Sacred Forest, Hunting, and Conservation in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

In a number of places, sacred forest sites play an important role in conservation and local livelihoods. Here we examine how Iban hunters and animals alike use sacred forest in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. To determine the relative importance of different sites in hunting, we compare hunting effort, animal species and their numbers encountered by hunters, and encounters and captures in a variety of forest sites including sacred groves. We relate the results to the role of such sites in the overall Iban agroforestry system and in the conservation of forest habitat that professional conservationists deem precious. Such land use practices, while having social and religious origins, may be important for local economic purposes, but they may also be valuable in promoting and enhancing the more global goals of biodiversity conservation.     

Cyclone Winston and Community-Based Marine Conservation in Fiji

ABSTRACT

The establishment and use of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) groups is now the established route towards conservation in large parts of the Pacific, especially in Fiji. One of the main strengths of CBNRM that is often mentioned is its adaptability to different contexts and to changing objectives among stakeholders, an aspect thoroughly tested by events such as ‘natural’ disasters. This paper is based on 10 months of fieldwork in Kubulau district in Fiji before, during and after Cyclone Winston. It provides an ethnographic account of how this ‘natural’ disaster affected a community and the local CBNRM group. It looks at how this event was experienced and managed by the group, and how the group’s involvement in disaster assistance shifted its role both within and outside of the community, as well as changing its future agenda during the months that followed. We can see in the aftermath of disaster a shift within the group away from the original primary focus on conservation and towards development. The paper provides an account of how the disaster seemingly strengthened the group and the ‘community’ in terms of organisation, knowledge and motivation, but also how it challenged previous norms and exposed weaknesses that are arguably inherent within CBNRM itself.     

Introducing Indonesian Medical Students to Rainforest Conservation and Community Health in the Field: A Practicum Experience in East Kalimantan

This article describes a practicum experience developed between a conservation organization (The Nature Conservancy) and a medical school (The Faculty of Medicine at Mulawarman University in East Kalimantan). Through this practicum, groups of medical students from Mulawarman have assisted with baseline and follow-up community evaluations in remote villages along the Kelay River, Berau District. These evaluations were done in conjunction with the Kelay Conservation Health Program, a program designed to improve health and healthcare for local people, mostly former hunter–gatherers, in an area of rainforest that the conservation organization seeks to protect. Besides gaining experience in community health assessment, through this practicum medical students also gained field experience and knowledge in rural and remote area health and healthcare in Indonesia and had an opportunity to explore linkages between conservation and health. At the conclusion of their time with the program, participating students also presented individual problem-based reports on relevant topics to students and faculty at the Medical School and to the District Health Department. This partnership between a conservation agency and a medical school in a developing country is unusual, but has been very well received by all stakeholders involved. Because of this, Mulawarman is now planning to make Kelay into a formal training site for its students. This experience may serve as a model for other groups interested in promoting ecosystem health education to future health professionals in the developing world.     

Cell Cultures from Marine Invertebrates: New Insights for Capturing Endless Stemness

Despite several decades of extensive research efforts, there is yet no single permanent cell line available from marine invertebrates as these cells stop dividing in vitro within 24–72 h after their isolation, starting cellular quiescence. This ubiquitous quiescent state should be modified in a way that at least some of the quiescent cells will become pluripotent, so they will have the ability to divide and become immortal. Following the above need, this essay introduces the rationale that the discipline of marine invertebrates’ cell culture should gain from applying of two research routes, relevant to mammalian systems but less explored in the marine arena. The first is the use of adult stem cells (ASC) from marine organisms. Many marine invertebrate taxa maintain large pools of ASC in adulthood. Ample evidence attests that these cells from sponges, cnidarians, flatworms, crustaceans, mollusks, echinoderms, and ascidians play important roles in maintenance, regeneration, and asexual cloning, actively proliferating in vivo, resembling the vertebrates’ cancer stem cells features. The second route is to target resting somatic cell constituents, manipulating them in the same way as has recently been performed on mammalian induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. While “iPS cells” are the outcome of an experimental manipulation, ASC are natural and rather frequent in a number of marine invertebrates. Above two cell categories reveal that there are more than a few types of seeds (cells) waiting to be sowed in the right soil (in vitro environmental conditions) for acquiring stemness and immortality. This rationale carries the potential to revolutionize the discipline of marine invertebrate cell cultures. When cultured “correctly,” ASC and “iPS cells” from marine invertebrates may stay in their primitive stage and proliferate without differentiating into cells lineages, harnessing the stem cell’s inherent abilities of self-replication versus differentiated progenies, toward the development of immortal cell lines.     

