Let's Talk Conservation!

Ha Long Bay is a World Heritage Site just a few kilometers up the coast from Haiphong Harbor, which was a major bombing target during the Vietnam War. I visited Ha Long Bay on 15-18 September to attend a capacity building seminar for the Vietnam Academy of Social Science, the Royal Academy of Cambodia, and the Laos Academy of Social Science. This was the eighth annual such seminar, all with funding from the Korean Environment Institute (KEI, which supported my attendance). Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam are steadily, albeit slowly, recovering from the devastation of the Indochina wars that ended only in 2007. Recall that after the US retreat from Vietnam in 1973, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1975 (against the China-supported Khmer Rouge) and withdrew only at the end of 1989; Vietnam (then still supported by the Soviet Union) was invaded by China in 1979 but quickly forced the Chinese forces back across their border; and the resistance against the Pathet Lao-run government continued until 2007 in the remote areas held by various hill tribes who supported US efforts during the Vietnam war. I mention this only because so few people outside the region remember that Indochina was at war for nearly 70 years, and has enjoyed peace for only a little over a decade. Small wonder that per capita GDP is lagging so far behind many of the other ASEAN countries (though Myanmar is still fighting various insurgencies and the Philippines faces Islamic separatist violence that slow their economic and social development, so both of them have GDP/capita under USD 10,000, and the Indochinese countries under USD 7,000). No residual animosity toward Americans (or Koreans who also provided troops supporting the South) was apparent, and the usual symbols of the US were common (McDonalds, Coke, Marlboro, Starbucks, etc.). I was interested to contribute to this effort, building on my work for ADB in 2015 on transboundary conservation efforts between China and Laos, China and Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, and Vietnam and Laos. And I worked for the Mekong Committee in 1974-1976 when it was sort of a ghost secretariat because three of its key original government members were no longer in control of their countries; and in 2005, I wrote a book with my ex-boss at the Mekong Committee, entitled “Agriculture in the Lower Mekong Basin: Experience from the Critical Decade of 1966-1976.” I entertained the opportunity to unload some of the excess copies taking up storage space at home, but rejected it because of possible modern sensitivities about what might have been. With the catchy title of “Green transformations for energy and water resource security in the Mekong sub-region,” the meeting attracted about 120 senior scientists (including the presidents of the respective Academies). My opening keynote address that covered the usual links among water, energy, biodiversity, climate change, and sustainable development, informed by recent visits to the region. Recognizing the audience, I stressed the point that environmental conservation is a social science since greening depends ultimately on human behavior. Subsequent sessions featured presentations from social scientists from the Indochina countries, plus KEI. English was the common language, though all presentations were interpreted into Lao, Vietnamese, and Khmer as well as English. Most were well designed and informative (I had not realized, for example, that Vietnam still depends on coal for 20% of its energy, has 21 coal-fired thermal power plants that use obsolete Chinese technology, and plans to build another dozen or so such plants). Cambodian scientists were clearly concerned that mainstream Mekong dams could disrupt the flow of water into Tonle Sap, the great lake that supports the country’s agriculture and society, and Vietnam’s scientists were worried that the upstream dams will lead to saltwater intrusion into the Mekong delta that produces much of that country’s rice. The Lao scientists, such as Simone Phichit, Director General of the Research Institute for Energy and Mines, were a bit sheepish about their country’s plans for mainstream dams and avoided any mention of their dependence on China to support their economy. And the Vietnamese are very unhappy that China is claiming islands and ocean territory they consider their own, perhaps just because it is called the South China Sea. While nobody mentioned the region’s wars explicitly, a focus of the event was to address security issues, including non-traditional challenges such as transnational organized crime, trafficking in illegal drugs and wildlife, and implications of new technologies. The role of academics in addressing such challenges were raised along with more traditional concerns such as trade, transboundary water resources, and energy. Some political, developmental, and cultural tensions remain among the three countries, so efforts such as this one supported by KEI are useful in seeking to build a more collegial relationship among leading scientists. The banquets on 15 and 16 October were well lubricated by Chilean wine, Vietnamese beer, and Russian vodka, and the hosts made sure that singing and dancing enlivened the evening (I of course beat a hasty retreat when a young hostess tried to entice me to join the karaoke crowd). But these cultural events are clearly effective in building positive feelings among people from similar, but distinct, cultures. Despite