Today, however, many of these rivers and lakes have been cleaned up—often at huge expense—and much of the wildlife has returned. A couple of years ago, for example, bass fishing opened up in the Potomac, a clear indication of much cleaner water. Fish are thriving in at least parts of Lake Erie. And fish are back in the River Thames, where waterbirds are once more breeding.
Here I want to mention just a few of the water cleanup projects that have come to my attention, many of which were undertaken in order to protect fish on the endangered species list.
How a Fish Led to the Cleaning of the Hudson River
Thirty years ago, the Hudson River and its surrounding waterways were so polluted that its population of short-nosed sturgeon became the first fish species to be listed (in 1972) as endangered. This resulted in a massive effort to clean up the river. Over the past fifteen years, the population of these fish in the Hudson River (next to one of the busiest cities in the world) has increased by more than 400 percent. The Manhattan area has the most urban estuaries on the planet, so the cleaning of its waters is a major conservation success story. Indeed, the environment has been so improved that there are even plans to introduce oyster reefs and shoreline wetlands in Harlem!
The Amazing Return of the Coho Salmon
In the 1940s, coho were so abundant in California rivers that their numbers were estimated at two to five hundred thousand statewide. And as recently as the 1970s, California’s coho fishery still pulled in more than seventy million dollars a year in revenue. But since 1994, commercial fishing for coho has been completely shut down and the fish is listed both state and federally as endangered. It was because of this dramatic decline that a coalition of conservation partners—including landowners and industry—began working to monitor and restore the health of the Garcia watershed, clogged by sediments resulting from irresponsible logging practices.
I happened to be in town when the San Francisco Chronicle published an article giving good news. While snorkeling in the headwaters of the Garcia River, Jennifer Carah, a scientist with the Nature Conservancy, and Jonathan Warmerdam from the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, spotted juvenile coho salmon.
I called Jennifer, and she told me that since then young coho had been spotted in five of the twelve sub-watersheds in the river basin. In many of these streams, they had not been seen since the late 1990s. It was an exciting time—Jennifer told me that when she identified those young coho, she “squealed so loudly that Jonathan heard the sound even though we were both underwater”!
There are other great stories, like the demolishing of a lakeside resort to save a minnow-size fish in Nevada, and building an area of wetlands so that carefully selected plants could clean the polluted water of a river in Taiwan. These and other accounts are detailed on our Web site.
Fortunately the looming threat of global water shortage has been acknowledged, and many of the stories in this book describe the efforts of those who are fighting against the reckless use of water for agriculture, industry, and domestic applications, the pollution of rivers and lakes, the draining of the wetlands, and so on.
Today we fight wars about oil, but as Ismail Seregeldin (then with the World Bank) said at the end of the last century: “The wars of the next century will be fought over water.” We could, with major changes in the way most people live today, survive without oil. But we could not survive without water.
Hope for China
Almost always, when I voice my hope that we humans can find a way out of the environmental mess we have made, someone will point out what is happening in China. Do I realize, they want to know, the extent to which that giant country, containing one-fifth of the world’s human population, is destroying its environment? And the threat that this poses for the rest of the world? I do, indeed. I have been to China once a year since 1998 and seen with my own eyes the speed of development, the staggering number of new roads and buildings—and cities—that spring up almost overnight. And I know full well that this rapid economic development has taken a heavy toll on the environment. In many cases, it has led to a great deal of human misery also.
As China opened up in the early 1980s, people were offered jobs manufacturing goods for outside markets—and the biggest migration in history was set in motion as the rural poor flocked to the new cities. And there, only too often, they found themselves and their children working in sweatshops, exploited so that China could undercut prices of goods made in the West. They tolerated this because they believed or hoped that it would eventually create a new economy from which they could benefit.
Meanwhile, the level of environmental degradation has soared. Two-thirds of China’s main rivers are too polluted for the water to be used for drinking or agriculture. The aquatic ecosystems have been destroyed—the Yangtze River dolphin became extinct. There has been devastating destruction of habitats across the country. And having harmed so much of her own environment, China, desperate to acquire materials such as timber and minerals to sustain her economic growth, is plundering the natural resources of other countries. Especially in Africa where many politicians are willing to sell off the future of their children to make a quick buck.
No wonder so many have given up on China’s environment—including many of the Chinese people. But it is important to realize that China is only doing what has been and often still is being done by many other countries. The impact is worse because of the country’s staggering number of people and, until fairly recently, the government’s refusal to admit there was anything wrong.
The good news is that people in China are now beginning to talk openly about the need to improve the environment and to set aside areas for the conservation of wildlife. (See this book’s chapters on the giant panda, the crested ibis, and the milu.) Another story, highlighted on our Web site, describes steps being taken to preserve areas of wetland to benefit the critically endangered Chinese alligator. Moreover, JGI’s youth program, Roots & Shoots, which involves young people of all ages in activities to improve the environment for wildlife as well as their own communities, is active in many parts of the country, with offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Nanchang. There are about six hundred groups in all.
