Back in October, we posted a story about a new technological tool called Cybertracker that is being used by indigenous San communities in southern Africa to track and monitor wildlife.

Last week, Botswana’s largest daily newspaper published another story on the CI-funded project, providing new insight into the lives of the trackers as they deal with long treks, staggering temperatures and potentially dangerous animals on a daily basis.

The life of a tracker is difficult, but its benefits outweigh the challenges. The Cybertracker project provides a rare employment opportunity for local people, encouraging them to continue the millennia-old cultural tradition of animal tracking and improving wildlife monitoring methods which are critical to maintaining healthy ecosystems and species.

Read the full story here.

Rosy periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus) - Madagascar plant from which cancer cures are derived.

Across the globe, ecosystems, plants and animals are rapidly disappearing.  As these wild lands, waters and species are destroyed, vast libraries of organic compounds potentially useful to medicine are also lost forever.

Almost all survivors of cancer and other serious illnesses have natural compounds from rainforest plants and other wild species to thank for their recovery.  As a member of the Alliance for Global Conservation, CI is dedicated to spreading the word about the immeasurable benefits that biodiversity provides for human health–for both today and tomorrow’s medical breakthroughs.

Check out the Alliance for Global Conservation website to learn more about the role of species in medicine and read personal testaments from cancer survivors.

Add your voice, and support international efforts to protect global ecosystems.

Several years ago, CI conducted a seminar on marine mammal and sea turtle rescue training in the Philippines’ Verde Island Passage. When a beached whale was found in the region this past December, Jessie de los Reyes, a graduate of the seminar, helped mobilize the community’s response. Corina Bernabe, the communications coordinator for CI-Philippines, recounts the experience.

Village patrolman Hernan Reyes was conducting a routine patrol along the shores of Nasugbu, in the Philippines’ Batangas province, when he met with an unusual sight: a 29-foot whale stranded in the shallow waters. It was 3 AM. A series of phone calls followed the discovery, and by daybreak, officials from various agencies had started arriving at the area, constituting a hastily-formed local response team.

The whale appeared calm and was breathing regularly, but would move or thrash its tail when people got too close or too noisy. The animal was found to have about 16 wounds on its body; the municipal veterinarian was called in to administer to the wounds, which were later assessed by experts to be inflicted by bites from the cookie-cutter shark (Isistius brasiliensis).

The incident naturally attracted a lot of attention in the village, with the local school even deciding to release its students early so they could witness the rare spectacle.

Some of the onlookers were later tapped to assist in releasing the whale, which was done after the veterinarian had administered antibiotics to the wounded animal. About two dozen men worked together to lift the whale (assisted by a rope sling) and guide it to deeper waters. The whale immediately swam out of the cove as soon as it was able to float, and a boat followed it to ensure that it safely reached open water.

Through the videos and photographs taken at the scene, experts were later able to identify the species as a Bryde’s whale (pronounced “broodus”), Balaenoptera edeni. In the Philippines, historical records indicate that the Bryde’s whale was subjected to hunting in the past. There is little information available on the current distribution of the species in the country, and live strandings such as what happened in Nasugbu are uncommon.

Cetaceans such as whales are key ecological indicators. High up on the marine food chain, declining numbers of cetaceans such as whales can cause imbalances in the marine ecosystem, consequently affecting fisheries and those that depend on them.

The successful release of the Bryde’s whale in Nasugbu was in large part due to the dedication and cooperation shown by the local community. It also shows an appreciation of the importance of creatures such as whales in maintaining a healthy marine ecosystem. That unforgettable morning in Nasugbu, the entire community was united in one thought: saving the whale was everybody’s priority.

Read more about this unusual event.

“So much for global warming!”

I must have heard some variation of this comment 10 times during the “snowpocalypse” that buried Washington, DC in snow in early February. The record-breaking weather has caused many climate change skeptics to revive their arguments, prompting heated responses from climate activists like Bill McKibben of 350.org and Al Gore. As a writer for CI, I wanted to add my two cents to this much larger conversation.

The belief that a large snowfall disproves the occurrence of climate change confirms much more about the inaccuracy of the widely-used term “global warming” than it does about the actual state of the planet. The scientific community has shifted toward using the term “climate change” to more accurately explain the fluctuations in temperature, weather patterns and species distribution that are occurring across the globe. Thomas Friedman even coined the term “global weirding”, which he discusses in a recent article addressing climate change skepticism.

But whatever you call it, its wide range of impacts are clear: even as DC sees more snow, large stretches of the African continent are facing serious drought, and glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland are melting at a dangerous rate.

And climate change also has many indirect and often unexpected effects. Consider the recent article in “Slate” magazine about the impacts of salting roads and sidewalks on nearby water supplies and ecosystems. For thousands of years, armies would spread salt on the fields of their enemies to kill crops and discourage life—yet today we are introducing it into our environment voluntarily?

