A time to say goodbye or is it a new start?

Iberian Lynx, Sumatran Orangutan, Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombat, Wild Bactrian Camel, Dama Gazelle, Seychelles Sheath-Tailed Bat, Chinese Alligator, Black Richoceros, Pied Tamarin and leatherback Turtle, they are the upcoming ten species that has a high possibility to be extinct according to Scientific American. Certainly if human continue imposing the anthropological impact on biodiversity, the future of wildlife species is not very optimistic. The Sixth Mass Extinction would that can be compared to the previous five mass extinction is coming, stated by biologists (Wake and Vredenburg, 2008; Walger, 2011). And this message is confirmed by palaeontologists using fossil records, which suggested that the current extinction risk is higher than would be expected (Barnosky, 2011).

To shift the kiss goodbye scenario to a new start, it needs the participation of multiple sectors and cooperation of different elements. Science, citizen science, social science, geographical data collection, public awareness and public education should all contribute to reduce the negative impact of human-related pressure. Such pressure has caused biodiversity loss and disfunction of ecosystem services. So it needs to address solutions from different disciplines. Keep the self-empowered hope and a coexistence system between wildlife and human can be achieved. This is the logic of my blog posting.

And same question for this blog: a kiss goodbye or new start? As you might know, I started posting this blog and feel pressured to keep it regularly posted because of "fear" as this blogging is my Master course requirement. But later I think I realised my "love" in blogging and communication with my potential readers in different ways on different contents. I think love, the love for the topic, the love for your own presentation, is so much more powerful than fear. So yeah, my blogging would be a new start shortly! Yet the most powerful instrument might be money as economists would suggest, perhaps students shall be rewarded for posting blogs on day from University ;).

I also want to take this opportunity to thank the lecturers and teaching assistants who give me this opportunity for this fun learning opportunity. I am very grateful for all my readers and supporters. Just like the begining of my blog, I want to end this special blog posting period with a video my friend and me made before. It is about an endangered species conservation programme on Palawan Forest turtles, who is under human impact of land use change and illegal poaching.

The youtube engine on blogger does not work this time. So enjoy it here by clicking the link!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXpZNJSu4c0

and here is also a Facebook Campaign on this programme. Find me! Find me!

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.603421439687974.1073741825.169655696397886&type=3

Case study: Coexistence between human and wildlife in Europe?!

Conservation is a mission-driven research discipline; so the purpose of conservation is dynamic, from conservation of the nature to the coexistence between human and nature (Mace, 2014). Historical experience showed it is very difficult for human and carnivores to co-existe as human carnivore conflicts are existing worldwild, for example, in Southeast Asia (Johnson et al, 2006), South Asia (Dar et al., 2009), Africa (Gusset et al., 2009). Yet recently a study showed a co-existence case study between human and carnivores. This study gives confidence to people that human and carnivores can coexist. Before the coexistence model, large mammals espacially carnivores are believed to be only possible to live in protection zone or wilderness, as a result of unfavorable management policy in city area (Linnell et al., 2006).


This research use data collected from 76 authors around 26 European countries, the main findings discovered that brown bears (Ursus arctos) now live in 22 European countries, and most of the ten main groups are increasing in numbers; Eurasian lynx (lynx lynx) spread in 23 European countries and have a population of 9,000; gray wolves (Canis lupus) now are found in Norway, Sweden and Finland and its population is also increasing (Chapron et al., 2014). The reasons for this success are summarised as protective legislation, supportive public opinion, and extensive practice (Chapron et al., 2014), which is consistent with adaptive management based on a better undersatnding of ecosystem functions (Treves and Karanth, 2003).

Interestingly, from the figure, there is a relatively isolated group of brown bears and gray wolfs in north-western Spain. There is no much information on the website analyzing the reasons for such phenomena. An online nature archive has documented the reasons to strong regulation, rising public awareness, and return of land to wolves because of urbanisation. Kuznet curve (Stern et al., 1996) indicated that there is turning point in economic development that Environmental degradation will start to reverse and the overall environmental condition will turn better.

There might be a similar curve between biodiversity degradation and economic development/urbanisation. There is great contemporary human pressure on biodiversity and conservation task is challenging with full difficulties. The turning point would not only rely on economic development, public awareness, strong regulation and enforcement also have important role to play.

