attempting to help.
Much of this is predetermined. In the environmental programmes of the large foundations, the staff have invariably come directly from the large conservation NGOs, and they funnel their money directly back to their colleagues. This has always been the case with the largest private foundations—MacArthur, Moore, Packard, Hewlett, and Ford Foundations—and the same pattern is found throughout the donor community. The number of foundations with programmes to work with indigenous peoples is miniscule. If donors want to really help indigenous peoples, they should provide support for institution strengthening, land rights, and employment generation—things indigenous organisations desperately need. These are the priorities of indigenous peoples. But they are not the priorities of the conservationists, and trying to jam conservation down the throats of indigenous and tribal peoples will go nowhere. Donors tend not to see this, and they are invariably unhappy with what indigenous peoples do with their money. This is repeated over and over and over.
HS: How has the increasing dependency of conservation organisations on corporate funding affected their relations with indigenous peoples?
MC: This has become a huge problem. It not only causes the conservation NGOs to ignore indigenous peoples; but has also served to disfigure their mission and turn a blind eye to the unsustainable, destructive activities of the corporations; and, I might add, their relations with abusive governments, such as Brazil, where the Amazon rainforest is vanishing with astounding speed. Conservation NGOs can be thrown out of a number of countries for working with indigenous peoples on environmental issues (or any other issues, for that matter). Granted, the conservationist NGOs are caught in an impossible situation, but they are the ones to blame.
HS: Could you tell us about the response the article received at the time it was published, both formally and otherwise?
MC: The editor got a strong response, especially from indigenous people and representatives of NGOs that work with indigenous peoples. Most of the reaction was positive. The three large conservationist NGOs sent in measured responses, admitting that they needed to do more to work with indigenous peoples in the field. Ford gave a defensive, not-terribly-honest response that missed the mark altogether. But the reaction on the whole was positive and constructive.
Most important, however, is that the article opened up discussion on the issue and it has continued to this day. Much of it now resides with indigenous people, who have become more openly active in the defence of their lands and conservation of their natural resources.
HS: Are there ways in which science (and scientists) can contribute to repairing this fraught relationship?
MC: It is my experience that the conservation NGOs use science to exclude indigenous people. They advertise themselves as doing “science-based conservation,” which sets them apart from indigenous people, who are not, in their eyes, “scientists.” (Here there is a disagreement regarding the meaning of the term “science”.) With the conclusion that they need to be guided by the “real scientists” (themselves). Does this sound familiar?
My feeling is that biological science has much to contribute, and indigenous people could learn a good deal from it. But it has to be a two-way street, for the conservationists can learn a good deal from the indigenous people. Unfortunately, it all boils down to power and money, two things the indigenous people do not have.
HS: Do you have any suggestions on what biologists can do differently (e.g. in what they choose to study, the approaches they take, the interpretation of their data) to help repair this relationship between conservation and indigenous groups?
MC: What the biologists/conservationists need to do is stop imposing their agendas on indigenous peoples. They have to listen to indigenous agendas and take them seriously. They could do this by spending time with indigenous people and experiencing their lives, what their problems are and how they deal with them. What their thoughts are on a variety of issues such as natural resources, food, sustainability, economics, and land tenure. I know this would take time, but something along these lines needs to be done. Without it, there will be no meeting of the minds and no basis for negotiating terms, and collaboration. There will be no respect or trust on either side of the divide. The biggest obstacle at present is the imbalance of money and power, both of which are on the side of the conservationists. It allows them to push their own agendas, using the excuse that they know what is right for the planet. I don’t think we can change this. In other words, I am not optimistic.
HS: Looking back, what is the place of this article (2004, World Watch) and the study on which it was based in the long arc of your career?
MC: I see the article as a small blip in my career path. I value much more the work of bringing indigenous peoples together in Central America and Mexico by helping—with various indigenous groups—to organise regional conferences and workshops dealing with natural resources, land tenure, and cultural identity; and also the mapping projects we set up with groups in Latin America, Africa, and New Guinea, and the mapping of Central America we did with National Geographic (1992 and 2002) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (2015). These maps were collaborations with the indigenous peoples and showed natural ecosystems, indigenous territories of occupation and use, and protected areas. All of this mapping, in which indigenous people and local villagers mapped their lands according to their wishes, have been extremely influential and have had a powerful impact at all levels.
The mapping we did with a number of indigenous peoples in Latin America, along with the work in Africa (Cameroon) and New Guinea (West Papua and Papua New Guinea) was a first step in which people in all of these areas have begun to learn about the practical value of mapping and learn to do the mapping themselves. They have begun to learn the technology of cartography; they have been working with professional cartographers in their own countries—and the cartographers have learned new skills to work with indigenous peoplein the field, withfield data, for the first time (before this, they had only worked with aerial photographs, never field data). The mapping has been a real collaboration of people and technology, and the maps have been recognised as valid—“official”—by governments everywhere we have worked. When I consider all that has been done with the organising and especially the mapping, the World Watch article was a minor diversion.
HS: What might you say to a young conservationist who is about to read the 2004 article?
MC: Just be aware of the issues it raises. I can’t force anyone to behave as I would like. But they should know what the dynamic between conservation and indigenous rights is, and perhaps learn something that can lead to a more constructive partnership in the field.
