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East Asia & Pacific is facing some great development challenges today: urbanization, protection of the environment, the need to find renewable energy sources and many others. This site wants to create a conversation around those important issues. More »

wildlife

Returning to Siberut: 30 years later, little has changed on remote Indonesian island

Submitted by Tony Whitten on Wed, 2009-09-23 12:15

Go anywhere after a 30 year break and you expect to see change – and you hope things will be better. Thus my wife Jane and I, together with our four children, were intrigued to see what life was like now on Siberut, the largest and most northerly of the Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra, when we visited it a few weeks ago. Jane and I had lived in a hut in the middle of the island conducting wildlife research for over two years until 1978. We wanted to see our closest friend there, Potifar Tengatiti Siribetuk, as well as other old friends, our old study area, some of the remaining traditional houses, and as many of Siberut’s four endemic species of primates as we could.

Visiting the island and the provincial capital of Padang also provided an opportunity to observe the impacts of the $1 million of grants which had focused on Siberut under the Phase 1 of the World Bank-implemented Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund. These grants had followed on from an Asian Development Bank loan project (pdf) from 1992-2000 which was not a resounding success for a variety of reasons. This had itself followed on from WWF projects.

Convenient solutions to an inconvenient truth: How old-fashioned conservation helps deal with climate change

Submitted by Tony Whitten on Tue, 2009-07-14 12:13

So much is being written about climate change. The heat is on, so to speak, to find new solutions to increasingly dire predictions from ever more detailed data and refined models. Many conservationists are setting great store by the promise afforded by RED (Reducing Emissions through Deforestation) and REDD (add Degradation). It is only a few more months before we learn whether the leaders of the world reach agreement of whether to move forward and unlock the money which could – forest governance permitting – cause a major boost to the funding and rationale for forest conservation.

Meanwhile, a new World Bank report has revealed that conservationists have actually been doing climate change projects all along; they just hadn’t realized it. New technological fixes aren’t essential to taking positive action.

Carbon Expo: A marketplace to finance environmental change

Submitted by Florian Kitt on Thu, 2009-05-21 17:04

Carbon finance sounds boring and technical and not much fun. However, it actually does a lot of good and can help fund critical environmental preservation projects as well as introduce clean and renewable technologies in both developed and developing countries. I am not a carbon specialist but at present involved in organizing the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific Region's participation in next week's Carbon Expo, a global trade fair for CO₂ market participants. Doesn't really sound like a lot fun? Indeed, it's a lot of work.

Shifting wildlife baselines: For the sake of the future, listen to your grandparents

Submitted by Tony Whitten on Tue, 2009-05-19 12:05

"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.

Deforestation in Sumatra, Indonesia – mapping the "thwacking"

Submitted by Tony Whitten on Wed, 2009-04-15 10:33

Click map to enlarge.

Looking at the new maps of Sumatra's forests, the Once-ler in Dr Seuss' The Lorax would not conclude that we "cared a whole awful lot," but rather that we were cutting them down as fast as we please.

It's nearly 35 years since I first flew over Sumatra, an island in western Indonesia. Looking out of the plane window, the dark green forests stretched to the horizon. Even if there weren't any Truffula trees, there were many herds of elephants, families of tigers, groups of monkeys and many thousands of lone orangutans calling and moving around the forest, hardly ever crossing paths with humans. Then came the organized loggers, the transmigration settlements, and the plantations – rubber, oil palm and industrial timber.

About half Sumatra's forests have been lost since 1985. Last year, a WWF report (pdf) found that forest cover in Riau province, central Sumatra, has fallen from 78% to 25% in 25 years.

Indonesia: The giant cuckoos, enormous gingers, and pretty leeches of Halmahera

Submitted by Tony Whitten on Thu, 2009-03-19 13:32

Judith Schleicher and I have just left the eastern Indonesian island of Halmahera, which was the subject of my first blog post a year ago. We were there on the second supervision mission – something which must sound pretty dull. In fact it was a real pleasure to meet with friends in the project team again, to see how well they are doing, and pretty exciting to have two days and two nights in the forests of the northern block of the Aketajawe-Lolobata National Park to see – despite the rain – some of the biodiversity and human impacts in the area. P.T. Weda Bay Nickel kindly allowed us to use their helicopter to get into the forest, landing at the junction of three abandoned logging roads within the northern (Lolobata) section of the national park.

Burung Indonesia is doing a fine job of executing this project and has already developed solid relationships with government, civil society and private entities to form a strong and informed constituency of concern for the protection of this new national park.

(After the jump: More about Halmahera Island’s wildlife – including birds, trees and leeches – and photos.)

Tracking wildlife in Lao - Day six: From Camp 6 to Ban Navang

Submitted by Nanda Gasparini on Tue, 2008-03-25 06:45

Arrived at Ban Navang! Arlyne and Tony with some of the villagers who were working on the wildlife monitoring.