Issue: Trophy hunting and conservation

Recently there was an online beauty contest hosted to vote for the "hot hunters" with photos of big game mammals being killed by them. There are many people online get irritated by such activity but there are also supporters for hunting right of these teenagers, who claims hunting benefits conservation.

Some researchers have also argued that sport hunting can support wildlife conservation policies and local development by providing huge amounts of revenue, and it can ensure ecological conservation through the enforcement of strict hunting rules (Lindsey et al., 2007).

Trophy hunting involves low off-takes is sustainable if the site itself is well-managed. Lindsey et al., （2006） summarized the benefits as follows: 

1. Trophy hunters pay higher fees per client and more revenue are shared by local people (Lewis and Alpert, 1997)；

2. Trophy hunting creates financial incentives for wildlife and habitat protection under a diversity of scenarios, especially for areas where wildlife is the primary land use； 

3. The provision of revenues from trophy hunting has the potential to promote broad acceptance of conservation objectives；

4. The presence of trophy hunting operators can reduce illegal hunting, where operators often conduct anti-poaching to protect the wildlife resource on which they depend (Hurt and Ravn, 2000).

The right-or-wrong debate of hunting on conservation is tricky. The Cove is a documentary that won Oscar Best Documentary Award, it illustrates a story of a group of people, from all occupations, work together to prevent dolphins to be killed by local villagers. After watching the film, I still feel the strong conflicts between local villagers and the rescue team. There are a few aspects that worth discussing. First, local culture. Dolphin killing is argued to be an important way for local indigenous people to make revenue and conserve their culture tradition. Second, economic trade-off. The environmental impact of revenue per capita caused by hunting is much larger than revenue per capita imposed by agriculture and industry. Third, food source. Dolphin is an important protein source for local people. There is a ethical paradox for more developed nationals to impose their values on the less developed areas. African countries might be a better example than Japan regarding to have right to protect such protein source from collection and hunting. 

Conservation based on geographical data collection

Google Earth Engine this year released the news that they are developing a google map product for species conservation purposes. This map of life is finally released in January 2015. This product identifies the locations of species on the map and connects it to both biological information and suitable habitats for the species. The map is made possible by remote sensing and geographical information system. The google research official blog uses Tamaulipas Pygmy Owl as an exmaple to illustrate the function of this map, species biological information, abundance data and habitat range of the species. A online example for play is available here.

Remote sensing is a powerful tool to provide data and information for conservation purposes. The uniqueness of remote sensing is that it provides global, long-term, reliable information on spatio-temporal changes of species' response to human-related change, especially land use (Pettorelli et al., 2014). Remote sensing uses satellite data to monitor abiotic conditions and disturbances, land cover, shallow benthic conditions and vegetation structure (Pettorelli et al., 2014). Researchers also use remote sensing data to detect poaching activity (Rashidi et al., 2014) and assess the difference between habitat adaption behavirours of endanger species groups. Remote sensing aerial photography techniques also can be applied  to count species population (Sirmacek et al., 2012), and hyperspectral remote sensors are used to identify invasive plants, assess habitat suitability and model future spread of invasive species (He et al., 2011).

Apart from remote sensing data, other data form can also be made into geospatial mapping format. Simon Pooley is a researcher at Imperial College London. One of his research is to collect information on crocodile attacks, record the location and other information and load it into a attack incidence map. Such map is useful for local villagers to have knowledge about local blackspots, and also beneficial for conservationists to conduct research and implement measures to protect local species. Geographical information is critical for both local life protection and conservation of species. Except data, geographical mapping can also be adopted as a tool to map conservation priorities, conservation investments and other components of conservation to better promote decision making and resource distributtion.

Celebrate new year with great animals!

Happy new year everybody! I hope you all had a lovely time watching the new year eve firework while drinking festive beverage! Alright, great. Let's go back to talking about some animals shall we?