This article has been modified from: Sridhar, H. 2022. Revisiting Chapin 2004. Reflections on Papers Past. https://reflectionsonpaperspast.wordpress.com/2022/04/24/revisiting-chapin-2004/. Accessed on 5th May 2022.
Further Reading Chapin, M. 2004. A challenge to conservationists. World Watch Magazine 17(6): 17–32.
As a lemur swings through the forest, consuming fruit, it inadvertently contributes to the persistence of the forest flora. Forest regeneration and ecosystem functioning are not at the forefront of the lemur’s to-do list. Rather, when the lemur enjoys its meals, seeds are consumed and, via faeces, distributed throughout the forest. However, the logging of huge tracts of forests at an alarming rate creates a dire survival situation for arboreal, foraging primates, and a negative feedback loop ensues. As the trees in the forest are felled, available habitat declines and many species are unable to remain in the forest consuming fruits. In turn, the seeds they would normally digest and defecate are no longer dispersed throughout the forest. Other organisms with tree-dwelling and foraging ecological traits will have similar effects on ecosystem functioning. Many plants rely on larger consumers, such as lemurs, to disperse their seeds, and without these obligate dispersal partners, the plants cannot effectively maintain their populations. Thus, there is a domino effect with extinction.
Plants and animals possess ecological traits that directly mediate ecosystem services. In the primate-logging example, not only are the lemurs at risk of extinction, but the important ecosystem functions (seed dispersal) they provide are also at risk. However, if we can assess extinction risk in terms of ecological traits, we can obtain a clearer image of the cascading effects that may result from their loss. Yet, the consequences of the biodiversity crisis are typically measured in terms of population loss or individual species extinctions. Due to the differences in ecological and taxonomic diversity, our research team was particularly interested in another equally important aspect of the biodiversity crisis: the ecological functions that are at risk of being lost and the associated consequences.
Ecological traits at risk of extinction
We assigned terrestrial vertebrate (amphibians, reptiles, mammals, birds) species to three core ecological niche axes (habitat association, mode of locomotion, and feeding mode) and tested for associations with their extinction risk status. We found that cave-dwelling amphibians, primates that live in trees and use all four limbs for locomotion, aerial and scavenging birds, and scaled reptiles that use walking locomotion are all disproportionately threatened with extinction (high-risk ecological categories). The loss of ecological functions associated with these traits has the potential to disrupt ecosystem processes and services on global scales.
Risk factors of extinction
We identified the threat types contributing to endangerment across all terrestrial vertebrates. Agriculture is a dominant human influence on our planet and we discovered that it is the single most common threat type to terrestrial vertebrate species globally. Further, we examined the connection between the high-risk ecological categories and their primary extinction threat types. For example, primates that live in trees and use all four limbs for locomotion are most threatened by agriculture, hunting, and logging.
The ‘death by a thousand cuts’ hypothesis
We examined the total number of extinction drivers threatening terrestrial vertebrates as a whole and within each taxonomic class and found that species at greater risk of extinction are on average affected by a greater number of extinction threat types. Thus, following a death by a thousand cuts scenario, where a species may tolerate one or two extinction drivers, but as the number of threats increase, the species’ vulnerability to extinction also increases.
Our study demonstrates that certain ecological traits make a species more vulnerable to extinction. The preferential loss of ecological traits in conjunction with increasing human disruption, has the potential to have global consequences. By identifying the threat types most strongly associated with endangerment of ecological traits, we take a critical first step towards ameliorating these global functional disruptions.
Further Reading
Munstermann, M. J., N. A. Heim, D. J. McCauley, J. L. Payne, N. S. Upham, S. C. Wang, M. L. Knope. A global ecological signal of extinction risk in terrestrial vertebrates. Conservation Biology 36(3): e13852. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13852.
Halting species extinction and ecosystem degradation require proactive decisions. We make decisions every day, often without thinking, but the decisions encountered in conservation are often perplexing. They include decisions like, how to save a species threatened with extinction? How to protect species and ecosystems while also considering the needs of people? When to stop monitoring and implement an uncertain solution? They take place against a backdrop of cumulative anthropogenic pressures, chronic underfunding, and a broader social, cultural and economic landscape. They also involve differing values, complex alternatives, scarce resources, urgency, and uncertainty.
When faced with such challenging decisions, the rapid, intuitive way we make decisions is often not our friend. It can lead us to delay decisions, pick the first alternative that comes along, or flip a coin and hope for the best. But using these strategies to manage species and ecosystems can lead to bad outcomes. For example, species may go extinct while waiting for the action to be taken, or scarce funds may be wasted on ineffective measures.
So, what can be done? In a recent paper in the journal Conservation Biology, we suggest that theories, frameworks, and tools from decision science can help. Decision science structures thinking so that decisions are informed, transparent, and defensible, and the alternatives identified improve the chance of achieving desired outcomes. Decision science is not new to conservation, but there are barriers to uptake. These include a lack of training; confusing terminology; a perception that applying decision science is complex, time-consuming and costly; and not knowing where to start.
Our paper seeks to overcome these barriers to help conservation practitioners navigate the disparate decision science literature better and improve the rigour and feasibility of applying decision science in conservation contexts.
