Author: Stuart Pimm

Global Warming

NASA - A year in the earth's life of carbon dioxide

September 2019

Time is running out in the fight against the world’s two most critical environmental crises: global warming and mass species extinction.”

GLOBAL WARMING

A significant driver of both climate change and extinctions is deforestation and its aftermath of degraded, fragmented, and isolated landscapes. Such places lose their capacity to absorb carbon emissions and to sustain species.

As forests around the world fall to exploitation, key areas for biodiversity not only lose habitat, but what remains is in fragments. Populations die out in fragments, because they are not viable, often becoming inbred, or suffer chance accidents of birth and death. Even when they are viable, a warming climate pushes species uphill —a journey that a fragmented landscape may prevent.

Even under the most optimistic scenarios, the world is not going to reduce the high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide anytime soon. Species do not have the option of waiting. They are moving towards the poles and, in the tropics, to higher elevations. That is when they can.

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Girl on Train Tracks analogy for Climate Change

But there is hope to help both endangered species and vulnerable communities facing the threats of climate change and deforestation.With the right, strong will, and enough resources, we can make a real difference for the health of the planet.

Our Goal is to Prevent Extinctions

Saving Nature believes it is an economic, environmental, human health, and moral imperative to fight the climate and extinction crises. Over the past ten years, we have proven our strategy to Connect, Protect, and Restore habitat for endangered species works for both. We unite the power of scientific discovery and conservation action to provide practical, immediate, scalable, and sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. In doing so, we address the pressing problem of species going extinct in isolated forest patches that are becoming too small and too warm for them.

We work in places where exceptional numbers of species are in extreme peril. These are also places where poverty is extreme, indigenous cultures are threatened, watersheds are degraded, and landslides are rampant. While our focus is on preventing extinctions, our approach to conserving biodiversity addresses all these cascading consequences of deforestation. It delivers crucial benefits to vulnerable human populations by putting a check on development that degrades watersheds. It also helps insulate indigenous cultures from intrusion, exploitation, and displacement.

Helping Species Adapt To Climate Change

Saving Nature is taking practical action to rescue the species most at risk of extinction from climate change. While humanity struggles with finding solutions to climate change, species are fighting for survival. They are seeking safe harbors with habitable temperatures by moving towards the poles and to higher elevations. Time is running out for many.

There is abundant evidence that species are moving and that even slight warming pushes species higher in mountainous areas to keep within habitable temperatures. The cycle of deforestation and climate change amplify this crisis. Deforestation blocks migration, trapping species in uninhabitable landscapes, dooming them to extinction. In their retreat to cooler climates, their ranges shrink, further compounding the odds against survival.

Saving Nature intervenes by creating corridors in biodiversity hotspots that connect forest fragments, liberating species trapped and isolated in increasingly inhospitable habitats. Restoring degraded land and reconnecting isolated forests achieves two objectives – it absorbs atmospheric carbon emissions and helps species adapt to climate change by finding safe harbor. Read More about how Saving Nature is building corridors to safe harbor.

Forest Drone View

Putting a Dent in Climate Change

In terms of climate change mitigation, planting tropical moist forests soak up an average of about 26 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare per year. The forests we restore can likely soak up carbon dioxide for 20 years or more. Indeed, increasing evidence suggests that they will continue to do so for much longer, though at a slower rate.

Large-scale tropical reforestation could make a huge dent in carbon emissions. Theoretically, we could offset about a third of global emissions from all sources by planting trees. While we concede that it’s not likely we could plant all those millions of hectares, it does show there are plenty of places with degraded land from which to select. We choose those places carefully and in ways that help other problems.

It also shows how individuals can make a difference by planting tress to offset their carbon dioxide emissions and help species adapt to climate change. Read More About How to become “carbon neutral” while helping species survive in an era of climate change.

How Can You Help?

We will continue to use both science and savvy to connect, protect, and restore forest corridors. We invite you to join us in this ambitious effort!

Help Fight Climate Change

Please support our forest restoration and connectivity efforts. Donating to Saving Nature helps fight the two most pressing environmental problems the world faces—mass species extinction and global warming!