And the story of the Loess Plateau is another reason for hope. It is an area approximately the size of France in the northwest of China. It is home to about ninety million people who were, for many long years, trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty and environmental destruction that only got worse as time went on. For years, the Loess Plateau was considered the most eroded place on earth.
The almost miraculous restoration of this desolate area to a landscape boasting a thriving environment for people and at least some animals has been documented by my friend John Liu in his inspirational film Earth’s Hope. It illustrates what can be done when a powerful government, backed by the World Bank, decides to take action.
Clearly the hundreds of millions of dollars spent were a wise investment, for already the local communities are thriving. The sense of hopelessness once shared by the population has been replaced by cautious optimism, and young people now expect an education and a future.
And there is hope for wildlife, too. It was decided from the start that there should be clear distinction between land designated for human use, and land that would be most valuable set aside to ensure, for example, protection of the watershed, soil stability, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity. And this “ecological land” could provide a refuge for local endangered species—rescuing them from the extinction many are currently facing.
Lesson from Gombe
The extreme environmental degradation of the Loess Plateau came about because the people sank ever deeper into poverty and hopelessness. Again and again I have seen, as I travel around the developing world, how rural poverty (that so often goes hand in hand with overpopulation) almost invariably causes great damage to the environment. But it was in Tanzania that I suddenly realized that we could only save the Gombe chimpanzees and their forests
, in the long term, with the support of the local people. And that we could not hope for such support while they themselves, desperately poor, were struggling to survive.
When, in 1960, I arrived at Gombe National Park to start my chimpanzee study, lush forest stretched for miles along the eastern shores of Lake Tanganyika and inland as far as the eye could see. But over the years, growing populations of local people, swollen by refugees, cut down the trees for firewood and building poles. By the early 1990s, the trees outside the park had almost all gone, and much of the soil was exhausted. Women had to walk farther and farther from their villages in search of fuel wood, adding hours of labor to their already difficult days.
Looking for new land to clear for their crops, people turned to ever steeper and more unsuitable hillsides. With the trees gone, more and more soil was washed away during the rainy season; the soil erosion worsened and landslides became frequent.
By the late 1970s, the chimpanzees were more or less trapped within their tiny thirty-square-mile national park. There could be no exchange of females between groups—which prevents inbreeding—and with only some one hundred individuals remaining, the long-term viability of the Gombe population was grim. Yet how could we even try to protect them while the people outside the park were so desperate, envious of the lush forested area from which they were excluded?
Building Up Goodwill
Clearly it was necessary to gain the goodwill and cooperation of the villagers. In 1994 the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) initiated TACARE (take care), a program designed to improve the lives of the people in these very poor communities. Project manager George Strunden put together a team of talented and dedicated local Tanzanians who visited the twelve villages closest to Gombe to discuss their problems. They worked out together how TACARE could best help.
Not surprisingly, conservation issues were not listed as top priorities. The main concerns were health, access to clean water, growing more food, and education for their children. And so, working with regional medical authorities, we introduced a new level of primary health care in the villages, including basic information about hygiene and HIV-AIDS. We established tree nurseries and developed ways to restore vitality to exhausted land—farming techniques best suited for the degraded soil. Roots & Shoots, our educational program for youth, was eventually introduced into all the villages. And as TACARE became ever more successful, we were able to start a micro-finance program enabling women to take out very small loans (almost always repaid) to start their own projects—which have to be environmentally friendly and sustainable.
The Importance of Women
All around the world, it has been shown that as women’s education improves, family size tends to drop—and after all, it was the growth of the population in the area that first led to the grim conditions TACARE was trying to address. It would be irresponsible to introduce ways of growing more food and saving the lives of more babies, without, at the same time, talking about the need for small families. There are TACARE-trained volunteers from each village, men as well as women, who provide counseling—that is well received—about family planning.
Information about family planning, along with access to health care for her children, enables a woman to realistically plan her family. If she has also received an education, things will go even better. So we started a scholarship program for girls—for a poor family is more likely to educate boys, leaving the girls, once they have finished their first years of compulsory education in the primary schools, to help at home. Some of our girls are now in college.
Restoring and Protecting
Recently I went with our forester, Aristedes Kashula, to one of the villages. A woman demonstrated her new cooking stove, which greatly reduces the amount of firewood she needs. Because all the women get fuel wood from a village woodlot of fast-growing trees, they no longer need to hack at the stumps of trees that once grew on the bare hillside. And such is the regenerative power of nature that a new tree will spring from the seemingly dead stump—and within five years it will be twenty to thirty feet high. Kashula pointed out a hillside now covered in trees. “It’s just one of our TACARE forests,” he said. “Nine years ago that slope was quite bare.”