Experts predict that climate change will further intensify storms, which, in the DC region, may mean more snow and salt. Heck, even Dallas, Texas got more than a foot of snow this year. And that’s just weird.

In a recent BBC News article, scientists found that bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus)—the back-flipping, front row-splashing, always-smirking denizen of many aquariums around the world—may hold potential insights to finding cures for type 2 diabetes which affects millions of people worldwide.

Now think about this for a minute: dolphins are big and photogenic and pretty well-studied, yet we’ve only just discovered this particular potential contribution to human health. Now imagine all the plants and creatures that scientists rarely see, are harder to study or that scientists don’t even know about, and the mind begins to boggle at what else may be lying out there, waiting to be discovered.

Conrad Savy is  a Conservation Science Advisor for CI.

This week I am in Costa Rica with various CI colleagues. We are taking part in a workshop and are lucky enough to be staying along a protected national rainforest. This protected land is part of a growing effort by the Costa Rican government to safeguard its most precious treasure: tropical rainforests.

As I walk through the dense jungle, I am wandering along narrow paths that are used by the various indigenous peoples who live nearby and consider this jungle their home. Although today is a rainy day and the rainforest (today very aptly named) is covered in a heavy fog, it’s difficult to adequately describe the beauty that surrounds me. It’s not hard to see why Costa Ricans are arguably considered the happiest people on the planet.

Often protecting these rainforests is seen simply as a way to lower climate change pollution—a carbon balancing act.  By putting a price tag on the forest, we hope to make the forests worth keeping. It’s an important argument, as these rainforests are critical to fighting global climate change as well as providing multiple secondary benefits such as medicines, food and fresh water.  It’s sad to think that we don’t just save these forests simply because we need their beauty—they enrich our lives by their existence alone.

I can’t say how many times I have talked to Americans from all walks of life who rave about a wonderful vacation they had in some country covered in rainforests.  They describe in detail the scents, the animals, the beauty—I wish we remembered this when protection of these forests by our leaders is being discussed and sometimes dismissed.  Maybe it’s time we work to save these rainforests just because it’s the right thing to do?

Russ Mittermeier with lemur at publication launch event

I remember when I was living in Tanzania in 2008, I stopped by the Wildlife Conservation Society office in Mbeya to learn more about their programs. I was surprised to hear that an entirely new species of monkey (the kipunji—Rungwecebus kipunji) had been discovered in the nearby Southern Highlands only five years before. At the time of my visit, the researchers were just beginning to familiarize the animals with their presence.

kipunji

But despite the kipunji’s remote habitat and how little we know about them, the species is among the top endangered primates in the world, according to Primates in Peril: The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates 2008-2010 (PDF – 14.4 MB).

This publication was announced today at London’s Bristol Zoo by a group of world-renowned primatologists from organizations such as IUCN, the International Primatological Society and CI (represented by CI president Russ Mittermeier).

“The results from the most recent IUCN assessment of the world’s mammals indicate that the primates are among the most endangered vertebrate groups,” said Mittermeier.

According to the IUCN Red List, almost half of the world’s primates are threatened with extinction from a combination of factors, including the destruction of tropical forests, the illegal wildlife trade and bushmeat hunting.

Mittermeier continued, “the purpose of our Top 25 list is to highlight those that are most at risk, to attract the attention of the public, to stimulate national governments to do more, and especially to find the resources to implement desperately needed conservation measures.”

The report is a bit dry (unless you’re a primate geek like me), but it contains beautiful illustrations by Stephen Nash of these rarely-photograped animals, as well as interesting insights about the species.

Without immediate action, species like the kipunji, which only appeared on our radar a few years ago, could vanish just as quickly.

Read the press release.

Where can you find stunning photographs and inspiring stories highlighting CI’s work around the globe? What does it mean when CI says we are taking our activities to a whole new scale?

It means this—Among other things, the new issue of Team Earth will:

• summarize the outcomes from December’s United Nations meetings in Copenhagen, and examine the next steps we must take to tackle climate change;
• explore how partner organizations in southern Africa are working with CI to save elephants while improving human livelihoods;
• reveal CI’s ambitious new plan to save the world’s oceans; and
• visit the forests and farms of Tanzania, where CI’s TEAM Network and the Gates Foundation are joining forces to revolutionize agricultural practices while conserving essential ecosystems.

It’s a busy time, and an exciting one. Take a moment. Take a look.

While Fernando and Artur were planting trees on a farm in Mineiros (see last Thursday’s blog post), I spent a couple of hours collecting some video footage and interviewing local stakeholders.

