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.

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.

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.

© CI/Piotr Naskrecki

As the saying goes, it’s the little things in life that really matter. Literally. I’m talking about the millions of tiny creatures that go unnoticed each day by most of us.

Dr. E.O. Wilson and David Liittschwager’s recent article in the February issue of National Geographic Magazine, “Within One Cubic Foot,” really brings these creatures to life for us. The close-up photos of hundreds of colorful and spectacular species bring this microscopic world to our eyes.

In just one cubic foot, Liittschwager documented an incredible array of biodiversity: more than 600 individual organisms in a coral reef in French Polynesia, 90 species in the Fynbos of South Africa, 32 fish species and over 100 clams in a river in Tennessee (USA) and over 500 insects representing 100 species in a Costa Rican cloud forest.

To me, this diversity is fascinating but not too surprising. As an entomologist working for CI’s Rapid Assessment Program (RAP), I have closely studied hundreds of one meter square plots on the rain forest floor, many containing over 30 ant species per plot. Our RAP team scientists document the diversity of remote and unexplored parts of our world, consistently revealing hundreds of species new to science, most of them from this realm of miniature creatures. It’s truly exhilarating for us to explore and study these tiny organisms, knowing that most of what we’re looking at has not yet been described by science and may not even have been seen by humans before!

The diversity of these little animals is the foundation of life in the forest and on the rest of our planet. They serve essential functions by breaking down dead and decaying material, acting as predators and prey, pollinating plants and sustaining the chemical processes that keep us all alive. In the article, renowned entomologist and biodiversity expert (and my Ph.D. advisor), Dr. E.O. Wilson points out that “without the smooth working of all this linkage, the biosphere would cease to exist”. In his book, “The Creation” (2006), Dr. Wilson explains, “People need insects to survive, but insects do not need us. If all humankind were to disappear tomorrow, it is unlikely that a single insect species would go extinct, except three forms of human body and head lice…but if insects were to vanish, the terrestrial environment would soon collapse into chaos.”

I am excited to see this intriguing story in National Geographic and hope that these spectacular photos help to bring these creatures more attention and respect.  If you’d like to see more photos and stories of this fascinating world, I highly recommend reading the book “The Smaller Majority” by my good friend and colleague, Dr. Piotr Naskrecki.  His macro-photography is beautiful and the stories of the small but dominant creatures of the earth are a must read.

Learn more about the discoveries made on our RAP expeditions.

Leeanne Alonso manages CI’s RAP program.

Rob McNeil and a giant Japanese salamander

Last week I was in Japan looking for giant salamanders (Andrias japonicus), and for two days I stayed in the charming and bustling city of Hiroshima.

Visiting Hiroshima for the first time is a peculiar experience. As a 36 year-old who grew up in fear of nuclear Armageddon during the 1980s, the word Hiroshima evoked two frightening images for me: a mushroom cloud and the shattered dome of the one building that still stood after the attack. The human horrors that those images captured were so frightening that I experienced them as a feeling of deep fear at the bottom of my stomach.

Extraordinary Creatures

The extraordinary creature that I was in Hiroshima to visit seems strangely relevant to my teenage picture of Hiroshima. It looks like the sort of terrifying mutation that all those 1950s sci-fi movies implied that the atomic age would unleash on us – a giant salamander, 100,000 times the weight of a normal salamander, with a bite that could take off a limb (or a finger at least).

But these salamanders are not mutants, created by a gamma ray burst in 1945. They are in fact ancient animals that have lived in the beautiful streams around Hiroshima for millennia.

The fear of nuclear Armageddon, thankfully, no longer haunts me, but as a person living through the biggest extinction crisis since the age of the dinosaurs, I still feel that nameless dread sometimes. It seems that humans simply can’t grasp that the biological systems that support the creatures that we are wiping out are also the ones that support us. And as our carelessness leads to the loss of more and more of the building blocks of ecosystems, we make our own future all the more precarious.

Reasons for Hope

But every now and then, I see a ray of hope, and the giant salamanders of Hiroshima are one of those rays.

Salamanders, for those of you who aren’t thinking about animals every day are amphibians, and amphibian species are being lost at a truly alarming rate – at present a third of all amphibian species are threatened with extinction.

Amphibians play a host of roles in an ecosystem, and from a human point of view, a key one is keeping insect populations in check – reducing the risk of insect-borne diseases. So if amphibian populations collapse, we may see an increase in human diseases.

A key reason for the decline in amphibian populations – along with human-induced habitat loss – is a fungus called Chytridiomycosis that can wipe out entire species, but recent research has shown that the Japanese giant salamander has lived with this fungus for hundreds of years without becoming ill.

So this extraordinary creature may hold a key to preventing the disease in other amphibians, which may in turn, help to protect humanity. Pretty cool.

VIDEO: Claude Gascon on the Giant Japanese Salamander
Claude is Executive VP, Projects + Science at Conservation International.

So as Japan prepares to host the Convention on Biological Diversity this coming fall – a major conference that brings nations together to try to slow or stop the loss of their plants and animals – we should make sure that we think about this weird looking, cold-blooded beast, and consider what unquantifiable benefits all of the other species at risk may end up offering us as well.

Rob McNeil is the Director for Media Strategy at Conservation International.  For more on this, check out the two great BBC  News pieces from that Japan trip:  “Close Encounters with Japan’s “living fossil” and Giant Salamander: Human  Threat, Human Promise.

Pollinators are in decline for a wide variety of causes, including loss of habitat and the use of pesticides. But there’s another major threat to wild, native pollinator populations: the threat of disease from commercially managed pollinators. With the serious decline in honeybee populations in the U.S., domestic bumblebees are being called upon more and more to pollinate crops. But these populations often have diseases that are not present in the wild population, and can be passed on to wild bees as they come into contact while gathering pollen.