the festivities, the water and fisheries resources of the Mekong river generate many challenges and controversies. China has multiple dams on the upstream Mekong (they call it the Lancang River), and these have major impacts downstream. China also has major resource-based trade links with the economies of southeast Asia, though these are observed with considerable alarm by the scientists from the affected countries; the Royal Academy of Cambodia, for example, has a China Study Center whose Director was quite candid in his concerns. And KEI’s Director told me that a major justification for their support in the region is to provide at least a modest counterbalance to China’s influence. The meeting ended with thanks all around, lots of group photos, pledges to keep in touch, and Laos offering to host the ninth event next year. And I have remained in touch with new colleagues in all three countries, as well as South Korea. The next day, I joined the KEI team (eight very competent and cordial authorities on resource management) to take a comfortable boat to visit the Ha Long Bay World Heritage site, which includes almost 2000 limestone islands. Our first stop was to visit Thien Cong Grotto, the most incredible limestone cave system I have ever seen (photos on request, or visit Google Images). Our time on board and at meals allowed us to discuss all kinds of issues. For example, they told me that North Korea’s Kim Il-Sung has forced his people to adopt a state religion known as Juche. Based on communist ideology, it preaches that the Korean race is the purest in the world and its well-being depends on the Kim family line, people’s worshipping him with incredible praise, and any criticism being harshly punished. But they are also glad to see that their government is reaching out to Kim, and while they realize that American support is essential they also want to proceed at their own pace in opening better relations with the North. They believe that they can best communicate their mutual national interests. More interesting, we observed the effective Vietnamese management of tourism to Ha Long Bay. All the boats were rather similar, and were clearly following agreed regulations about docking, safety, traffic management, and so forth. Tourist sites had well designed and maintained trails, a wide variety of activities appealing to diverse tourist interests, fairly good information in multiple languages, well-informed guides available on request, and plentiful souvenir shops. I have encouraged Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation to consider sending its senior managers of Marine National Parks (Thailand now has over 20 MPA, and many are suffering from poor tourism management) on a study tour to see how Vietnam is monetizing its conservation efforts. Not that it is perfect; the casinos and amusement parks on the adjacent mainland carry minimal environmental messages, and the many seafood restaurants may well be stimulating over-fishing in the World Heritage Site (though the fish, lobsters, crabs, and shellfish were tasty!). So all in all, this was several days well spent. I learned a lot, was able to share perspectives with the leading academics from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and expanded my network of colleagues within the region. 25 October 2018 JAM

Here is a quick travelogue to share with you some of the highlights from my just-completed trip to China.  I couldn’t send it from there because China bans Google so I was free, free! of the daily flow of “news” and emails. So I had a bit more time to draft news to family, to send once I got back to the googlesphere!  So join the trip: When I first flew to Beijing in 1983, leaving two infant boys behind in the safe arms of their mother, the airport was pretty basic and was shared with the Air Force, so MIG-16s were parked among the airliners and visitors were few.  Today: Beijing airport is huge and busy, with a network of terminals connected by a comfortable subway system.  And this of means huge crowds of visitors, with thousands of us thrown together to wait patiently for immigration and customs, hoping that nobody is carrying some horrible communicable disease.  Transferring to a domestic terminal about 15 minutes away by bus, I then flew to the border with North Korea, where I joined the 2018 Changbai Mountain International Ecological Conference of China. With others attending the conference, I was put up in the Changbaishan Paradise Hotel that is notable for the alien space ship parked on its roof (see photo). Perfectly comfortable hotel, and the hot water is provided by a volcanic hotspring from the adjacent national park.  When I first visited this park four years ago, the hotel was rather lonely but today it is surrounded by a substantial tourism city that resembles Las Vegas in its bright shiny lights, big circus tents, and numerous tourist attractions (though based roughly on nature rather than gambling).   One evening, many of us were enticed to see the “Water Dances”.  This sounded kind of corny, but being a good sport, I went along and was delighted that I did.  It was truly spectacular, staged in a pond 100 meters long and 20 meters wide, with hundreds of nozzles shooting water in various directions and shapes, including some over 50 meters high.  The 30-minute choreographed dance of the waters was set to a wide range of music, including the theme of The Magnificent Seven, Mozart, Beethoven, some drums, and traditional Chinese music. The waters seemed alive and indeed danced in time with the music, illuminated in various colors.  