The villagers gathered under the trees to greet us, including two shy scholarship girls. A ten-year-old R&S leader, confident in his tight-fitting red-striped shirt, told us about the trees his club was planting. I told them how I spoke about the TACARE villages as I traveled around the world. “And,” I said, “we must remember to thank the chimps. It was because of them that I came to Tanzania—and see what it has all led to!” I ended with a chimpanzee pant-hoot and had all the villagers joining in.
TACARE has greatly improved the lives of the people in twenty-four villages around Gombe, generating a level of cooperation that would have been unthinkable before. And today, under the leadership of Emmanuel Mtiti, we are reaching out to many other villages in the large, mostly degraded area that we call the Greater Gombe ecosystem, with the aim of restoring the forests. Most recently, with government support, we are introducing the TACARE programs in a very large and relatively sparsely populated area to the south, hoping to protect the forests before they are cut down and thus save many of Tanzania’s remaining chimpanzees.
In TACARE villages women can take out tiny loans and start their own environmentally sustainable projects—such as establishing a tree nursery.(JGI/George Strunden)
Emmanual Mtiti showing me, for the first time, the regenerating forest outside Gombe National Park—the leafy corridor that will enable the chimpanzees to leave the park and interact with other remnant groups. (Richard Koburg)
Chimpanzees, Corridors, and Coffee
The farmers in the high hills round Gombe grow some of the best coffee in Tanzania, but because of the lack of roads and transport difficulties, they often lump their superior beans with those grown at lower altitudes. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters was the first company to join us in our effort to get these farmers a good price. Now there are a few specialty brands on the market in the United States and Europe, and the farmers—as well as connoisseurs of good coffee—are overjoyed.
The goodwill generated is helping the chimpanzees as well. Every village is required, by the government, to create a Land Management Plan, which includes allocating an agreed percentage of their land for protection or restoration of forest cover. Now many of the villages are setting aside up to 20 percent of their land for forest conservation. They’re also working with JGI’s amazingly talented Lilian Pintea, an expert in GPS technology and satellite imagery, to ensure that these protected areas will form a corridor so that the chimpanzees will no longer be trapped in the park. That will link them to other remnant populations living in the vast habitats we are helping to protect.
Early in 2009, I stood with Emmanuel Mtiti on a high ridge looking over at the steep hills behind Gombe. A few years ago, those hills had been bare and eroded by desperate attempts to grow crops. Now I could see trees—hundreds and hundreds of them, many more than twelve feet high. This regeneration stretched as far as we could see, toward the Burundi border to the north and the town of Kigoma to the south. It was the first part of the leafy corridor about which I have been dreaming since TACARE started. A last chance for the long-term survival of the Gombe chimpanzees.
PROTECTORS OF THE
WORLD OF PLANTS
For most people, mention of endangered species brings to mind giant pandas, tigers, mountain gorillas, and other such charismatic members of the animal kingdom. Seldom do we think of trees and plants in the same category—as life-forms that, in many cases, we have pushed to the brink of extinction and that desperately need our help if they are to survive.
This discussion about healing earth’s scars illustrates that, through a combination of human determination, scientific know-how, and the resilience of nature, even badly compromised habitats can be restored—and time and again we find that it is plants that start the process. Somehow they take root on rock we hav
e laid bare, on land and in water contaminated with pollutants. Slowly they build up the soil and clean the water, paving the way for other life-forms to follow.
Without plants, animals (including ourselves) cannot survive. Herbivores eat plants directly; carnivores eat creatures that have fed on plants—or, to be picky, they may eat animals that fed on animals that fed on plants.
Yet for the most part, the work of the botanists and horticulturalists who battle to save unique plant species from extinction, and to restore habitats, goes unnoticed. The more I thought about this, the more I realized that it was really important to recognize the sometimes extraordinary work that has been and is being done to preserve the rich diversity and sheer beauty of the plant life that brightens our planet. I wanted to acknowledge the contributions of the field botanists who travel to remote places to collect specimens of endangered species, the talented horticulturalists who struggle to germinate reluctant seeds, the skill and patience of those working in herbariums, seed banks, and the many Centers for Plant Conservation that have been established in so many places around the world.
Many of these scientists have generously shared their stories with me or informed me of the work of others. And while unfortunately we cannot pay tribute here to all these champions of the plant kingdom, many of their fascinating stories can be found, gloriously illustrated, on our Web site.
They are dedicated, these custodians of our botanical world. They travel to remote places, searching for rare species, collecting seeds, dangling from ropes to hand-pollinate the last individuals of an endangered plant that has taken refuge in the most inaccessible and inhospitable terrain. They have worked, year after year, to find ways of propagating, in captivity, some plant that is vanishing—or gone from the wild. Some of these heroes I have met, such as Paul Scannell and Andrew Pritchard, who have worked tirelessly for years to protect and restore some of Australia’s endangered orchids, and Robert Robichaux, who has devoted his life to saving and restoring the glorious silversword and other Hawaiian plants.
Hope for Animals and Their World Page 35