We contend that better outcomes start with learning to think through decisions by decomposing decisions into manageable components. This process is called decision analysis (or structured decision-making) and lies at the heart of decision science. The steps can be loosely summarised as follows:
Define the decision to be made
Specify what we want to achieve (i.e., values of importance)
Identify the alternatives we can take to achieve values of importance.
Estimate how alternatives perfor on values of importance
Assess trade-offs
Pick the best option
Iterating through these steps helps ensure we’re working on the right decision and that all values of importance are identified. This process can also help to design alternatives that better achieve these values. Rapidly iterating through these steps with the information at hand may reveal a suitable alternative, at which point the decision can be made. If this doesn’t occur, the initial iteration can provide insights for subsequent iterations (such as a value that needs to be considered).
At each step, a number of decision-support tools can be drawn on. They include qualitative tools, such as brainstorming, conceptual mapping, and strategy tables; quantitative tools, such as data, models, structured expert elicitation; and tools for dealing with trade-offs. In addition, there are decision support frameworks such as Priority Threat Management framework and Systematic Conservation Planning which can help to navigate through multiple steps of a decision analysis for a range of conservation decisions. Our paper simplifies the choices between the vast array of tools and frameworks by outlining to which steps and to what problems each may be helpful.
For those facing difficult conservation decisions, our paper provides a much-needed contextual framework of key terms and prescriptive guidance for getting started with decision science. This will help to illuminate a pathway for turning these difficult problems into timely, effective, and beneficial outcomes. As a bonus, many of the steps outlined are universal and will help improve decision-making for any difficult decision encountered.
Positionality statement: The paper reflects the views and experiences of 24 authors who primarily work in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the USA, and who have been primarily trained in western (ecological) sciences. The authors have diverse demographic identities within these bounds, and diverse experience with decision science. Our hopes in preparing this paper were to: 1) Provide a simple entry point to decision science, so that difficult conservation decisions are more tractable; 2) Diversify who can access and apply decision science; 3) Provide a foundation for critical appraisal of the field; and 4) Stimulate discussion and contrast of the field and other ways of making decisions for biodiversity conservation.
Further Reading
Hemming, V., A. E. Camaclang, M. S. Adams, M. Burgman, K. Carbeck, J. Carwardine, I. Chades et al. 2021. An Introduction to Decision Science for Conservation. Conservation Biology 36(1): e13868. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13868
At the turn of the last century, James Carrier and Daniel Miller introduced the idea of a ‘virtualism’. A virtualism is a model of reality that is so powerful that when people imbibe the model, they expect it to be true. A bit like marriage if you think about it. If reality proves to be different from the model then reality, not the model, has to change.
In the main, these authors had in mind economists’ models, which have tremendous prescriptive power. For example, these models expect people to be rational profit maximisers, and when the modellers discover that people are not, well then, they ought to learn to be. You must change yourself to conform to the model. But virtualisms are also prominent in conservation. Conservation is full of models and visions of what the Earth should look like. It is the science of the future.
Carrier and Miller’s arguments are important, but they are flawed in one obvious respect. They fail to say how right virtualisms are. It seems obvious to us that if you have a good working model that allows you to understand things, then it is only reasonable to change the world so that it fits the model. Otherwise you fall prey to a myriad local tyrannies and pretensions of nuance that simply ignore the fact that THE MODEL IS RIGHT. Models are always right. In fact, they are more than that. They are beautiful—which is why models are called ‘models’. On the catwalk of life, they shine most gloriously. The history of life on this planet could, and should, be written as an unnecessarily painful process of learning to be a model of itself.¹
Now, it is our unfortunate duty to report that, despite there being a number of reasonable and utterly exquisite models of landscapes, biodiversity and society, there are a number of places and things which continue to exist in blatant disregard of their proper place or form. We must do something about this. And it is with more sadness than anger that we write to seven of the most egregious offenders these letters in the following page.
