Honoring Environmental Research That Could Change the World
By Carol Schadelbauer, May 14, 2010
Wildlife authorities and environmentalists waited warily, and wearily, as a huge oil spill took aim last Thursday at Louisiana’s ecologically fragile coast…Forecasts showed the spill making a beeline for the pristine barrier islands of Breton National Wildlife Refuge, home to the brown pelican, which faces a new threat less than six months after it was removed from the endangered species list. – Houston Chronicle, 4.29.2010
Conservationists are constantly confronting new threats to the species they protect. And whether it is an oil spill creeping closer to pelican nesting grounds, deforestation threatening Golden Lion Tamarin Monkeys, or Kenyan farmers shooting cheetahs, a few fundamental questions remain: How can humans and endangered species coexist peacefully? What causes extinction in the first place—and how can we predict which species will be next?
This month, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement recognized two extraordinary conservationists grappling with precisely these issues. Dr. Laurie Marker of the Cheetah Conservation Fund and Dr. Stuart Pimm of Duke University will join environmental superstars like E.O. Wilson and Jane Goodall as Tyler Prize Laureates. (Burness works with the Tyler Prize). In the words of Prize Executive Committee Chair Owen T. Lind, “They are living, breathing heroes of our environment.”
Partnering with farmers to save cheetahs
How can you stop farmers from shooting endangered cheetahs, when those cheetahs eat their livestock, endangering the farmer’s own livelihood? Dr. Laurie Marker’s answer: help them coexist. Guard dogs bred to protect herds from cheetahs can save the predators from the wrong end of a farmer’s rifle. “As a farmer stops having livestock losses,” Marker explains , “and starts learning more about livestock management and wildlife management, then the cheetah has a better chance of living.”
That is one of the pioneering approaches Dr. Marker has brought to bear to protect the cheetah from extinction for 36 years. (Only a few thousand cheetahs remain.) She created the Cheetah Conservation Fund to enact these techniques in Namibia, where the greatest number of cheetahs are living in the wild. Predators are key to a functioning ecosystem, but helping farmers and the public understand that is a challenge, and it’s one the Fund has tackled since its inception in 1990. Its projects have worked to ease the tension between humans and cheetahs, and they’ve included the breeding of guard dogs for livestock herds, and another project turning invasive vegetation into “Bushblok” fuel bricks that can be sold.
Mapping where extinction will strike next
Grave threats to a species often come with little warning. But Dr. Stuart Pimm’s work aims to change that, describing the ecological processes that drive extinction, and providing the mathematical tools that analyze them—and predict what plants and animals might be next.
Pimm’s first book, Food Webs, showed that even the most complicated food webs follow patterns—and that those patterns could be described. Threats to species on one level of a food chain, he demonstrated, could cascade down to another. It has been Pimm’s goal to help scientists understand how, and to that end, he has created sophisticated metrics for extinction rates, modeling endangered species populations to create a “roadmap” for conservation efforts.
What’s the roadmap saying so far? Watch the mainland. While past extinctions occurred in great numbers on islands, Pimm’s work suggests that future ones will occur on land.
Scientists and advocates
Drs. Marker and Pimm are both distinguished researchers. But perhaps equally notable is their advocacy: Just this month Dr. Pimm spoke at a Capitol Hill briefing along with fellow Tyler Prize laureate Dr. Thomas Lovejoy on the dangers posed by deforestation to humans, plants and animals alike. Later that day, he pointedly asked Members of Congress to keep the U.S. Copenhagen commitment and provide one hundred billion dollars over three years to protect tropical forests. Dr. Marker, too, is a fierce advocate—called by U.S. Ambassador to Namibia Jeffrey Bader “literally and figuratively a force of nature.”
What will they do with the $100,000 in prize money? Pursue innovative projects that are hard to get funded in traditional ways, says Dr. Pimm: “This prize will be hugely helpful in allowing me to do the creative, high-risk things that are difficult to get research grants for, but yet in the long term are the very things that allow you to tackle new and exciting ideas.”