About a thousand visitors were watching, 999 of them with a cell phone recording their favorite water dances.  Only one unfortunate left his iPhone back in his hotel room… The Conference itself was an interesting example of China exerting its soft power, reaching out to various countries with a conservation message that shows that China well understands that the world appreciates green forms of development (though none of us were seduced into thinking that conservation will trump trade among China’s leaders).  Participants included about a dozen from Russia (which shares a long border with China, and is collaborating on transboundary conservation of tigers, leopards, and snow leopards — we enjoyed some nice presentations showing how this is working); several from Indonesia, which has forests producing timber that China covets; a team of three from Kenya, where China is supporting lion conservation (but did not mention its continuing illegal import of poached elephant ivory); Brazil, an important source of timber and minerals; Thailand, a source of rice, fish, and other products exported to China; United Arab Emirates (which provides over 30% of Japan’s oil and gas, and the Chinese want some); Nepal, which is a buffer between China and India and tries to maintain a balance among sensitive billion-person powers; and so forth.   The organizers also invited senior diplomats who represent their countries at the Conference of Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (with 196 countries as Parties, lacking only the Holy See, which has no biodiversity, and the USA, worried about the CBD’s impact on biotechnology) and the Convention on Climate Change (actively implemented by China and almost all other countries). Representing Switzerland, Germany, the UK, Norway, Denmark, Mexico, South Africa, Canada, Italy, and New Zealand, such seasoned diplomats are not easily convinced, and each gave their own perspective on conservation priorities. But their participation lubricated potential collaboration and improved understanding.  And Beijing will host the CBD Conference of Parties in 2020.  This is all part of China’s systematic effort to expand its global influence through trade, investment, educational opportunities, joint research, technical assistance, and so forth, at a time when “America First” means ceding influence to others, with China leaping in while Europe is distracted by Brexit.  This change in global leadership will certainly take time, but China takes the long view of history and has great patience.  And while it values free trade and open collaboration internationally, it keeps a tight lid on domestic flow of information and personal freedoms. The Chinese respect the elderly, so I was asked to chair the opening session of the conference, as well as give a presentation on Thailand’s national parks, so I had to introduce myself, which was pretty entertaining. The screen for showing our slides was amazing, twenty meters wide and five meters high, with the slides somehow projected from behind — quite an amazing technology (see picture, coming).  Lots of great talks, including on giant panda conservation, snow leopards, tigers, sustainable chocolate linked to conservation (delicious, and take a look at www.originalbeans.com), Canada’s national parks, Chitwan National Park in Nepal (which we visited in March with some of our friends), and a lot of nice presentations on China’s many protected areas (some rather incomprehensible because all of the text on the screen was in Chinese, but the good ones had both English and Chinese). I also had to give about 30 minutes of interviews to the Chinese media, and I trust they shared with CNN and Fox so you could see me spout platitudes.  I was anxious to get back to Thailand… All for now.  D/J

I was tantalized by a return to Nepal after an absence that had been far too long. I had spent two years in Nepal back in the early 1970s, as the co-leader of the Arun Valley Wildlife Project in the Himalayas of eastern Nepal. While in Kathmandu to deal with some logistics challenges for our expedition, I had devoted a few days to visit John Seidensticker and Andrew Laurie in Chitwan National Park in Nepal’s lowlands (called Terai). John was a Smithsonian Institution researcher doing ground-breaking work on radio-tracking tigers and Andrew was in the midst of some remarkable research on the Greater One-horned Rhinoceros that earned him his doctorate from Cambridge University. Travelling all night in a jam-packed bus that hugged the narrow pock-marked road worming its way through the mountains down to the terai, I was relieved to arrive safely in the sleepy village of Sauraha where John and Andrew had their respective basecamps nestled among the modest huts of the farmers from the Tharu ethnic group. After a simple breakfast of tasty rice and lentils at John’s campsite, I ambled over to the Rapti River that marked the boundary of the national park and climbed into a tree with some inviting branches that offered an opportunity to enjoy some relaxing birdwatching with my trusty Leitz Trinovid bionoculars. Within a few minutes, I saw a sloth bear, two rhinos, a sounder of wild pigs, scattered groups of two deer species, at least 40 species of birds that included some impressive strutting peacocks, and a small herd of domestic cattle. Later, Andrew took me on the back of his trusty elephant