1) Dear Indian biodiversity, According to the Global Roadmap for Conservation, you ought not to exist. Given the massive number of roads that run through your domain and the bazillions of people that live off you, you should have disappeared and become a low priority for conservation planning. We ask that you rid yourself of all those endemic fish and frogs, butterflies and birds and beetles. Keep a tiger for old times’ sake! Don’t drive us crazy, The Road Kartel
2) Dear Siberian Tundra, By virtue of the same Global Roadmap, you have been pronounced an important area for biodiversity conservation. So, stop mucking around with the handful of shrubs and herbs, and the occasional anaemic tiger, and give us the goods. We demand a cacophony of crickets, a glut of geckos, a decadence of damselflies. How about a forest? That would be good for carbon too. These cold austere landscapes will not do. Freezing you out, Cold Shockington
3) Dear Wilderness of North America You most definitely exist. You were created by imagining people-less wilds to be the pinnacle of landscape evolution and then purging the peoples who had the temerity to people you, thus restoring your unsullied virginity. But you need to get bigger, better, more original. The histories of the lands you need to conquer are no object. After all, they never have been before. You are much too small and modest right now. And make your mountains grander while you are at it, please. Yours pristinely, Awe Shockington
4) Dear Mt. Hanang, We regret to inform you that you exist in the wrong place. You are a 3500m mountain found in central Tanzania, covered with afromontane forest and montane ericaceous vegetation. Yet, in the vitally important new eco-regions map of all the world’s ecological zones, you are plainly, and rather neatly, classified as halophytic floodable savannah. You are appear to think that you are an extinct volcano, but you are meant to be a salt lake. You must stop this selfish occupation of endangered halophytic territory immediately. You are therefore instructed to move to one of the places where extinct volcanoes are normally found within three days of the post-marked date of this letter. Please resist any temptation to explode upon receipt of this directive. We lava you, Heat Shockington
5) Dear Unpronounceable volcano originally somewhere in Iceland, If ever there is a feature of the landscape that was found in the wrong place, it is you. You got everywhere! Keep yourself to yourself and well away from any flight paths for evermore. We lava you too, Still Smokington
6) Dear Beaches of the World,
Stop shifting your sands. All this constant erosion and accretion is driving us nuts. You are making it very hard for coastal developers, cartographers, town planners, and beach bums. Various molluscs, crustaceans, and worms of all kinds are greatly inconvenienced by your behaviour. We have also received a petition from the sea turtles of the world, asking that you stay exactly where you are. Do not move, do not cross go, do not collect $200!! Yours sedimently, Oyster Shuckington
7) Dear Global Economy,
You have never done what was expected of you. The Crash of 2008? The shock therapy treatment of Russia? Are you trying to make economists look stupid? Your behaviour is decidedly weird because you helped give rise to the phenomenon of virtualism in the first place. At the very least you could have stuck to the script. Now people are pointing out that growth does not bring happiness, prosperity (broadly defined) or a general positive outlook on life. And that is definitely not what the model prescribed. Yours shilingly, Debt Piling-upton
The problems do not end here. Make up your minds, mangroves—are you aquatic or terrestrial? Rivers, how dare you change course? And in the larger and longer scheme of things, continents, for heaven’s sake2, stop drifting and settle down.
If only the world and its peoples (and other life) realised that it is the scientists’ job to decide what things look like and how to behave, and everyone else’s job to do what they are told, then the world would be a much better place. Just ask a lab rat.
¹DNA, for example, did not have a clue what it actually was until Crick and Watson made their famous model of it.
In the last several years, the hunting and trapping of grey wolves has increased dramatically in the “lower 48” states of the United States. A recently published paper (see Further Reading section at the end) authored by several of the nation’s leading biologists and wildlife advocates, found that there is a lack of data to justify this recent wave of lethal wolf management. This is the first peer-reviewed research of its kind since wolves were removed from the Endangered Species List in the Northern Rockies in 2020.
Below is an interview with authors Dr. Peter Kareiva, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and President and CEO of the Aquarium of the Pacific, and Elishebah Tate-Pulliam, a research assistant at the Aquarium of the Pacific and a previous recipient of the Aquarium’s African American Scholars award.
Q: Stepping back a bit, why did you personally get involved with the wolf issue? Runningthe Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California, what led you to author a peer-reviewed analysis on an issue that is most central to the Northern Rocky MountainStates?
A, Peter: I joined the Aquarium of the Pacific because I love animals, am committed to conservation, and believe that our planet will thrive only if the public better understands and appreciates wild nature. Our current wolf management conundrum is a trenchant example of three factors: poor treatment of animals, poor conservation, and poor information. Of course I got involved—I used to call my beloved family dog “little wolf” as a puppy. And then there is the science. In 1997 I served on a National Academy Committee that examined the hunting of wolves in Alaska. What we found in Alaska foreshadows what is happening now in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming—the Alaskan wolves were being unfairly blamed for doing much more damage to moose populations than the actual data revealed. Conservation, compassion, and a commitment to data drew me to the #RelistWolves Campaign—a grassroots coalition of conservationists, environmental nonprofit organisations, wildlife advocates, Native American tribes, and scientists. The campaign and its members have dedicated themselves to enhancing public understanding of wolves and ensuring their survival by advocating for one common goal: to restore the grey wolf to the Endangered Species List.
A, Elishebah: My undergraduate and graduate work included nothing about wolves or terrestrial conservation, but I did conduct research on ecosystem restoration in marine coastal systems. The reintroduction of wolves to western North America is one of the greatest successes of species reintroduction and ecosystem recovery. That caught my attention. So, when Dr. Kareiva invited me to join the wolf team, I couldn’t say yes fast enough. Like many people, I had my own view of wolves, but as a scientist, I wanted to learn more about their ecology and interaction with humans. In some way, wolves remind me of great white sharks, which I think of as wolves of the ocean—feared and vilified, yet magnificent animals.
Q: What are some of the benefits of wolves? Why are wolves so vital for our society and for nature?
A, Elishebah: As a keystone species, grey wolves are critical for maintaining healthy, resilient ecosystems and preserving biodiversity. We depend on these amazing animals to serve as ecosystem guardians. For example, wolves help keep herbivore populations, like deer and elk in check. Without predators, elk and deer can become so abundant that they overgraze, which in turn exacerbates soil erosion and produces heavy loads of sediment in streams.
