Welcome back to Primate Conservation. For this video, for this module, we're going to go ahead and we will be discussing, what is conservation? We're going to spend some time going over a couple of definitions and some variations on conservation. But really this a life-long conversation, this is a dialogue, this is really an argument in many instances. We'll go ahead and we'll get moving through there, but keep in mind that this is a very short introduction to it, whereas we will be addressing a number of these points throughout the entire course. We can ask the question, why do we need conservation? We can say, what are we trying to protect? We can ask, what do we value? We can say, what do we want to pass on? To illustrate some of these, we can have just a very clear cut example of this, where we've got forest on one side, and then just on the other side of the road the fact that the forest has been completely doomed, the forest has been cut away. Are we trying to protect the forest? Are we trying to protect economic growth? Roads in love of themselves, allow greater transport and greater access to areas which, of course is, good and bad. It makes it getting from one to another fairly easy, but what are the environmental consequences that come with this? Also we can look at conservation in terms of, are we trying to protect or preserve these pristine landscapes? Again, what are we focusing on? What do we really want to see for these things? More specifically, when we start looking at animals, this is probably a picture that you guys have seen, not this individual, but this idea of a picture. We're going ahead and probably looking at some form of tourism, people going to an area, having the opportunity to see either animals in the wild, or quite often they'll see animals in cages, or this opportunity to interact and have your picture taken with either baby animals or wild animals or to feed the animals. Really, the problems is that when we look at this, this is putting both the human and that animal into great danger. Because of our very close genetic relationship with wild primates and with primates in general of being primates ourselves, it's really easy for disease transfer to go back and forth. There's that fantastic movie Outbreak that all hinges on a sick Capuchin passing the disease to humans and all the rest of it. But again, it's things to think about. Where is this animal and why is the animal not back in its normal setting? So are we conserving it? Are we protecting it? Are we exploiting it? So all of these issues can definitely come up. Let's go ahead and take a moment to define what conservation or one definition of conservation. Generally, it's considered to be protection of natural resources. What are some of those natural resources? We can talk about the conservation of birds or conservation of natural places. We can talk about the conservation of insects and plants, so nothing else in the US, of course, there's been a lot to do about the protection and preservation of bees as the creatures really that do pollinate so much of our food sources. Then we also have just what we're focused on, protection of primates. The easy way to look at it is or one way to look at it is, the proper use of nature. Conservation typically refers to attempts to make human's relationship with the environment sustainable while still extracting natural resources. There is an interplay here between making certain that the environment is sustained, but that there still is some use of those environmental resources. So think about it, it's like conservation usually support measures that would reduce human use of natural resources, but when those measures are beneficial to humans. It can also be referred to as choices that people make everyday to consume less. So taking shorter showers and installing solar panels, the use of reusable bags rather than the plastic bags at grocery stores, so all these things can be seen to help conserve nature or conserve our resources. One way to look at it from the opposite side is we can talk about preservation. So protections of objects, of buildings, of landscapes. Typically, refers to setting aside of areas of lands that are either human free or free of obvious marks of human influence, like roads or fire pits, or who sole human inhabitants or native people. So a very different idea of it so a lot of times when we think of preservation can think of as I said, preserving landscapes or preserving cultural heritage sites or in lists in the United States, a lot of times the National Park Service so really a different idea between the national parks, the natural forests, national forests in how we use the land or how we think of the protection of nature from use. So setting something aside, preserving it, rather than conserving it and using it some of that. In a very strong example of a protectionist or preservationist model, we can look at something that's been called fortress conservation. So obviously, I'm giving it here with this no admit kind of thing, but you can look at it as fortress conservation is a conservation model that's really based on the belief that biodiversity protection is best achieved by creating protected areas where ecosystems can function in isolation from human disturbance. So this idea of, okay, we want to protect this forest and we want to protect this landscape the best way to do it is to kick all the humans out of it. So fortress or protection is conservation assumes that local people use natural resources in a rational and destructive ways and as a result, cause biodiversity lost and environmental degradation. So very clear cut in it's one of those okay, this is area's safe everybody get out, do not use this particular area. Protected areas following the fortress model can be characterized by three principles. Number one is local people dependent on the natural resource base are excluded. So if local peoples live right on the edge of a national park or live on a protected area, they're being told, stay out, get out of this