Categories: Climate Change

Of What Use is Biodiversity?

ChinaBirdBlin

In the August 2019 Special Edition of Duke Magazine, Dr. Stuart Pimm shares his observations from a recent visit to China.

A TOAST AT THE FRONLINE

Of What Use is Biodiversity?

August 15, 2019: Stuart Pimm

I stand on a small tributary of the Irrawaddy River. Across it is Myanmar—formerly Burma: I’m about as far west in the Chinese province of Yunnan as I can be. Borders between countries fascinate, for they illuminate different experiments in how we manage our natural world. Across the river, the land is going up in smoke. There’s a dense blue haze. At night, I see dozens of small fires, while overhead a satellite maps them from their thermal infrared radiation.

On returning to Duke, I look at what those maps show. China’s border is obvious. For a thousand miles along its southern and southwestern frontier, it has very few fires, while thousands carpet the land of its immediate neighbors.

Across the river unfolds a human tragedy, repeated across the developing world. Poor farmers burn the land each year to clear forests and brush and to enrich the poor soils with the nutrients the burning releases. On steep slopes, the inevitable heavy rains will wash away those nutrients, the soils, and often people’s homes too. The land’s fertility degrades each burning season.

Globally, burning tropical forests adds 4 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere a year, almost as much as all the emissions in the U.S. and more than those from the European Union.

 

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Categories: China, News, Saving Nature Collection

Helping Species Adapt to Climate Change

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Help species trying to escape climate change. Help Saving Nature plant trees to offset your carbon footprint and give species an escape route.
Help species trying to escape climate change. Help Saving Nature plant trees to offset your carbon footprint and give species an escape route.

July 19, 2019

In the face of climate change, species are fleeing to the poles and to higher elevations.  Saving Nature is trying to help them get there.

HELPING SPECIES ADAPT TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Every year, the world’s increasing population adds approximately 37 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from industry, agriculture, forestry, utilities, and transportation. 

Deforestation — of which the burning of tropical forests is the major component — contributes about 10% of these emissions. It is also the principal driver of biodiversity loss.

Our unrelenting carbon dioxide emissions have surpassed the planet’s ability to absorb these greenhouse gases, leading to climate disruption and species extinctions.

Species Moving to Higher Elevations as the Climate Warms

While governments struggle with finding solutions for climate change, species must seek higher ground with habitable temperatures for their survival.

Even under the most optimistic scenarios, we aren’t going to reduce the high levels of carbon dioxide anytime soon. Species do not have the option of waiting. They are moving towards the poles and, in the tropics, to higher elevations. That is, when they can.

Some species may not reach the refuge of higher elevations and will go extinct. The cycle of deforestation and climate change blocks their passage through degraded wastelands. As a result, they become trapped them in an uninhabitable landscape, dooming them to extinction.

Evidence from a 40-year Study: 1978 vs. 2018

Ph.D. student, German Forero-Medina, under the direction of Dr. Pimm, examined the distribution of birds along an elevation gradient in the mountains of Peru. Forty years earlier, Dr. Pimm’s Duke colleague, John Terborgh, had surveyed this same mountain chain at various elevations.

 

Returning to the original sites and using the same methods, the team compared where the birds are now versus in the past. Simply, they are at higher elevations — though not as high as one expects.

 

This suggests that the already threatened birds in the isolated patches of forest are in deep trouble. Isolation is bad enough, the inability to move to higher elevations is even worse news.

Saving Nature Builds Corridors to Safe Harbors

Our approach is a simple, effective, and scalable solution to reducing carbon dioxide and preventing extinctions. Restoring degraded land and reconnecting isolated forests achieves two objectives – it absorbs atmospheric carbon emissions and helps species adapt to climate change by finding safe harbor.

 

Simply put, the corridors we create in biodiversity hotspots connect forest fragments and liberate species trapped and isolated in increasingly inhospitable habitats. By reconnecting isolated forests, we create vital migration routes for species seeking higher ground.

 

In doing so, we get massive leverage by financing local partners to buy relatively small amounts of land to create significant protected refuges and strategic connections. Merging isolated forest fragments is critical to facilitating colonization of previously inaccessible areas. Doing so diversifies genetics and builds resiliency. In this era of climate change, the forest corridors also serve as the routes to survival as the climate warms.