Scales of Spatial Heterogeneity of Plastic Marine Debris in the Northeast Pacific Ocean

Plastic debris has been documented in many marine ecosystems, including remote coastlines, the water column, the deep sea, and subtropical gyres. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG), colloquially called the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” has been an area of particular scientific and public concern. However, quantitative assessments of the extent and variability of plastic in the NPSG have been limited. Here, we quantify the distribution, abundance, and size of plastic in a subset of the eastern Pacific (approximately 20–40°N, 120–155°W) over multiple spatial scales. Samples were collected in Summer 2009 using surface and subsurface plankton net tows and quantitative visual observations, and Fall 2010 using surface net tows only. We documented widespread, though spatially variable, plastic pollution in this portion of the NPSG and adjacent waters. The overall median microplastic numerical concentration in Summer 2009 was 0.448 particles m⁻² and in Fall 2010 was 0.021 particles m⁻², but plastic concentrations were highly variable over the submesoscale (10 s of km). Size-frequency spectra were skewed towards small particles, with the most abundant particles having a cross-sectional area of approximately 0.01 cm². Most microplastic was found on the sea surface, with the highest densities detected in low-wind conditions. The numerical majority of objects were small particles collected with nets, but the majority of debris surface area was found in large objects assessed visually. Our ability to detect high-plastic areas varied with methodology, as stations with substantial microplastic did not necessarily also contain large visually observable objects. A power analysis of our data suggests that high variability of surface microplastic will make future changes in abundance difficult to detect without substantial sampling effort. Our findings suggest that assessment and monitoring of oceanic plastic debris must account for high spatial variability, particularly in regards to the evaluation of initiatives designed to reduce marine debris.     

Incorporating Conservation Zone Effectiveness for Protecting Biodiversity in Marine Planning

Establishing different types of conservation zones is becoming commonplace. However, spatial prioritization methods that can accommodate multiple zones are poorly understood in theory and application. It is typically assumed that management regulations across zones have differential levels of effectiveness (“zone effectiveness”) for biodiversity protection, but the influence of zone effectiveness on achieving conservation targets has not yet been explored. Here, we consider the zone effectiveness of three zones: permanent closure, partial protection, and open, for planning for the protection of five different marine habitats in the Vatu-i-Ra Seascape, Fiji. We explore the impact of differential zone effectiveness on the location and costs of conservation priorities. We assume that permanent closure zones are fully effective at protecting all habitats, open zones do not contribute towards the conservation targets and partial protection zones lie between these two extremes. We use four different estimates for zone effectiveness and three different estimates for zone cost of the partial protection zone. To enhance the practical utility of the approach, we also explore how much of each traditional fishing ground can remain open for fishing while still achieving conservation targets. Our results show that all of the high priority areas for permanent closure zones would not be a high priority when the zone effectiveness of the partial protection zone is equal to that of permanent closure zones. When differential zone effectiveness and costs are considered, the resulting marine protected area network consequently increases in size, with more area allocated to permanent closure zones to meet conservation targets. By distributing the loss of fishing opportunity equitably among local communities, we find that 84–88% of each traditional fishing ground can be left open while still meeting conservation targets. Finally, we summarize the steps for developing marine zoning that accounts for zone effectiveness.     

海龟是海洋保护理想的旗舰物种

旗舰物种的“明星效应”对生物多样性保护和国家公园建设具有很好的推动作用。我国对海洋保护高度重视,选择理想的代表物种作为旗舰物种,对海洋保护具有重要的推动作用。国家一级重点保护野生动物海龟是大型的海洋爬行动物和海洋活化石物种,对海洋生物多样性和生态系统的平衡稳定具有重要作用;海龟的独特外形特征使其具有很高的识别度,憨态可掬的形象和特殊的生活史使其充满魅力;海龟在我国被利用的历史悠久,具有很高的文化价值;海龟在沿海地区可遇见性和可接触性高,与人类有很好的关系。综上所述,本文认为海龟是海洋保护理想的旗舰物种。     

Marine Invertebrate Conservation: Evaluation of Fisheries Over-exploitation Concerns