A, Peter: Elishebah is exactly right. The best documented case study comes from Yellowstone National Park, where wolves were reintroduced in 1995. The return of wolves changed elk behaviour, keeping them on the move, which in turn allowed young willow and aspen plants to survive when previously they would have been browsed by elk. The return of these plants then helped beaver populations recover, and helped reduce sediments in streams. A less commonly appreciated benefit of wolves is their prudent predation of sick and diseased animals.
For example, chronic wasting disease has been spreading among elk and deer populations in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and wildlife biologists hypothesise that wolves could play a valuable role in removing sick and infectious animals, thereby slowing the spread of this deadly brain disease.
Q: What is wrong with current wolf management policies?
A, Peter: Extreme wolf hunts in states like Idaho, Montana, and Wisconsin have shocked many wildlife biologists because of how many wolves were killed in such a short period of time. In only six months of the 2021–2022 hunting season in Montana, at least 25 wolves from Yellowstone were killed when they wandered outside the park boundary—a number that represents one-fifth of the federally protected Yellowstone wolf population. Even more dramatic is the killing spree in early 2021 of at least 216 wolves in Wisconsin over a three-day period. The zeal with which hunters killed wolves clearly overwhelmed Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources. By the time the hunt was shut down, at least 97 more wolves had been killed than the state-mandated quota of 119 wolves. More generally, we found that data surrounding the benefits of wolves typically has not been incorporated into state-level wolf management decisions. Also, when state agencies formulate their wolf policies, it does not appear that they gave much weight to the collateral damage associated with rampant trapping and hunting of wolves.
A, Elishebah: Creating effective management policies for wolves is complicated. Firstly, wolves are predators and there’s no denying that wolves kill both wild and domesticated animals as they go about their business of being a wolf. That said, data indicate wolves much prefer wild prey to domesticated cattle and sheep. Human societies have a long history of treating predators like wolves as vermin. Before the arrival of European colonists, wild nature thrived in harmony with Native Americans, and wolves were abundant throughout North America. That all changed as western colonists spread across the continent hunting, trapping, and poisoning wolves to near extinction. But now as wolves make a comeback, they encounter a landscape filled with human activities. This renews opportunities for wolf-human conflict and in turn has created the threat of a second round of persecution and wolf slaughter. Unfortunately, our protest of the wolf slaughter is seen by some as an attack on hunters. It is not an attack on hunters. We know that hunters are often great conservationists. We also recognize that hunting is a cultural legacy for many westerners, and any ban on hunting might be interpreted as an infringement on the rights of hunters. I certainly agree that hunters have rights. But animals also have rights. Ethical hunters respect animal rights when they embrace the principle of fair chase. However, no one would call baiting, trapping, running wolves down with packs of dogs and ATVs, and night-vision hunting a fair chase.
Q: You have mentioned poor information—what did you mean by that?
A, Peter: That’s a great question. First, there is huge uncertainty about how many wolves there are, how many have been killed in the recent hunting spree, and how frequently wolves have preyed on livestock. We think there are around 6,000 wolves left in the lower 48 states as of last year, but credible analyses of the uncertainty of this estimate have not appeared in the scientific literature. We are not even sure how many wolves have been killed over the last two years—we think it is around 1200. However, because of poor data transparency, under-reporting, and poaching, we worry the 1200 number is an underestimate. Finally, when we attempted to quantify wolf impact on livestock, we ran into difficulties. We examined the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s data on livestock killings in our analysis and found that it’s only published about every five years and includes livestock deaths that are only presumed wolf kills, not necessarily confirmed wolf kills. The bottom line is this: the current justification for wolf hunts is based on data that is inconsistent and unevenly reported. It is my strong belief that given the precarious status of wolves, no hunting should be allowed until we have more transparent and accurate data. In the absence of such data, prudence tells us to be cautious before we sanction such widespread slaughter of wolves.
Q: What do you say to the tens of thousands of farmers and ranchers throughout the U.S. who claim that they must kill wolves, In certain instances, to protect the well-beingof themselves and their livestock?
A, Elishebah: Firstly, I understand the desire to protect one’s livelihood. Ranching is a tough business: droughts, fires, diseases, extreme temperatures, and predators can cause a rancher to lose income. At a more personal level, I am sure ranchers are upset whenever one of their cattle or sheep are killed. For this reason, ranchers should have their concerns heard and addressed—and they are. I wonder, however, if the ranching community has an accurate view of the deaths caused by wolves in the context of all the undesired deaths that their livestock suffer? To provide some context regarding this concern: the number of sheep and cattle killed by wolves never exceeded 0.21% and 0.05% of unwanted deaths in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Wisconsin, according to the 2020 USDA report on sheep and 2015 report on cattle. Causes other than wolves made up the vast majority of unwanted livestock deaths. Why are we vilifying wolves for their attacks on livestock, when in fact their predation on livestock is minor compared to all the other factors?
A, Peter: We understand the challenge that independent ranchers have, which is why we advocate for conflict reduction (which has proven effective) and reimbursement programs. Our point is simply that killing wolves should be a last resort, not the first option.
Q: You mentioned conflict reduction, what can this look like in practice?
