| JOHN ROBINSON
ES: Thanks, Steve—that was great. It’s actually probably a
preface for next year’s symposium on marine reserves and conserving
the seascape.
Our next speaker, Dr. John Robinson, is the Senior Vice President and
Director of The International Conservation Program for The Wildlife Conservation
Society. In your program it says that he oversees more than 300 field
projects in 53 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It also mentions
that he has undertaken fieldwork.
We don’t ask any managers, including myself, how long it’s
been since we’ve undertaken fieldwork. But one of the things he
doesn’t mention is what he undertook fieldwork on. And something
you might want to ask him about, in the break or at lunch, is the fellowship
that he belongs to. It’s a secret fellowship that no one talks about.
And if you scratch the surface of any conservation organization in the
United States, you will find a primatologist.
So John’s going to give us a little bit of an overview of putting
the conservation genetics field into the broader context of landscape
conservation. Thank you, John.
(Applause)
MANAGEMENT OF DIVERSITY: A LANDSCAPE APPROACH
John G. Robinson,
Senior Vice President and Director,
International Conservation, Wildlife Conservation Society
JR: Thank you, Eleanor. It was
a long time ago. . . .
I’m going to speak more broadly about biological diversity. Biological
diversity, biodiversity, has been the subject of a lot of governmental,
intergovernmental, and nongovernmental discussions over the last decade.
It’s become, really, a central preoccupation of conservation. And
numbers like these—25% of all species of birds have been driven
to extinction over the last 200 years; statements like—of the remaining
9,600 species, 1,100 are listed as endangered; about 18% of all mammals
are listed as endangered.
But despite all of this attention, a consensus has not really been developed
on: What is the biodiversity that we’re talking about? Most people,
when you talk about biodiversity, think about lists of species—just
like the list that I just gave you. Nor is there a broad consensus on
how to conserve biological diversity. A lot of discussion about parks
and reserves, sustainable use, multiple-use areas and the like. This presentation
will sketch out some answers to some of these questions, especially from
the perspective of The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
When we think about biological diversity, I think we all recognize that
biological diversity has got a number of components out there—genetics,
species, communities, ecosystems, and landscapes—and that each of
those components has a number of attributes. Structure—which really
relates to the physical organization and pattern of that diversity; composition—which
is the identity and variety of biodiversity; and function, which is the
ecological and evolutionary processes linking and acting between those
elements.
Conservation and biological diversity therefore really has to occur at
all of these different levels. We’re looking at all of that, and
attempting to conserve the whole pattern. You can focus on different cells,
and there’s going to be collateral effects across different cells,
but no one approach is going to capture all of this. And I’m going
to argue that the genetic component gives us the most sensitive indicator
of biodiversity loss, and the landscape component gives us the most cost-effective
and pragmatic approach. But ultimately, all of these components are inextricably
linked, as Stephen Palumbi was saying.
Looking at genetic diversity—just a few examples. We can look at
the attributes of genetic diversity, and we can say that a conservation
strategy, like the creation of gene banks—which basically targets
the composition of genetic diversity—is a very effective strategy
for that one cell. There are some collateral impacts—but, generally
speaking, it’s a quite focused approach.
And then, going to the other extreme, we can look at landscapes and say:
At the landscape level you can focus your conservation activities at the
landscape level. But while this approach can be quite good at conserving
these overall patterns, an approach that is restricted to looking at landscape
tends not to do such a good job of conserving species, diversity, or genetic
diversity. An agroscape, basically, can conserve these kinds of landscape
characteristics or attributes, but it’s not the same as a natural
landscape.
Now traditionally, what conservationists have done is, they have created
parks. And WCS, as a fairly typical conservation organization, has, over
the course of its history, created 130—or helped in the creation
of 130—parks and reserves around the world. And in the last 12 years
or so we claim to have created, or helped create, about 130 million acres
of land around the world. The problem with parks is that we’re only
able to preserve a certain percentage—a very small percentage—of
the terrestrial land in parks and reserves, and the proportion of the
marine realm that we have been able to conserve is much, much less than
that.