thing, you're not allowed to come in and use these resources. Number two, enforcement is implemented by park rangers patrolling the boundaries, using a fines and fences approach to ensure compliance. So easiest way, you put up a fence, you put up a sign and you say if you cross into this area, you're going to receive a fine you might have to go to jail and then the third portion and this is really where people start to get really twitchy and again, these are much larger conversations, it's really just a little hint into some of this, but they say that only tourism, safari hunting and scientific research are considered as appropriate uses within protected areas. The protected areas certainly have their place and a lot of times it depends on how you're going about doing this, whether what are the goals? and as we'll discuss in a moment, how is the local community actually involved in it. So within this fortress conservation model, again, it is those fences and fines aspect of it. So because local people are labeled as criminals, poachers, and squatters on lands that they've occupied for decades or centuries, they tend to be antagonistic towards fortress style conservation initiatives, less likely to support the conservation goals. So if you put up a fence around and you tell people that even though they may have been able to use those resources before, people are going to generally balk at that. So you get a lot of candidates conflict in these areas of interest. There's a lot of information in the field of political economy and political ecology where they really talk about these local use rights for it. So another issue too is that between local peoples and law enforcement is what happens if the law enforcement comes from that area, so I've seen this a number of times in Vietnam where some of the park rangers are local people and so it's one of those you start to get a lot of familiar conflict within there as well. So one particular method that has been developed and it's been in use for decades now is community-based conservation, so want to spend just another couple of minutes talking about that and then highlighting an example that we'll come back to. If we define community-based conservation, we can say at its core, community-based-conservation is just what it sounds like. Efforts to protect biodiversity in which the local community participates as much as possible. So if scientists and local people who live in a certain place who work together to save species living in that place. That's taken from communityconservation.org, an organization that has participated in this type of conservation planning in use for a number of years. They go on to say that it is really the best of both worlds: Local knowledge, practicality, and priorities, and global scientific effort coming together to protect biodiversity. Combination of local knowledge and international knowledge can be really powerful. It really can. As long as everybody comes to the table as equals and everybody is working towards similar goals, then you really can have solid benefits towards it. An example of this that I wanted to address right this minute, as I said, we'll come back too in the Vietnam case study, and when we talk about some conservation organizations, is the Denver Zoo. If you go over to Denverzoo.org, and look at their conservation section, one of the areas that comes up is Vietnam, conserving Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys. This is a program that while I'm not directly involved, I have a number of friends who work on it, a number of colleagues who have worked on it. One of the things I love about it is that they've got a strong community engagement piece to it. We're going to create our detail on this, but just very briefly, their statement is "We engage communities surrounding the Khau Ca forest, that's the area where these Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys live, to enhance their understanding of the local and global importance of the forest and Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys." These monkeys only live in a very restricted habitat area in Vietnam. They encourage them to convert that knowledge into conservation action. They list out a number of activities that we'll go through, but a lot of it is involvement and engagement in the local community. Thinking of it as community-based conservation and having some of the surrounding communists to the forest take on an active role of protecting those areas. We'll address this project in the later module, so stay tuned for it. What I'd like to go ahead and close with for this particular conversation is that we really are all in this together. When I travel, when I do research, I am a guest to that country, and their scientists and researchers. Here is something that was very important to me and taught to me when I was coming up through school is that, the work and the country are more important than my particular interest in it. So it really has to be that research does not exist in a vacuum. Here's a picture of myself and a friend of mine, [inaudible] Bow. Bow is a fantastic birder, conservationists and scientist in his own right. I was fortunate enough, he took us out to an area just southeast of Ho Chi Minh City called Khmer, which has regrowth of all these mangrove forests in the area. Many conversations all had about reforestation through this area, about the birds and the biodiversity within the particular area, and about some of the conservation efforts and some of the tourism issues and concerns. Lots of good stuff, again, we'll address some of these a little bit later on within the course, but just again to reiterate, the most important thing is that we have to be open and honest. We can come into these conversations and we work together. We get each other's opinions and we see how we can move forward at this rather than coming into being like, "All right, listen on the western scientists and I know it's best". Something to definitely bear in mind as we continue on with our conversations.