to see more rhinos and John showed me plentiful signs of tigers: fresh footprints, droppings, and scratches on trees. The teeming wildlife was exciting, but Andrew and John shared some concerns about the impact of the villages that were inside Chitwan, resulting conflicts between people and wildlife, and the threats of poachers seeking parts of tigers and rhinos for the Chinese market. Forty-five years later I welcomed the opportunity to return to Chitwan, though the visit carried some anxiety. Would the wildlife still be as rich? Would Sauraha still be as hot and dusty? Had the villagers invaded the national park? Would we be able to find a decent place to stay? Was the local cuisine still confined mostly to rice and lentils? Fortunately, the visit was in response to an invitation by my old friend Hemanta Mishra, who as Deputy Director of Wildlife Conservation had been responsible for granting permission to carry out our studies in the Arun Valley back in 1972. He was a leader in Nepal’s conservation community, managed the naming of Chitwan as a National Park in late 1973, and later worked for WWF, the Smithsonian Institution, and the World Bank in Washington D.C. As a Nepali with long experience in Chitwan and Washington, he had a wealth of experience and great stories to share about the jungles in both locations. My wife Pojanan and I were also joined by Bindu and Sumana Lohani. Bindu had recently arrived back in Nepal after a distinguished career at the Asian Institute of Technology (in Bangkok, where I first met him) and the Manila-based Asian Development Bank, where he brought environmental concerns into the mainstream of loans for developing the struggling economies of Asia – not least Nepal. Now retired, he is a senior advisor to the Prime Minister, who seems very receptive to conservation initiatives. With such valuable friends we had no trouble finding seats on a jam-packed Buddha Air flight from Kathmandu, though our flight was four hours late in taking off. But it saved a six-hour ride down the still-treacherous serpentine mountain “highway”, now made even more frustrating by its heavy traffic and constant construction. We landed at the very modest Bharatpur airport, where transport to Chitwan National Park had been arranged by Hemanta. The road was under construction, far from smooth, and characterized by a constant pall of dust. The first sign of what was to come was located at the first major intersection leading to Sauraha (picture), where 35 lodges and restaurants were advertised, all stressing wildlife as an important part of the allure. We had been a bit dubious about the possibility of spending some nights in a tent, which was not nearly as interesting as it might have been in our youth. So we were delighted to pitch up at the Rhino Lodge, a 3-storied edifice built about mid-way between where John and Andrew had their research camps back in the early 1970s. It was being run by the National Trust for Nature Conservation, a national non-governmental organization that provides support to projects throughout Nepal. Remarkably, Sauraha had been transformed from a collection of huts and croplands into a thriving center for nature-based tourism. The sleepy Sauraha village I enjoyed back in 1973 has now become a poster child for how to provide economic benefits from a national park to the local people. I was delighted to see such a clear demonstration of the validity of the “conservation for development” mantra that I had been chanting regularly during my 30 years at the Switzerland-based International Union for Conservation of Nature. The simple, but profound, point is that local people need to benefit if protected areas are to prosper, and Chitwan is a terrific example. In short, the people living around Chitwan National Park have morphed from farmers into active members of a thriving tourism industry based on the natural values of the park. For example, we saw over 200 domestic elephants carrying tourists into the park, dozens of tourist guiding operations, and numerous hotels, lodges, and restaurants. Demand from foreign tourists is so strong that local shops stock wine from Australia, Chile, and California; beer from Belgium; and chocolate from Switzerland and the Netherlands. Restaurants serve Japanese cuisine (Nepal is very popular with Japanese tourists), pizza, tacos, steaks, and much else in addition to the usual rice and lentils that remain the mainstay of the Nepal diet. Even more impressive, a Community Forest in the buffer zone to the NP supports up to five tigers and a dozen rhinos and is being managed for tourism and nature conservation. The village that owns and manages the forest is thriving economically, poaching has essentially stopped, and the rhino population has boomed from about 140 when Andrew was working in Chitwan to about 600 today – enough to send founder populations of rhinos to Bardia and Suklaphanta national parks, where they had been hunted to local extinction but are now under more effective protection. Steady observations by the teams of local nature guides have identified over 570 species of birds for Chitwan. The villages that were within the park have been relocated to more suitable land elsewhere and the size of the park has been significantly expanded. Chitwan is being so well managed that it was added to the prestigious World Heritage List as early as 1984, and it is even better now. Of course, success in conservation inevitably leads to new problems, such as rhinos raiding rice