A, Peter: There are a wide variety of effective non-lethal wolf management techniques. Ancient techniques like fladry, which entails creating a perimeter of colourful flags around livestock, combined with contemporary techniques like strobe lights and loud noises have proven effective at deterring wolves. In addition to these tried and true methods, some recent non-lethal innovations promise even greater success going forward. I just learned about this idea of infusing carcasses of cattle with cocktails of nauseating chemicals. When the wolf eats this cattle carcass, it feels sick and develops a learned aversion to cattle. That clever innovation is exemplary of the creative ideas we should be exploring in order to avoid primitive lethal approaches.
A, Elishebah: One idea is establishing programs that reward ranchers who invest in conflict reduction. This can complement programs that compensate ranchers who have lost livestock to wolves.
Q: Does the killing of wolves ever evolve into the killing of other, non-targeted speciesso to speak? If so, can you explain?
A, Elishebah: Attempts to deplete wolf populations often result in wolf hunters and trappers accidentally shooting and trapping dogs and other “non-target” species. Nearly one non-target animal was accidentally trapped for every wolf trapped in Idaho from 2012 to 2019, including threatened and endangered species. In Montana during the hunting seasons of 2018–2020, half of all non-target species accidentally caught in traps were domestic dogs.
Q: Is there anything being done to advocate for wolf protection? What can readers do toget involved?
A, Peter: The Biden Administration is conducting a status review with the chance to restore federal protections to ALL grey wolves. Relisting wolves is the only way to stop brutal state-led hunts before it is too late. In the long term, we need to pursue coexistence with wolves, as well as coexistence with the many other “dangerous” animals that were once endangered but are now recovering. We have learned how to save and restore wildlife—now we need to learn how to live with wildlife. Write your congressional representatives and encourage them to pay attention and care. Support organisations that strive to protect wolves and other wildlife.
A, Elishebah: Dr. Kareiva mentions what amounts to advocacy. As a recently graduated student, I think education and communication are key. We need to escape the tyranny of an “us versus wolves” mentality to an “us and wolves” mindset. Moving toward this change in mentality is what we are working towards with the #RelistWolves Campaign. I’d encourage folks to visit RelistWolves.org for more information on the campaign and how they can take action.
Keystone species
The concept of “keystone species” can be traced to R.T. Paine, who introduced the idea after conducting field experiments in which the removal of starfish from rocky intertidal communities in Washington State, USA, led to a transformed intertidal zone—blanketed with mussels, whereas in the presence of starfish intertidal rocks were covered with barnacles, sea palms, mussels, anemones, and other “space-holders”. “Keystone” is a metaphor for a species that holds the ecosystem together, much like the keystone at the top of a stone arch. Some species are more equal than others, and keystone species are those organisms which, if deleted from an ecosystem, the ecosystem shifts to a totally different state with a cascade of impacts that dramatically alter the abundances of other species. Without its “keystone”, a stone arch collapses into rubble. The elimination of these species in nature can prompt surprising and far-reaching changes or collapses in the local environment. Examples of keystone species include sea otters, elephants, sharks, certain diseases, and of course humans! Unfortunately, human activities have tended to deplete and in some cases locally extinguish keystone species throughout the world, largely because keystone species are most often predators at the top of food chains and are thus viewed by humans as dangerous or as competition.
Further Reading:
Estes, J. A., J. Terborgh, J. S. Brashares, M. E. Power, J. Berger, W. J. Bond, W. J. Carpenter et al. 2011. Trophic downgrading of planet Earth. Science333(6040): 301–306. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1205106
Eisenberg, C. 2013. The wolf’s tooth: keystone predators, trophic cascades, and biodiversity. Washington DC: Island Press.
Kareiva, P., S. K. Attwood, K. Bean, D. Felix, M. Marvier, M. L. Miketa and E. Tate-Pulliam. 2022. A new era of wolf management demands better data and a more inclusive process. Conservation Science and Practice: e12821. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.12821.
Wildlife populations are threatened by human-caused mortalities, ranging from hunting, roadkill, collisions with wind turbines to bycatch (the accidental capture of non-target species) in fisheries. Examples like the extinct passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) or the northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni), of which only two individuals remain, show us how quickly the loss of individuals due to human activity can lead to the extinction of local populations and even entire species. Fisheries bycatch, in particular, remains a global problem for biodiversity conservation and fisheries management. Indeed, the extinction of the enigmatic Yangtze River dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer) in China was attributed in large part to fisheries bycatch. Likewise, the vaquita (Phocoena sinus) of Mexico’s Sea of Cortez faces imminent extinction for the same reason. With no more than a dozen individuals remaining, it is now the smallest porpoise in both size and number. As such, one of the pressing challenges for wildlife managers and policymakers is: How many deaths are too many? At what point would a wildlife population decline or even go extinct?