Girl on Train Tracks analogy for Climate Change

How Can You help?

We will continue to use both science and savvy to connect, protect, and restore forest corridors. We invite you to join us in this ambitious effort!

Donating to Saving Nature puts trees in the ground for biodiversity, and sequesters carbon from the atmosphere. In short, supporting Saving Nature helps fight the two most pressing environmental problems the world faces—mass species extinction and global warming—at the same time!

Categories: Birds, Carbon Offsets, Climate Change, Research, Saving Nature Collection, Science

Let’s Talk Carbon!

Offest Your Carbon Footprint by Planting Trees

July 5, 2019

Stuart Pimm

HOW TO BECOME CARBON NEUTRAL

Let’s talk carbon. Saving Nature offsets carbon emissions surprisingly cheaply and, in doing so, helps species adapt to climate change.

This can be a complicated subject. Let’s simplify it.

We ask each supporter for $100 per year. That will make the average US citizen “carbon neutral” — the native trees we plant to restore forests with that money will soak up as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that he or she puts into it each year.

Carbon Dioxide Causes Global Warming

Our various human activities put about 37 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. That’s from burning coal and gasoline, of course, but also by burning forests.

Girl on Train Tracks analogy for Climate Change

We measure increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with great precision and have done so for decades. As the concentration increases, it traps more of the sun’s energy and so the planet warms. That massively disrupts the climate, harming people and biodiversity alike.

How to Become Carbon Neutral

Taking action to erase your carbon footprint is as simple as answering three questions.  

1. How much carbon dioxide am I putting into the atmosphere each year?

If you are average and live in the USA, the answer is 16 tons.

2. How much carbon does a forest soak up?

 

Growing trees take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So how many trees do you need to plant so that you are “carbon neutral?” That is, how many trees with your name on them are needed to soak up — technically, the word is sequester — as much carbon dioxide as your lifestyle produces. 

 

The answer is that the corridors we reforest at Saving Nature soak up about that same amount per hectare per year. Those corridors continue to do that for twenty years or more and at a slower rate thereafter. The bottom line is: help us plant and protect a hectare of forest and you’ll be carbon neutral for decades.

3. And finally, how much does it cost to be carbon neutral?

Tropical forests soak up about 26 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare per year as they grow back. They do so for 20 years — and usually considerably longer. Close enough, buying and reforesting a hectare of tropical forest will offset almost all a typical American’s carbon dioxide emissions for 20 years.

 

So how much does a hectare cost? Well, that depends on where we help our partners buy land and whether they plant the trees. Apart from some very difficult restorations, for which we solicit support from foundations, our costs are about $4 a ton per carbon dioxide. So about $100 per year will offset a typical American’s carbon emissions. (Other nations have different and usually lower ones.)

4. How to help combat global warming and save species?

We will continue to use both science and savvy to connect, protect, and restore forest corridors. We invite you to join us in this ambitious effort! Donating to Saving Nature puts trees in the ground for biodiversity, and sequesters carbon from the atmosphere.

Help Fight Climate Change

Please support Saving Nature in fighting global warming — at the same time you’ll be fighting mass species extinctions!

Categories: Carbon Offsets, Climate Change, Saving Nature Collection

Frequently Asked Questions About Carbon Offsets

Offest Your Carbon Footprint by Planting Trees

July 10, 2019

Frequently Asked
Questions About
Carbon Offsets

Welcome to our Frequently Asked Questions page about using a carbon footprint calculator and carbon offsets! 

Here, we aim to address common queries regarding carbon offsetting, a crucial tool in combating climate change. Whether you’re new to the concept or looking to deepen your understanding, this guide is designed to provide clarity on how carbon offsets work, their impact, and how they can be utilized to reduce your carbon footprint. If you’ve used a carbon footprint calculator and are wondering how to offset your carbon footprint, you’ve come to the right place. Read on to explore answers to the most pressing questions surrounding carbon offsets.