Feb. 9, 2007* - This morning we, sadly, had to make our way out of the forest. We had our breakfast and left around 6:30 am as the transect teams were leaving to do their last day (day four) of their surveying in this area (tomorrow they’ll move to a new location).

The walk on the trail back was absolutely stunning. It is such a beautiful forest, it’s hard to describe and no adjective would probably ever do it justice. On the walk back we got lucky again and saw some Douc Langurs! They really are amazing creatures. And they sure make some giant leaps as they make their way from tree to tree.

We stopped midway to have lunch, and reached Ban Navang shortly after 3 pm (about a 16-kilometer walk from Camp 6, towards the opposite direction than Tha Phai Ban). Ban Navang is a very nice, but very poor, village of about 310 people. With support from the WMPA they have been able to build water wells, a school, and the typical “toilet houses” you see in Lao villages: small, little houses made up of wood and palm leaves with a squat toilet. They also have some water wells where Arlyne and I bathed today.

Tracking wildlife in Lao - Day five: Camp 6

Submitted by Nanda Gasparini on Fri, 2008-03-21 07:29

Feb. 8, 2007* - Second day of transect for us and third for the team. Arlyne and I joined a different group today, while Tony and Jim joined our group from yesterday. Our most interesting viewings today were Brown Hornbills – big birds about 70 centimeters tall, with a tucan-like beak, and sitting very high up in the trees – and a Giant Black Squirrel, just sitting there, with its large, bushy tail that made it look kinda like a skunk from where I was sitting (with my binoculars about 200 meters away.) The animals were so beautiful! I never imagined getting this excited about seeing a bird, squirrel or monkey, particularly when they are hundreds of meters away! But it’s exciting stuff! Like Tony says… the “WOW” factor: that moment when you first say “wow” and your perspective changes forever….

Perhaps almost as amazing as seeing the wildlife is noting the talent of these men in spotting things that are hundreds of meters away (granted they used to hunt for a living). While they have binoculars as well, they mainly spot the animals with their bare eyes, it’s incredible! I could barely see the hornbill at first, and they could just tell from hundreds of meters away, that high up on a tree, was a silhouette next to some leaves (which was a hornbill). I guess Arlyne and Tony are right; these are just the skills that they develop on a daily basis.
Lao Jungle Diary 5

Tracking wildlife in Lao - Day four: Camp 6

Submitted by Nanda Gasparini on Wed, 2008-03-19 11:02

Mr. Xaypanya signals on the map where we went that day while Tony and Arlyne, on the left, and Jim and I, on the right, watch.

Feb. 7, 2007* - Although this was my first transect ever, and our first transect here, it was the team’s second day. We woke up at 5:30 am, had breakfast, and left for the transect just before 7 am. Arlyne and I joined one group, while Tony and Jim joined another. In each group there are generally three people (usually men in this case): the leader and another “observer” (looking out for species) and a guard (just in case).

The idea of the transect is to cover about two kilometers of territory, in a straight line (which is set up on the first day following GPS location and compass bearing), slowly and quietly, listening and looking out for the species. Why five types in our case? According to Arlyne, they chose these five because they generally are relatively easy to either hear or see in this forest but are also some of the most threatened by hunting – a big concern in the NT2 Watershed.

The aim of the survey is, then, to measure the abundance of these five species over each transect, repeating it every four years, for 30-years (the period financed by the Nam Theun 2 Power Company), which will allow the WMPA to track whether wildlife levels have been maintained, increased or decreased (and thereby assess whether protection efforts are working).

Making a stop on the way to Camp 6 to have lunch. My favorite was the meng da geo, a gel-like substance in which to dip the rice, except this one was made of crushed, dry insects.

Feb. 6, 2007* - Up at 6 am, pack, enjoy some nice instant coffee Arlyne brought, some sticky rice with chicken left over from last night, and ready to go!

Today was a “point A” to “point B” day, meaning our main goal was to get to Camp 6, sixteen kilometers away from Tha Phai Ban, to join the groups working on the wildlife monitoring (the “transect” teams) – the reason why we’re here!

The walk wasn’t bad at all. We stopped about half way to have some lunch and got to camp by 4:30 pm. The forest is so beautiful, there’s so much energy! We walked through some villages, each with their own map pointing to what part of the protected area they live in and which parts they use for agriculture, to hunt, gather forest products, and which areas they fully protect. I also got to practice my Lao with my WMPA (Watershed Management and Protection Authority, which manages the protected area) and government friends, which was a nice little extra benefit for me!

Once at camp, we set up our tents, had a bath in freezing Nam Che river (I thought I’d lose a toe!) and had dinner of freshly-caught fish and sticky rice. My favorite part was the meng da geo, a gel-like substance in which to dip the rice, except this one was made of crushed, dry insects (much tastier than it sounds!)