fields to graze on farmers’ livelihoods and more tigers to feed on cattle, goats, and the occasional human. Oops. But the park managers have developed an effective approach to dealing with such problems, primarily through compensation and teaching farmers how to protect their crops. We took “official” National Park elephants into the park, with experienced guides who in their formative years had worked with Andrew Laurie and John Seidensticker and no doubt learned valuable lessons about wildlife behavior. They were able to show us plenty of rhinos (including one bathing in the river just a few feet away from our elephants), spotted deer, lots of fresh tiger tracks, barking deer, a sloth bear, several species of small mammals, and a multitude of birds; and it was fun just to ride the elephants into places where the public is not permitted. This included a visit to the site of reintroducing wild water buffalo from Kosi Tappu National Park near the Arun River into the park; they were extirpated in the 1960s but Chitwan is part of their historic range and has ample suitable habitat. It was great to see these magnificent aggressive and wild beasts, so different in shape and behavior from its docile domestic version. We also visited the site of the abandoned village, which is now a productive rhino habitat and supports a thriving population of spotted deer that provides a favored prey for the park’s tigers. On another day we took a dugout canoe down the Rapti River and saw mugger crocodiles and the fish-eating gavials (a species of crocodile with a long snout packed with thin, sharp teeth, sometimes reaching 17 feet in length). This was another indication of success, because both species of crocodilians were nearly extirpated from Chitwan when I was there back in 1973 and I never saw any of them except in the gavial captive breeding center. When we got out of the dugout canoes, we walked over to the elephant breeding center (run for the National Park by the National Trust), where six elephant mothers were with their calves; all of them were impregnated by a notorious wild bull, named Ronaldo for some reason, who crashes into the breeding center and has his way with any of the females that are in estrous. He intimidates the domestic bulls, who lead a soft life with every need met by their owners and spend their days carrying tourists to see rhinos. A pretty great national park! After a few days in Chitwan, we headed west and stopped at the Vulture Restaurant, not to eat vultures but rather to watch them dine. Vultures are seriously threatened in Asia because cattle are given a drug called diclofenac (sort of like ibuprofen), which helps protect them against disease and pain but when they nonetheless croak and the vultures feed on them, the side effect for the scavengers is kidney failure and the vultures fall over dead in just a few days. The loss of vultures is leading to the spread of domestic pariah dogs who carry rabies as well as upsetting the natural order of things. Nepal has responded by banning diclofenac and is making a serious effort to bring back vultures, including the Vulture Restaurant. This is another operation run by the National Trust and includes a cow hospice where old cows who are no longer productive (and not allowed to be eaten by their Hindu owners who were expected to nonetheless care for them until they die, so they are happy to be rid of them while earning a small price) and taken into a well-managed herd and allowed to die a normal death, at which time they become vulture dinner. We watched 30-40 vultures (hard to know the exact number because they came and went) of six species (of a total of nine recorded from Nepal). It was inspiring to watch them gorge themselves, showing a remarkable lack of table manners for a restaurant. We returned to Kathmandu well satisfied that Nepal’s nature is in good hands: a combination of an effective government agency, supporting projects run by the National Trust for Nature Conservation, continuing research on many species, and enthusiastic support from local people who well appreciate the point that attractive nature brings swarms of tourists willing to spend their money to experience the wildlife that is an essential part of the culture of Nepal. Jeff McNeely is a lifelong conservationist now retired and living in Thailand. He was the night animal keeper at the Los Angeles Zoo when he was a graduate student at UCLA in 1967-8. Joining the Peace Corps in 1968, he was sent to Thailand where he found a way to work with Dr. Boonsong Lekagul to write a book on Mammals of Thailand. As the Vietnam war drew to a dreary close, he worked in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam to prepare a system plan for the protected areas of the Lower Mekong Basin. In 1977, he headed to Indonesia, where he managed WWF’s first country program; some 35 projects contributed to preparing the foundation for that diverse country’s protected areas. In 1980 he joined the Switzerland-based International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as the Executive Officer of the Commission on National Parks. He stayed at IUCN until 2009, retiring as Chief Scientist after having worked in over 100 countries, writing dozens of books and hundreds of scientific papers. He was actively involved in the movement to prepare a Convention on Biological Diversity, leading to the entry into force of this convention in 1993 and the broad acceptance of the concept of biodiversity internationally.