The nature of overfishing of marine invertebrates is complex,ranging from the perception of overfishing because of competitionby user groups for a common property resource to extensive overfishingto near extinction because of poaching by either licensed orunlicensed fishers. As a group, marine invertebrates seem particularlyresistant to overfishing, primarily because their relative immobilityand scattered concentrations means refuge populations oftenexist. However, this distribution pattern also means a fisheryis scattered over an often large geographical area with relativelysmall, frequent landings at any location. A minimum legal sizeregulation, enforceable anywhere before consumption, is theprimary regulation applied by managers for many species to ensureagainst overfishing. Overfishing concerns arise primarily forthose species where price is sufficiently high to encourageillegal fishing or where harvest by fishers is not easily monitoredor controlled because of the nature of the fishing activityor because only part of the animal (e.g., the flesh) is harvested.Instances of overfishing by cause are discussed, and examplesare presented to demonstrate how managers are dealing with orhave dealt with different situations.     

Shifting Cultivation and Conservation of Biological Diversity in Tripura, Northeast India

Shifting cultivation (jhooming) has been identified as one of the main human impacts influencing biodiversity in Tripura, Northeast India. Over the last few years a new class of shifting cultivators has emerged that has adopted non-traditional forms of jhooming, which have been responsible for the loss of biological diversity in the state. This paper describes the successes achieved by the state government in providing the jhumias (tribes practicing jhooming) with various non-jhooming options. Recommendations include the need for short and long term control measures, improvement of existing jhooming methods, and integration of traditional knowledge with new practices.     

Access to Marine Bioresources: Hitching the Conservation Cart to the Bioprospecting Horse

Bioprospecting involves the collection of biological material for screening for commercially exploitable biologically active compounds or attributes, including genetic information. The authors assess the claim that bioprospecting has the potential to act as a sustainable carrot for biodiversity-rich states to conserve marine environments. They analyze the tensions between the international conventions that address bioprospecting in marine areas: the Biodiversity Convention and the Law of the Sea Convention. In particular, they reject any suggestion that there is a legal presumption in favor of coastal states granting access to marine bioprospectors. They argue that the different approaches taken by the marine scientific research provisions of UNCLOS to fundamental research and research with commercial potential is unrealistic because of the difficulties of drawing the distinction in practice. As a result, the danger is that scientific research will get caught in the hard bargaining increasingly associated with bioprospecting. The authors argue that coastal states will derive greater benefit from research collaborations rather than the distant prospect of winning the product royalty lottery.     

Capturing the uncultivated majority

The metagenomic analysis of environmental microbial communities continues to be a rapidly developing area of study. DNA isolation, the first step in capturing the uncultivated majority, has seen many advances in recent years. Protocols have been developed to distinguish DNA from live versus dead cells and to separate extracellular from intracellular DNA. Looking to increase our understanding of the role that members of a microbial community play in ecological processes, several techniques have been developed that are enabling greater in-depth analysis of environmental metagenomes. These include the development of environmental gene tags and the serial analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequence tags. In addition, new screening methods have been designed to select for specific functional genes within metagenomic libraries. Finally, new cultivation methods continue to be developed to improve our ability to capture a greater diversity of microorganisms within the environment.     

Spatial Epidemiology and GIS in Marine Mammal Conservation Medicine and Disease Research

The use of spatial epidemiology and geographical information systems (GIS) facilitates the incorporation of spatial relationships into epidemiological investigations of marine mammal diseases and conservation medicine. Spatial epidemiology is the study of the spatial variation in disease risk or incidence and explicitly addresses spatial structures and functions that factor into disease. The GIS consists of input, management, analysis, and presentation of spatial disease data and can act as an integrative tool so that a range of varied data sources can be combined to describe different environmental aspects of wild animals and their diseases. The use of modern spatial analyses and GIS is becoming well developed in the field of marine mammal ecology and biology, but has just recently started to gain more use in disease research. The use of GIS methodology and spatial analysis in nondisease marine mammal studies is briefly discussed, while examples of the specific uses of these tools in mapping, surveillance and monitoring, disease cluster detection, identification of environmental predictors of disease in wildlife populations, risk assessment, and modeling of diseases, is presented. Marine mammal disease investigations present challenges, such as less consistent access to animals for sampling, fewer baseline data on diseases in wild populations, and less robust epidemiologic study designs, but several recommendations for future research are suggested. Since location is an integral part of investigating disease, spatial epidemiology and GIS should be incorporated as a data management and analysis tool in the study of marine mammal diseases and conservation medicine.     