Also, an issue with parks is that we are, perhaps, reaching the end of
the park-creation era. This looks at protected areas in tropical forests
really from 1900 to 1995. And basically, what you can see is that we seem
to be reaching the end of the creation of these kind of areas as a conservation
strategy. We also have to deal with the whole issue that we’re not
going to be able to keep all these species bottled up in parks. Species
tend to move. Populations tend to require larger areas than most of the
parks that we’re dealing with today.
So conservation can basically occur at a number of different scales. At
the local-site level, we can do a very, very good job of controlling and
managing the biological communities out there. Less so at the park and
reserve level. But, again, our level of control is fairly significant.
But at these levels, at these scales, there are many species that we do
not conserve in anything like a systematic way. At the other extreme—basically,
the regional conservation efforts—you’re very, very effective
at influencing things, and you’re very effective in the planning.
And a lot of what conservation organizations are involved in today—which
is sort of planning for conservation; developing priorities; developing
lists of ecoregions, or lists of hot spots—really occurs at this
level. And it’s an influential level, but it is not a very good
level to actually implement conservation action. You’ve got a lot
of influence but not a lot of control. The landscape level is a mesolevel,
and conservation organizations, I think, are increasingly focusing their
conservation activities at that level.
If you’ll look, though, at the conservation at the landscape level,
what you’re trying to get to is levels of connectivity between natural
areas. As you do that, you reach out from those natural areas, moving
into the human landscape, and you get conflicts over resource use; you
have issues of the social context and enforcement of various kinds of
things.
If you’re going to do conservation at the landscape level, you must
include human land uses and activities. The reality, of course, is that
our expertise and ability to do that kind of management is still pretty
limited. Especially because humans and wildlife frequently come into conflict
in these intermediate zones.
Now, let’s look at the effects of human use on biological diversity.
If you examine the components of biological diversity across a gradient
of human impact—reading across the top here—natural, managed,
and cultivated—what you can clearly see is that, in a general sense,
the more you have human use, the less you are able to conserve biological
diversity. But if you go down the components here, you recognize that
you can conserve, even in cultivated areas, a fair bit of landscape diversity,
a little bit less of ecosystem diversity, but not very much of species
and genetic diversity. Now, this is a very broad pattern out there—but,
basically, you’ve got both of these things in place. If you’re
interested in conserving genetic diversity, in general—and trying
to capture all of that genetic diversity—clearly, what you need
is some strictly protected areas.
One of the approaches the WCS is using, in a sense, to try and integrate
across those different levels, is what we’re calling the “landscape
species approach”—which basically tries to integrate species
conservation with ecosystem conservation, with a more landscape approach.
Where the goal of this, in some sense, is to conserve the landscape, and
the landscape attributes, but the mechanism is through the eyes of the
species.
And we’ve defined a set of species out there that we call “landscape
species.” These species use large ecologically diverse areas, and
often have significant impact on the structure of natural ecosystems.
In other words, spatially, they move across large areas, or their populations
require large areas, and their requirements in time and space make the
landscape species especially susceptible to human alteration. These are
species that use space, in many ways, at a level very similar to the way
that we, as human beings, use space. And it’s actually because of
that that many of these species are in pretty bad shape.
Now, going back to our scale diagram, one can actually define different
kinds of species that tend to occur, and tend to subsist, at different
kinds of levels. So you have local-scale species—which can be conserved
at the local site—and they can be things like bog turtles.
Landscape species, though, tend to occur and move across space which is
broader than your typical park and reserve. These are not necessarily
all charismatic megafauna. Many of them are. But many species—hummingbirds,
black-back woodpeckers—tend to use space at a much larger kind of
scale. Many of these species occur at low population densities. So if
you’re interested in conserving minimum viable populations of these
species, you need to think about the larger areas. Other species, which
may occur in locally abundant situations, tend to move across very large
areas—and you need to be able to think about their conservation
in terms of those large areas.
Now, the challenge, in some sense, is defining the conservation landscape.
What defines the characteristic needs for a population of one of these
landscape species? Clearly, what we’re trying to do is, we’re
trying to conserve ecologically functioning populations. And, at a minimum,
that probably means we’re trying to conserve minimum viable populations,
which are going to be defined by the genetic characteristics of the population.
A population requires a certain kind of area to survive. And by characterizing
the movements of that species, and identifying the requirements of that
species, you can begin to identify the resources that they need, and the
area that they need to survive.