If you like strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes or peppers, you need pollinators. These species are necessary for 30 percent of our crops; bumblebees alone pollinate 15 percent of U.S. crops. Domestic bee populations are not sufficient to meet the demands of our food pollination needs, and studies have shown that native species are often more efficient pollinators, resulting in higher productivity. And they do it for free!

A recent paper by Aizen and Harder (2009) suggests that the proportion of agriculture that depends on animal pollination has increased over 300 percent during the last half century while managed pollinator populations have increased only 45 percent. This indicates that there are not nearly enough managed pollinator populations to do the job. Native pollinators are critical.

The decline in bumblebee populations is not only happening in the U.S. In the U.K., two species of bumblebees have gone extinct in the last 70 years, and many other species are in serious decline, for many of the same reasons.

There are many things that we all can do to help stem the loss of our native pollinators.

In agricultural settings, pollinator conservation techniques include planting hedgerows and native plants to attract wild pollinators and eliminating the use of pesticides and herbicides. One of CI’s partners, the Xerces Society, has developed guidelines for attracting and promoting native pollinators to crops.

Pursuing policy changes and governmental regulations on pesticide use and movement of managed pollinators are also critical actions. Last week, several NGOs, including the Xerces Society, Natural Resource Defense Council and Defenders of Wildlife, petitioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture to regulate movement of bumblebees in the U.S. in order to keep them within their native range and to certify that domesticated bumblebees are disease free.

On a more individual level, anything we can do to protect, restore or create native habitat will benefit not only incredible insects but also other amazing animals and plants. Plant a native garden in your backyard, rooftop, balcony, schoolyard, windowsill, farm, ranch or golf course; use native flowering plants to provide a stable food source for an array of native insects and pollinators; consider leaving parts of the lawn unmown for habitat and wild flowers; provide water for native insects in a shallow dish or birdbath.

As a part of CI’s new Food Security Strategy, CI recognizes the critical role that native pollinators play in food production. The conservation and promotion of native pollinators is an excellent demonstration of where synergies between food security and healthy ecosystems can occur.

The most recent version of the IUCN Red List (published in November 2009) revealed that species extinction continues at a dangerous rate. More than 17,000 species—36 percent of the total of number of species assessed—are currently threatened with extinction, a startling number which underscores the need for immediate action.

This week in Paris, the United Nations is holding one of several celebrations and conferences to launch the International Year of Biodiversity, drawing attention to the escalating plight of the world’s species as countries prepare for the Convention on Biological Diversity’s October meeting in Nagoya, Japan—a meeting which will set new targets for combating the global problem.

As CI urges the world’s nations to make a bolder commitment to biodiversity conservation in 2010, we’re providing more stories, photos and videos about Earth’s most fascinating species and the complex, unexpected ways that their presence – or absence – impacts all of our lives.

What might this target look like?

Writing in the prestigious scientific journal “Nature” this week the President of IUCN, Dr Ashok Khosla, and the Director-General of IUCN, Julia Marton-Lefèvre, argue that the target must be an ambitious one.

Khosla and Marton-Lefèvre propose that in the short-term, the world’s governments must bring a stop to the loss of biodiversity – “in particular, by setting an intermediate target to prevent further extinctions”, because extinctions are irreversible – once a species is lost, it can never be brought back.

They recommend that this immediate target should have a deadline of 2015, because of the synergy that this would bring with the timing of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, and because it would place the deadline within current political cycles, to provide an incentive “to ensure that elected politicians successfully deliver the target to their constituencies”.

Finally, they recommend that this immediate target should be supplemented by a long-term 2050 vision of not only halting the loss of biodiversity but of turning the tide to provide comprehensive restoration of biodiversity and ecosystem services essential for supporting human well-being. This 40-year time frame is appropriate for the restoration of populations, habitats, and ecological processes, given the decades necessary for the re-establishment of forests, wetlands, coral reefs, and other ecosystems.

Conservation International strongly endorses this call from IUCN, and will be engaging with the policy process over this coming year to help ensure that the world’s new biodiversity target will be an ambitious one.

The current draft of the new biodiversity target is posted on the Convention on Biological Diversity’s website along with an eForum with 18 questions on the subject for public comment. We encourage you, our readers, to sign in to this eForum (it requires a simple registration: just enter your e-mail and you will be sent a password) and support the message from IUCN, Conservation International, and civil society around the world that the planet needs a powerful biodiversity target. The key questions are numbers 5 and 15!

Happy New International Year of Biodiversity to you all!

* All but three of the world’s governments. Andorra, the Vatican, and the United States of America are the only ones of the world’s 193 nations who are not yet parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Conservation International urges citizens of these three nations to encourage their governments to become parties to this important global treaty as part of their celebrations of the International Year of Biodiversity.

Dr. Thomas Brooks is a Vice-President in the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science at Conservation International.

Believed to be the world’s most endangered lemur, with less than 100 remaining in the wild, this discovery by a team of researchers from CI and partner organizations spells hope for this and other species that may have higher numbers than have been recorded.

Local conservationists believe that the support from local communities is playing a key role in the protection of important lemur habitat. The lemurs’ presence in the forest underscored the importance of the new protected area that is being created in the region.

Learn more…
PRESS RELEASE: Scientists Provide A Lifeline For Madagascar’s “Panda”
FEATURE: New Greater Bamboo Lemur Found in Madagascar
IN PHOTOS: Greater Bamboo Lemur