fish

One of the most exciting conservation initiatives in Asia at the moment is the Harapan Rainforest Initiative in central Sumatra, where I have just stayed for a week.

One of the most exciting conservation initiatives in Asia at the moment is the Harapan Rainforest Initiative in central Sumatra, administered by a trust formed of the RSPB, BirdLife International and Burung Indonesia. I’ve been fortunate to have just stayed there for a week, sleeping out on the forest floor with local teams while being based in their main camp.

As Sukianto Lusli, Burung Indonesia Executive Director, told me with great excitement when he first explained his crazy idea to me years ago, “It’s flat!” This may not mean much to most people, but given that conservation areas tend to be those areas with difficult access, little water, steep topography, and basically the bits that no one else wants, to be in an area managed for conservation that was (more or less) flat was wonderful.

"I was swimming in the river near Godmanchester and I got the fright of my life when a large triangular dorsal fin broke the surface of the water just in front of me. It was so close I could have touched it."

The old fishermen proclaiming, "When I was young the fish used to be THIS big," need to be heeded – not ridiculed.

So said an old lady at my church in Cambridge, England, some 20 years ago when she found out I worked in biodiversity. She was recalling an event some sixty years before when she was a young girl. It turned out she was describing the dorsal fin of a massive European sturgeon, a prized source of caviar, and now virtually extinct in the UK. The wonderful old lady and I had different perspectives on the matter. To her the existence of the sturgeon at her local swimming hole was part of her personal experience, whereas to me it was a disconnected event in the foggy past. To her the long absence of seeing a sturgeon represented a loss, whereas to me it was a species I would never expect to see so close to my home because I knew they no longer exist. We had different baselines.

One thing villages in Pacific Island countries can do is to organize the farmers to cultivate the land of participating farmers collectively, increasing manpower and thus improving productivity.

In some Pacific Island countries, such as Fiji, Solomon Islands, Samoa, and Vanuatu, land is fertile and suitable for growing a variety of tropical fruit, vegetable, and root crops. The majority of these populations rely on subsistence agriculture and fishing as their economic mainstay. In some islands, the women and children work the farm while the men fish for the day’s catch. In other islands, the men tend the farm while the women sell the surplus crops in nearby markets.

Land development for commercial agriculture is limited in most of these islands due to issues surrounding communal ownership of land. Take an example of a small farming village in the rural areas near the capital city of Fiji. This village consists of seventy households, of which sixty live below the national poverty line. The head of each household has the right to cultivate a portion of the communal land to feed his family.

Black Dragon Spring. See full photogallery.

A remarkable feature of the distribution of Lake Dianchi’s endemic fish fauna (see previous entry ) is that some of the species are essentially confined to ponds protected by Buddhist temples.  These ponds are fed by freshwater springs coming out of the karst hills which surround parts of the Dianchi Basin. The water is beautifully clear and it is a very special feeling to see such excruciatingly rare and restricted species in such special surroundings.

Visit one of the many Buddhist temples in China and neighboring countries and you are more than likely to see sellers of small caged birds or of baby turtles which believers can release to gain merit.  To be honest, many of the small birds are already stressed and likely dehydrated and don’t live long (and indeed are often re-caught). This is one aspect of the wildlife trade issue in SE Asia, and a few years back we supported a delightful cartoon book on this with the Lao PDR office of the Wildlife Conservation Society and with additional support from the Canada Fund.