Captured Protected Dolphin in net CC: Simon Allen
Determining a sustainable limit to human-caused mortalities is a paramount conservation challenge and requires appropriate tools. The Potential Biological Removal (PBR) equation, for example, is a popular tool in fisheries management, allowing scientists and fisheries managers to calculate the maximum allowable number that can be removed from a ‘stock’ (wildlife population). In other words, it is an estimation of an acceptable limit of wildlife mortality due to human activity (e.g. bycatch in the case of fisheries). PBR is based on estimates of the impacted population’s size and growth rate. However, such conventional tools typically do not consider ‘stochastic’ factors—random chance events that affect wildlife populations. Stochastic factors that influence population dynamics include environmental changes, such as extreme weather events, which are expected to increase in frequency and intensity with climate change. Although often ignored in population models for conservation, stochastic factors can have large effects on the fate of populations because they affect birth and death rates, and in some cases may be the tipping point of whether a population remains stable or declines, whether it persists or goes extinct.
Captured protected Dolphin on deck CC: Simon Allen
With our colleagues, we developed a new conservation tool that incorporates such stochastic factors to determine sustainable limits to wildlife mortality due to human activity. We called this tool ‘SAMSE’ for “Sustainable Anthropogenic Mortality in Stochastic Environments”. Likewise, we called the sustainable limit to wildlife mortality the ‘SAMSE-limit’, which we defined as the maximum number of individuals that can be taken from a population without causing a population decline in a changing environment. SAMSE is based on population modelling that can be implemented using off-the-shelf software, such as VORTEX, offered by the IUCN Species Conservation Toolkit Initiative free of charge.
We applied SAMSE to a case study of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) subject to fisheries bycatch off Western Australia. The Pilbara Fish Trawl Interim Managed Fishery targets a range of finfish for the domestic market, but unfortunately, also results in the accidental capture of protected species, including dolphins. Captains reported 16–34 dolphins caught per year (2006–2017), while independent fishery-observers estimated dolphin bycatch rates of 45–60 dolphins per year (2003–2009). When we applied the conventional PBR method without incorporating stochastic factors, the maximum bycatch mortality limit was 16.2 dolphins per year. By contrast, when we incorporated stochastic factors, using SAMSE, we calculated a SAMSE-limit of just 2.3–8.0 dolphins per year. Reported dolphin capture rates have thus consistently exceeded the SAMSE-limit. Our case study suggests that dolphin capture rates are unsustainable, especially when incorporating stochastic events. The study also illustrates that conventional approaches that do not account for chance events may underestimate the true impact of human-caused wildlife mortality.
By introducing SAMSE as a novel conservation tool, we offer a broadly applicable, stochastic addition to the conservation toolbox for evaluating the impact of human-caused wildlife mortality. We are working on an app that will make SAMSE easily accessible to researchers and wildlife managers worldwide. This is particularly salient given the broadening spectre of climate change-induced environmental fluctuations.
Further reading: Manlik, O., R. C. Lacy, W. B. Sherwin, H. Finn, N. R. Loneragan and S. J. Allen. 2022. A stochastic model for estimating sustainable limits to wildlife mortality in a changing world. Conservation biology 36(4): e13897. doi:10.1111/cobi.13897.
Featured image: a male southern pygmy perch (Nannoperca australis) by Michael Hammer
Biodiversity loss is a major environmental issue with freshwater species particularly vulnerable due to impacts, such as flow reduction and diversion to agriculture, drought, pollutants, and invasive species. Restoration programs in the form of captive breeding combined with reintroductions to the wild are becoming a popular management option to combat population decline and species loss. These programs are intended to be the last line of defence against extinction, as they aim to restore or maximise biodiversity in the wild when other avenues for conservation have already been exhausted. However, many reintroduction programs are unsuccessful for a number of reasons, including reduced genetic diversity in captively bred populations.
Breeding tanks
Genetic diversity is the range of genetic characteristics found within a population and it is essential for the evolution of populations through adaptation to changing environments. If genetic diversity is low, fewer opportunities exist for a population to adapt, thereby increasing its extinction risk. Low genetic diversity in captive populations can be due to inbreeding (when close relatives breed with each other) and genetic drift (the loss of genetic variants due to chance events during reproduction). Adaptation to captivity, whereby gene variants beneficial for the captive environment are selected for, can also reduce genetic diversity. Therefore, it is important that captive breeding programs use genetic-based approaches to preserve as much of the genetic diversity found in wild populations as possible.
Long-term datasets from monitoring programs are essential to determine whether genetic diversity has been maintained post-reintroduction, but most studies do not incorporate this information due to time and economic constraints. Our study provides a rare empirical example of a long-term genomic monitoring program that clarified the outcome of genetic-based captive breeding and reintroduction for the threatened southern pygmy perch (Nannoperca australis).
Southern pygmy perch are a species of small-bodied fish (<85mm) endemic to south-eastern Australia. Alongside other small-bodied fish, they are particularly vulnerable due to their reliance on habitats subject to rapid degradation and poor dispersal capabilities, limiting their ability to move when conditions become unfavourable. A population of southern pygmy perch inhabiting the Lower Lakes region of the Murray-Darling Basin would have gone locally extinct during the Australian Millennium Drought (a period of severe water shortages from 1997–2010). Fortunately, emergency rescue was undertaken to bring the remnant population into captivity in 2007.