I had the opportunity to talk to Renato Alves, project coordinator of the NGO Oréades, CI-Brazil´s local partner. In the video below (in Portuguese), he explains the carbon project.

Mirella Domenich is the communications manager of Conservation International Brazil. After filming the video above, she joined in to help plant many native trees!

VIDEO: Renato Alves explains the carbon project (em português)[See post to watch Flash video]

Em português

Enquanto Fernando e Artur plantam sementes de árvores nativas do Cerrado, em uma fazenda em Mineiros, em Goiás, na região Centro-oeste do Brasil, eu investi algumas horas coletando imagens e entrevistas sobre o projeto Carbono Emas-Taquari, que a CI-Brasil implementa em parceria com a ONG local Oréades.

Eu tive a oportunidade de conversar com Renato Alves, engenheiro agrônomo e coordenador de projetos da Oréades, que me deu explicações sobre o funcionamento e objetivos do mesmo. Confira trechos da entrevista no vídeo abaixo.

Mirella Domenich é gerente de Comunicação da CI-Brasil e, depois de coletar as informações em vídeo e foto, também colocou a mão na massa para plantar as mudas de espécies nativas.

At six o’clock this morning, Artur, Mirella and I met the Oréades staff members, an headed out to the field, where we would be planting one hectare of plants native to the Cerrado, the Brazilian savannah. Two hours later, after traveling almost 90 kilometers (56 miles) along a road surrounded by soy plantations, we arrived at the farm that would receive the first seedlings of the carbon sequestration project. I immediately smelled the fertilizer we would be using: turkey manure and eggs. The smell was terrible, but our cause was noble.

During the land work, which was divided between 12 people, I started thinking about my own life experience and the new things I was learning. Although my job makes me one of the people directly responsible for the Cerrado’s preservation, this was the first time I had planted trees in my life. Undoubtedly, it was a great experience, allowing me to see in person how much deforestation costs. They say that one of the most important things to do in life is to plant a seedling. I would say it’s even better to plant more than one tree, especially when they’re native species.

Physically exhausted by the labor and the sun that did not stop throughout the day, everybody cheered when the last seedling was planted. Mission accomplished! Now we can say that we planted the trees that, in the words of Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran, will be “the poems that earth writes upon the sky.”

Fernando Ribeiro is a sociologist and socioeconomic coordinator of CI-Brazil’s  Cerrado-Pantanal Program.

Em português

Dia 27 de janeiro foi o terceiro dia da visita de nossa equipe (eu, Artur e Mirella, conforme post anterior) no município de Mineiros, interior de Goiás, na região centro-oeste do Brasil, com o objetivo de acompanhar de perto nossos parceiros da ONG Oréades na implantação do projeto de sequestro de carbono para mitigação de mudanças climáticas, intitulado Projeto Carbono Emas-Taquari. A atividade desse 27 de janeiro foi a que mais marcou, sem dúvida nenhuma. Fui para uma fazenda com o Artur e Mirella e a equipe da Oréades para plantar um hectare de mudas nativas do Cerrado, a savana brasileira. Foi a primeira vez que plantei árvores na minha vida e devo admitir que fiquei muito contente por isso. Sem contar que foram espécies do Cerrado, bioma do qual eu sou um dos responsáveis diretos pela preservação.

Era quarta-feira quando, às 6 horas da manhã, acordo para me encontrar com o pessoal da Oréades, e irmos para o campo. Depois de quase 90 Km pela estrada, onde só se via plantações de soja, chegamos às 8h à fazenda que receberia as primeiras mudas do projeto de sequestro de carbono.  Apesar de toda a vista linda do Cerrado, eu não poderia esperar que o adubo que utilizaríamos seria esterco de peru com ovos. Sem dúvida nenhuma, o cheiro era terrível, mas a causa era nobre.

Durante o trabalho na terra, que era dividido por 12 pessoas, pensava em como eu havia chegado ali, minha trajetória profissional, pessoal e novos valores que estava adquirindo. Sem dúvida, foi uma grande experiência que, apesar de ter sido breve, me permitiu ver o quanto custa o desmatamento e as queimadas. Dizem que uma das coisas a se fazer na vida é plantar uma muda. Eu diria que uma das coisas a ser feita na vida é plantar várias mudas e, se puder escolher, que essas sejam do Cerrado.

Esgotados fisicamente pelo trabalho braçal e pelo sol que não cessou durante todo o dia, as 12 pessoas aplaudiram quando a última muda foi plantada. Missão cumprida!  Agora, podemos dizer que plantamos as árvores que, na frase do poeta libanês Khalil Gibran, serão “os poemas que a terra escreverá para o céu”.

Fernando Ribeiro é sociólogo e coordenador de socioeconomia do programa Cerrado-Pantanal, da CI-Brasil.