1. What are carbon offsets?

We all produce carbon as a result of using fossil fuels directly, or indirectly when we use products that were produced using fossil fuels. For example, we directly produce carbon when we drive a car or take a flight. When you eat food that has been produced with artificial fertilizers and pesticides (which are made from oil) you are indirectly producing carbon. The amount of carbon you produce is your “carbon footprint.” On average, each US consumer produces about 26 tons of carbon dioxide per year. (That’s 7 tons of carbon.)

Carbon offsets are a way to compensate for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by funding projects that reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere. An offset works by engaging in an activity that does the opposite. Instead of producing carbon, you do something to absorb carbon.

Luckily, plants are very good at this. Whenever you plant something, the plant will be absorbing carbon that would otherwise remain in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming.

Professor Pimm, Saving Nature’s Founder and President, likes to lead an exemplary, energy efficient life, except he flies a hundred thousand miles a year or more. So, using our carbon calculator for flight emissions, he determines how many tree to plant to offset his carbon emissions from flying.  For example, a return flight to Rio de Janeiro puts about 1 ton of carbon dioxide into the air, per person. That’s about $4 worth — much less than a week’s supply of the coffee he drinks. (Biodiversity friendly, fair trade, organic, of course.)

Louie Psihoyos, Oscar-winning director, asked Pimm to be in his documentary Racing Extinction. Pimm’s condition was that there would be a donation to offset the film’s carbon emissions. Psihoyos and his team made a very detailed calculation. It came to close to what Pimm had suggested on the simple basis of how many people worked for how many months and how many flights they took. After all that, Psihoyos felt that the donation was so small, he gave several times the calculated amount, for which we were very grateful. If you wait until the very end of the documentary, you will see it paid for trees planted at Jama Coaque, Ecuador.

2. How do carbon offsets help reduce emissions?

By investing in carbon offset projects, individuals and organizations can effectively counterbalance their own carbon emissions. For example, if you take a flight and calculate your carbon footprint using a carbon footprint calculator, you can then purchase carbon offsets to “offset” the emissions from your flight.

3. How do I offset my carbon footprint?

To offset your carbon footprint, you can calculate the emissions from your activities using a carbon footprint calculator and then purchase carbon offsets from reputable providers. These offsets fund projects that reduce or remove an equivalent amount of CO2 from the atmosphere.

4. Should I use a carbon footprint calculator to work out my annual carbon emissions?

Carbon calculators are a great way to estimate your annual carbon emissions. Our carbon footprint calculator is based on the EPA estimates for carbon emissions. We also help determine how many trees to plant to offset your carbon footprint with a donation to Saving Nature.

Check our our carbon footprint calculator.

5. How does donating to Saving Nature offset my carbon footprint?

At Saving Nature, we’re keen to slow the extinction rate and, in the process, we plant a lot of trees that offset carbon emissions. When you donate to Saving Nature, we channel funds to turn degraded cattle pastures into forests. As the forests regrow on the land we help acquire, they sequester about 26 tons of carbon dioxide (7 tons of carbon) per hectare per year. This sequestration rate continues for about 20 years, then continues, but at a slower rate. 

Therefore, over 20 years,we estimate that each hectare we acquire sequesters at least 540 tons of carbon dioxide (140 tons of carbon). We make deals to purchase and restore land at under $2,000 per hectare, so we are recovering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at about $4 per ton. (Most of our deals are much cheaper than that. For the ones that are more expensive, we seek help from foundations).

6. Is Saving Nature’s carbon certified?

This is the question we get most from companies. There are certified carbon offsets and that allows them to be traded. Now, certification is a good idea. It creates a product that companies can trade because everyone trusts those who do the certification. We are working to certify our carbon credits in Colombia.

7. What are the scientific facts about global warming?

First, the emissions. Global carbon emissions are about 10 billion tons of carbon per year. That goes into the atmosphere as 37 billion tons of carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas. That’s about 1.5 tons of carbon (5.5 tons of carbon dioxide), per person per year, but rich countries emit far more than poor ones. 

Deforestation — of which the burning of tropical forests is the major component —contributes about 10% of those emissions. Some tropical countries have much higher carbon emissions than one might expect from their industrial activities.  