Monitoring Site
These rescued individuals (approximately 65 fish) were the basis for a breeding program which utilised genetic data to create breeding groups comprising unrelated individuals to maximise the genetic diversity of offspring. Following the return of water to the Lower Lakes region in 2010, offspring of the first captive-born generation were reintroduced to their original habitats in spring 2011 and autumn 2012 (approximately 1350 fish released). The release of the first-generation individuals was important for reducing time in captivity and therefore lessening the potential for adaptation to captivity. Following reintroductions, demographic and genetic monitoring of the southern pygmy perch population was undertaken annually or bi-annually from 2011 to 2021.
Monitoring Site
Post-reintroduction monitoring of the restored wild population identified some recruitment (addition of new individuals), but limited population growth prior to 2018. In 2018, a larger number of individuals were detected and in 2019 the population was found to have expanded its range outside of the reintroduction site. Alongside this successful population growth, genomic analysis showed that inbreeding remained low and genomic diversity was maintained in the first generation bred in captivity. Critically, low inbreeding and maintenance of genomic diversity was observed across eight generations in the restored wild population. This is a clear success and provides evidence that genetic diversity can be maintained in captive breeding programs if genetic approaches are incorporated.
Further Reading
Marshall, I. R., C. J. Brauer, S. D. Wedderburn, N. S. Whiterod, M.P. Hammer, T.C. Barnes, C. R. Attard et al. 2022. Longitudinal monitoring of neutral and adaptive genomic diversity in a reintroduction. Conservation biology 36(4): e13889. doi:10.1111/cobi.13889.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the people of the Ngarrindjeri Nation as the traditional custodians of the Lower Lakes. The success of this long-term program would not have been possible without high levels of collaboration and partnership. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the Molecular Ecology Lab at Flinders University, the South Australian Government and Native Fish Australia.
Photographs by Molecular Ecology Lab Flinders University (MELFU) and Michael Hammer
Photo credit: ‘White Storks in flight’ by Lawrence Hills. 2020
Hunting is a controversial topic, not only amongst conservationists but also the wider public. Our research defines hunting as the shooting or trapping of a wild animal in line with local laws and regulations. Poaching, on the other hand, is not. Nuances such as this are vital when discussing polarising conservation issues.
Receiving much public attention, including from the popular conservationist Chris Packham and Queen guitarist Brian May, the hunting of migratory birds in Malta is one of the high profile conservation issues in Europe. One of the smallest countries—area wise—in the world, Malta is an island nation with a rich and complex history resulting from its strategic location in the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Africa. Since entering the European Union (EU) in 2004, Malta has had to significantly adapt its national hunting laws to align with EU directives.
Being held accountable to EU directives consequently allowed international environmental NGOs, such as BirdLife Malta and Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS), to conduct surveillance activities and report to the European Commission. Surveillance not only monitored the breaking of hunting laws but also extended to the Maltese government, who were often accused of weak enforcement and judicial decisions that lacked severity. It is these factors that gave Malta the unenviable reputation as a “blackspot” for illegal bird hunting in the Mediterranean region.
Our research utilised multiple data sources to build a picture of how enforcement of hunting regulations, as well as trends in wildlife crime developed from 2008 to 2017. This period is important as it includes multiple key events during a time of rapid change in the landscape of bird hunting in Malta. We found that, over this period, enforcement efforts increased every year and far exceeded EU standards. Alongside enforcement, environmental NGOs also assisted with patrolling the countryside, mobilising groups of volunteers armed with cameras and drones to monitor hunters and catch poachers.
Figure 1. Key events from 2000 – 2018 surrounding bird hunting in Malta. Ferns, Campbell and Veríssimo. 2022
In what reads as good news for conservation, our research found that, alongside increasingly intense surveillance, convictions of bird-related wildlife crime reduced over this period. However, when talking to key local stakeholders—such as members of enforcement departments, a president of one of the largest hunting associations, and an experienced ornithologist—a number of contradictions emerged.
Firstly, escalating tensions among stakeholders is preventing collaborations between them. The situation is further complicated when stakeholders call into question the reliability of each other’s data, e.g. government statistics, surveillance results, and self-governance figures. Consequently, stakeholders are getting more polarised and distrust is becoming a key issue within their relationships. The distrust is so strong that it creates problems such as: poachers and hunters being considered as one and the same; physical altercations between environmental NGO members and the hunting fraternity; and the government being publicly criticised on the international stage.
Secondly, informants believe that the restrictions imposed on hunters has resulted in a worrying trend of poachers travelling to countries in North Africa and the Middle East, where governance is weaker. This is enabling greater levels of poaching than could ever be achieved in Malta. This frustration is further heightened by the reach of hunting communities through social media, rightly or wrongly, creating a sense that the limitations on home soil through EU directives only serve to increase the opportunity of hunting or poaching in other countries.
We conclude that, whilst enforcement is an important component of wildlife crime reduction, it should not always be considered as a primary tool. An unbalanced approach which neglects stakeholder engagement—in this case involvement of hunters in advocacy and governance—and traditional norms has the potential to create dynamics that are contradictory to conservation goals.
Further Reading
Ferns, B., B. Campbell and D. Veríssimo. 2022. Emerging contradictions in the enforcement of bird hunting regulations in Malta. Conservation science and practice 4(4): e12655. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.12655Veríssimo, D., and B. Campbell. 2015. Understanding stakeholder conflict between conservation and hunting in Malta. Biological Conservation 191: 812–818. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2015.07.018