As a conservation strategy it can be quite effective, because the population
exists at a landscape level, and working to conserve that species allows
you to get at the landscape-scale processes. If the species, as well,
is a good umbrella species—capturing a lot of species underneath
it—you can also capture and conserve a lot of the species and their
genetic constituencies.
Let me give you a very specific example. This is actually a drawing by
a 14-year-old who immediately understood the concept. And its core—a
park, and different land uses—human land uses—around those
parks. And, basically, the idea is, this area is the required area to
support a certain suite of landscape species. And this approach very rarely
just uses one species—it tends to use a whole stack.
I’m going to give you a very specific example. WCS has been involved
in the conservation of the Nouabalé Ndoki National Park, right
here in the middle, in northern Congo, for about the last eight years,
when the park was created. There are a number of adjoining parks in other
countries—some of which are quite successful, some of which are
not. To the southwest and north of the park there are large forested areas
that are being opened up for forestry exploitation.
As we looked at this area we began focusing the activities on a set of
landscape species—species like the forest elephant—which,
apparently—we seemed to be finding movements all through this area—right
from the Nouabalé Ndoki area, right down into Lac Lebeki; crossing
the rivers here, into two other countries; moving out in this direction.
So these are species which move fairly broadly. There are also other species,
like the bongo, which occur in locally abundant populations, but they’re
very, very restrictive. And so to manage this population you need to think
about a much broader metapopulation.
At the core of all this is the Nouabalé Ndoki Park. And, as you
can see from these pictures, you’re dealing with a very heterogenous
landscape, and the animals are moving out across that landscape. And then
you have—again, here’s the park here. To the south—this
is the forestry concession of the Congolese Industrielle du Bois—CIB—which
is the largest employer in the country of Congo. And this is their coupe
pattern. They’re now actually moving right up here. They’ve
cut roads up here, and moving up into this area, up here. And their impact
on the landscape is very, very significant.
Bokala, the main headquarters has got probably between 12 and 15,000 people
now living there—that’s down here—with industrial sawmills
and the like. These are cutting camps, out on the edge, and the impact
on the forest is very significant. Not only on the forest, itself—but
there’s a very, very significant bushmeat trade in the area, because
almost all of the animal protein, which supports all of those people,
comes from wild meat. And there is commercial hunting which goes on for
things like elephant, and for their ivory—and, also, for their bushmeat.
However, the conservation of this whole area must recognize that these
things are going to be going on. They need to be integrated into the conservation
landscape; they need to be mitigated to the extent that we can. But if
we’re going to conserve populations of wildlife—even in this
very remote area—we’re going to have to manage for all of
these things.
So to recap in a general way, we need to think about the biological landscape
of the species. You saw the movement patterns, just as an example, of
mandrills in Gabon. These are animal movements around a water hole. And
so we define a biological landscape, which is defined by the needs of
wildlife in time and space. We have preferred food resources, breeding
habitats, secondary food resources, etc.—and we have a human landscape.
And the human landscape, again, is a landscape which frequently takes
the natural landscape and alters it, or converts it, in one way or another.
And we have our human land-use patterns—with creating indigenous
reserves; totally protected areas; agricultural areas. Frequently, as
in this particular case, you know, nations cut through this area. And
the conservation landscape is basically the intersection of the human
and biological landscapes.
And that intersection allows us to define the key threats to the wildlife
populations—be it bushmeat hunting, and that kind of problem; or
it could be agricultural areas, which are affecting things like breeding
habitats. And, ultimately, this gives us a way to focus our conservation
actions. In this particular case, in this example, minimizing demand for
bushmeat—or better enforcement, or whatever—maximizing habitat
quality and the like.
The bottom line is, we are clearly seeking to conserve all the components
of biological diversity. The landscape-species approach is an efficient
and cost-effective approach, especially if conserving the higher components—in
other words, the ecosystems and landscapes out there—because you’re
trying to conserve at that scale. And to the extent that these landscape
species are umbrella species, we’re also capturing much of the species
and genetic diversity out there.
But conserving many species in the full range of genetic diversity clearly
requires totally protected areas. Genetic diversity, in general, is our
most sensitive indicator of change, and very difficult to manage for it.
However, it is the component of biological diversity which is most affected
by human use.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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