8. How much carbon is there in forests and how much do forests sequester when we replant them?

A recent study by Saatchi et al. maps current estimates of how much biomass there is in forests.The units on the map are in megagrams, which is a ton — and the measure is of biomass.  About half of biomass is carbon.  In most of the places where Saving Nature restores forests, there’s a minimum of 300 tons of biomass or 150 tons of carbon per hectare.

Graph

These are the areas shown in orange or red. (One Saving Nature site is in dry forest and the amount is less.)  A variety of other papers show averages above 200 tons of carbon per hectare, especially in the wettest forests.  As luck would have it, there is a detailed study done, in part, at one of the key Saving Nature sites: La Mesenia in Colombia. (Not luck, really: when one protects forests, one provides a place for scientists to work!) Gilroy et al. show that the primary forest there had 200 tons of carbon per hectare.

This study also shows something else. The forests go from about 10 tons of carbon per hectare as pastures to about 100 tons in about twenty years — so an average of about 4.5 tons per year, but higher in the first decade than the second.  It’s much harder to study the change in forest biomass than just the biomass — one needs several measurements, of course. 

A recent paper by Poorter et. al.1 is a massive compilation of the available estimates, by dozens of people who work in this field. They presented many graphs comparable to the one by Gilroy et al. and concluded that over twenty years, recovering forests sequestered an average of 3 tons of carbon per year. Wetter sites accumulated carbon faster than dry ones. Their results predict that the places where Saving Nature has its projects would accumulate 150 to 200 tons of biomass (so 75 to 100 tons of carbon) in 20 years, so at just under 4 to about 5 tons of carbon per year  Interestingly, they showed a median time of 66 years to reach 90% of the carbon in old forests — a result broadly comparable with the graph above.

So, our land purchases are indeed the gift that keeps giving and giving. In our calculations, we’ve used a higher annual rate of carbon sequestration, but a much shorter period over which the carbon accumulates. 

9. Can you explain carbon math?

Well, yes, if you insist. The bad news is that different publications use different units.  We use metric tons of carbon. Some publications talk about carbon, some about carbon dioxide, and some don’t tell you which. A ton of carbon becomes 3.67 tons of carbon dioxide when you burn it. (That’s because the molecular weight of carbon is 12 and carbon dioxide is 44: 44/12 = 3.67.)  And some studies use biomass. About half the biomass of wood is carbon.

We use hectares, 100 metres by 100 metres, and 1 hectare is roughly 2.5 acres. There are 100 hectares to a square kilometre. Some publications use hectares, some square kilometres, but worst of all,  the Food and Agriculture organisation uses 1,000 hectares — or 10 square kilometres.

As if this wasn’t bad enough! Some studies use tons, while others use megagrams. A megagram is, well, a ton. And after all that you will be relieved to know that one Imperial ton is almost the same as a metric done (1 ton = 1.02 metric tons). We’re using metric tons.  The worst news of all is that many studies don’t say what they are using! (It can take an age to find out what they actually mean.)

10. How can I teach the carbon cycle to high school students?

Teaching children about the carbon cycle doesn’t have to be confusing. Once they understand the relationship between trees and climate change, they can be climate change ambassadors to friends and family.

Contact Professor Pimm for details of his presentation to High Schools on how to estimate how much carbon there is in a forest. 

11. What can I do to fight climate change?

Calculating and offsetting your carbon footprint by planting trees to restore rainforests is a great way to take personal responsibility climate change. The next step is knowing how many trees to plant to offset your carbon footprint. Our carbon footprint calculator will help you do both. 

Donating to Saving Nature to plant trees to offset carbon dioxide and rescue biodiversity solves the two most pressing environmental problems the world faces—mass species extinction and deforestation—at the same time!  We will continue to use both science and savvy to connect, protect, and restore forest corridors. We invite you to join us in this ambitious effort! 

Please support forest restoration and connectivity, and share our hope for the future of species struggling for survival in the face of global warming!

Footnotes

1. Poorter L, Bongers F, Aide TM, Zambrano AM, Balvanera P, Becknell JM, Boukili V, Brancalion PH, Broadbent EN, Chazdon RL, Craven D. Biomass resilience of Neotropical secondary forests. Nature. 2016 530:211 2.