I reckon quite a lot of you around my age would be familiar with the anime Pokémon (Pikachu, Goldeen...ringing any bells?).
Balmford and his colleagues (2002) conducted a survey on testing children's knowledge on biology, with a twist. They asked 109 children who are in UK primary schools aged from 4 to 11 to identify 10 common UK wildlife species including plants, invertebrates (that are animals without backbones such as dragonfly and starfish), mammals, and birds picked at random and also 10 ‘species’ from Pokémon. The scores are  gained by successfully identifying the species. The result seems to be varied with the effects of participants’ age and gender. In general, boys scored slightly higher than girls but only because that boys were better at recognising Pokémon species. It is considered controversial whether Pokémon is more for boys or girls. I’d like to say that both boys and girls enjoy watching them, but a matter of fact is that when I was in primary school, there were more boys watching Pokémon than girls. The pupils’ age also have a positive correlation with the score. For wildlife, mean identification success rose from 32% at age 4 to 53% at age 8, and slightly dropped over the age of 8; however for Pokémon, it rose from 7% at age 4 to 78% by age 8, (Balmford et al., 2002). The figure proved that older children would perform better at identifying both wildlife species and pokemon. However, at the age of 8, a child could recognise nearly 80% of the pokemon but could only being able to identify about half of the natural species shown. Balmford pointed out that "children have a great potential of learning about creatures regardless of whether it's natural or man-made". At the same time, he expressed the concern that conservationists are on the edge of failing at sparking interest in their subjects. It's understandable why children are more interested in remembering the names of the species in Pokemon. There isn't always a interesting story line to follow when learning about names of animals and plants. People care about what they like and learn about what they care, naturally. Balmford also suggests that it is vital for conservationists to re-establish the link between the nature and the nation especially those of the young age . It could be achieved through investment in creative productions such as educational films, documentaries, books and apps (softwares on phones and tablets). It's shocking how many hours a day a kid nowadays could spend on mobile devices. But it could actually become a good thing when they could spend some time learning about the nature.

Merry Christmas card with amazing species!

Speaking of creative productions regarding conservation, there are actually quite a lot of creative conservation programs and websites if you look close enough. One that I particularly like to share with you is the ARKive programme. ARKive programme is designed to build a database of endangered species to provide information for both adults and kids (although kids might need their parents to introduce it to them first) to learn more about these species and hence benefit the great purpose of conservation. The website is beautifully designed and well catalogued. You can search the animals that you want to learn more about or you can simply click 'inspire me' underneath the search bar if you want to randomly know something about an endangered animal. You can explore the wildlife of different species, religions or natural habitats. It also has special pictures designed for public holidays, whoo hoo! Since it's the festive season, let's enjoy some of the pictures shall we?

Thanksgiving day (of course, turkeys) 

And Hanukkah day (the website is not only for Christian you see and it's rather art-y, innit) 

What? this is good enough? You shall check out the christmas edition! The best of year! 

This year, Arkive blogs invited plants and animals from both terrestrial and marine system to play the "A visit from St. Nicholas" story. So amazing! Yet because of the copyright issue, i shall not copy all the photos here but I will give you the link to their blog. 

Also Happy New Year with some my own photos! Print your own special Christmas cards from my website if you like it! 

Conservation from a lens of anthropology

When mentioning conservation, what is the first scientific word occur in your mind, ecological monitoring, biodiversity modelling, or genetic evolution? Conservation is a biology-oriented research direction which focus on the conservation of animal species. Mascia et al (2003) proved that conservation and social science are interrelated.

Anthropology focuses on the relationship between human and species, targeting more on human in conservation. Goldman (2003) evaluated the situation of community-based conservation in Tanzania, he promoted to engage local people. Homewood (2012) assessed the economic status of pastoralists in east Africa and questioned the situation that wildlife revenues (e.g. from tourism) is not shared with these citizens by its government. Woodhouse (2012) examined the role of religion in conservation practice of Tibetan people and showed positive association between the two. These researchers all point new directions for conservation to integrate more broad knowledge and be more practical.

Not only these researchers give new thoughts to academic research, they also update research methodologies. Questionnaires and interviews are useful tools in anthropology. Yet in sensitive topics related to crime, what interviewees respond is not always turned out to be true. Nuno and John (2014) reviewed survey tools for asking questions about poaching, both advantages and disadvantages and suggested specific questionnaire techniques. Some of these methods basically use dice, beans and other tools to represent the answer to the questions.