Conservation genetics of the endangered terrestrial orchid Liparis japonica in Northeast China based on AFLP markers

Levels of genetic diversity and population genetic structure of the rare, endangered terrestrial orchid Liparis japonica were examined for eight natural populations (n = 185) in Northeast China using six AFLP primer pairs, where this species has experienced severe habitat loss and fragmentation. Based on 406 DNA bands, a high level of genetic diversity was found at the species level with the PPB of 85.47 %, while the genetic diversity at the population level was low (PPB = 47.48 %). A significantly high degree of population differentiation was found with 42.69 % variation existed among populations as measured by AMOVA, indicating potential restricted gene flow. The genetic distances between populations were independent of the corresponding geographic distances, and the genetic relationship of individuals had no significant correlation with their spatial distribution. The restricted gene flow might be impacted by reduced population size, habitat destruction and fragmentation. The results in this study suggested that habitat protection and keeping a stable environment are critical for the conservation of L. japonica species.     

Canadian Perceptions of Commercial Fisheries Management and Marine Mammal Conservation in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean

ABSTRACT

Public attitudes toward the use of fisheries and marine mammals in the northwest Atlantic have played an influential role in recent controversies over management of these resources. A thorough assessment of public sentiment has, however, been lacking. We describe the results of a survey conducted to assess Canadian public opinion regarding a variety of commercial fisheries and marine mammal issues. Over one thousand, randomly selected adult Canadians were surveyed concerning their attitudes, knowledge, and concerns toward the conservation and management of marine mammals in the northwest Atlantic. The sample included 875 members of the general public, 130 sealers and 81 commercial fishermen.

Most Canadians (93–95%) in all sampling groups and in all provinces, except Quebec (54%), expressed concern about conflicts between marine mammals and commercial fisheries. Knowledge of basic marine mammal biology, however, was strikingly deficient and variable among groups: sealers obtained the highest knowledge rating, fishers were intermediate, and the general public scored lowest. The views of the Canadian general public, sealers, and commercial fishers were highly divergent regarding prioritization of goals for Canada's commercial fishing industry. Sealers and fishers emphasized employment, cultural and economic considerations, while the general public placed greater emphasis on ecological and ethical matters. All groups agreed that the most significant threats to Canada's commercial fisheries included fishing by foreign countries, pollution, and over-fishing. Competition from marine mammals and damage to fishing equipment by marine mammals were rated as the least important threats. Fishing by foreign vessels in Canadian waters was regarded by all groups with particular suspicion.

Unlike sealers and fishers, the general public consistently disputed the notion of sacrificing the needs of marine mammals for the benefit of commercial fishing. The public also expressed a strong preference for including fishing impacts on marine mammals in setting allowable catch quotas for commercial fish stocks, and further indicated a willingness to favor the interests of marine mammals over commercial fisheries in marine mammal entanglement situations.

More than ninety percent of all respondents indicated strong support for the ‘existence value’ of seals. Most Canadians opposed sealing for fur, whereas most approved of harvesting abundant adult seal populations for meat, harvests associated with the cultures of native peoples, and harvests important to local economies. Respondents were divided regarding the harvest of seals that damage fishing gear. All groups strongly opposed the harvest of newborn seals. Sealers and residents of Newfoundland supported lethal methods of seal population control, while residents of large urban areas and women were inclined to approve of non-lethal measures. An overwhelming majority of Canadians objected to the use of poisons or clubs as a means of population control.

Consideration of the results of this study could provide an enhanced basis for fashioning mutually acceptable policy solutions and mitigating conflicts between commercial fisheries and marine mammal conservation in the northwest Atlantic Ocean.     

Marine Telemetry and the Conservation and Management of Risk to Seal Species in Canada and Australia

Marine telemetry expands the knowledge of the biology of marine species at risk: their life cycles, activities, interactions, habitats, and threats. Four seal species in Canada and Australia are faced with distinctive and divergent management problems. This article examines their conservation status, legal protection, and the role that telemetry has played, or could play, in providing previously unavailable information to help meet conservation goals. The value of telemetry data to minimize fisheries mortality of one species has been demonstrated in Australia. Despite there being significant telemetry data for the other species, policy and management have not yet responded.