FIGURE 1: Map of carbon in tropical forests: from Saatchi SS, Harris NL, Brown S, Lefsky M, Mitchard ET, Salas W, Zutta BR, Buermann W, Lewis SL, Hagen S, Petrova S. Benchmark map of forest carbon stocks in tropical regions across three continents. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2011 Jun 14;108(24):9899-904. 3.

FIGURE 2: Accumulation of carbon in regenerating tropical forests. From Gilroy JJ, Woodcock P, Edwards FA, Wheeler C, Baptiste BL, Uribe CA, Haugaasen T, Edwards DP. Cheap carbon and biodiversity cobenefits from forest regeneration in a hotspot of endemism. Nature Climate Change. 2014 Jun;4(6):503.

Categories: Carbon Offsets, Climate Change, Saving Nature Collection

Making Habitats Whole Again

Stuart Pimm, Founder and President of Saving Nature

January 14, 2019:  Stuart Pimm sat down with Ella Barnett to reflect on the Tyler Prize and its role in his conservation vision for SavingSpecies. 

 

He has since launched Saving Nature in July 2019 as the successor to SavingSpecies.  His new organization reflects his now broader vision for working toward a sustainable future to solidify and amplify the gains achieved.  Saving Nature has recruited an expanded team of leading conservation professionals  to help shape the strategic direction for saving vanishing ecosystems, preventing extinctions, and improving the lives of communities most impacted by environmental degradation.

 

Dr. Stuart Pimm, the Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, is a founding father of modern conservation. A trained biologist and theoretical ecologist, he has used his multidisciplinary background in the application of understanding biological conservation. It is because of him that science was implemented into conservation and species population, and extinction rates started to be tracked. In 2010, Pimm was awarded the Tyler Prize for his extraordinary contribution to the environment. Now, eight years on, the Tyler Prize sat down with him to find out what Pimm has been working on since. Unsurprisingly, his unfailing dedication towards the environment in general – and conservation in particular – has crafted a path towards a rapidly expanding non-profit organisation that aims to restore international species populations while working at a local level.

 

How did the Tyler Prize help you to contribute to the environment?

I was incredibly fortunate to get the Tyler Prize, and I felt that one of the things that I could do with that money was to use it to create an organization, SavingSpecies. It’s an organization to try and look at what are the key places around the world that we need to protect if we’re going to save biological diversity, biodiversity. The money I received from the Tyler Prize has certainly helped me push that agenda.

 

What does SavingSpecies do?

SavingSpecies, identifies the critical parts of the world where species are going extinct, through finding local partners. We want to empower local conservation groups, and we help them raise money to do restoration of habitats, typically forest restoration.

 

We solicit proposals from people in developing countries that want to manage their land by reconnecting these fragmented landscapes. We get proposals from people, and then we try to raise the money from donors, and convince them that it’s a really cost effective way of preventing species extinction.

 

We work with local partners to acquire unproductive land, get rid of the cattle, and replant those areas in native trees, establishing habitat connections. In doing that, we also are able to provide a source of income for local communities.

 

How does SavingSpecies generate impact?

What we do is reconnect forests by building what we call habitat corridors.

 

We have a mapping site, which maps out the key places in the world where species are at risk, and then we know from lots of detailed scientific studies the consequences of fragmented habitats. We’ve done a huge amount of research that shows that small, isolated fragments of habitat lose species and so we’re in the business of re-connecting landscapes to make them viable for species.

 

We also want to empower local conservation groups by helping them raise money to restore habitats. I wanted to build an organization that would help them, that would reward them, that would give them the resources and the scientific capability that they need. Moreover, you can see our results from space. You can go to Google Earth, and you can see the landscapes that we have reconnected with our tree planting.

 

Where are SavingSpecies’ projects?

We currently have ten projects in six countries. We have projects in the Andes. There’s Colombia and Ecuador, in the Coastal Forest of Brazil, and in places like Sumatra…

 

The site we work in Sumatra is the only place that has elephants, rhinos, tigers and orangutans in the same place. It’s a big patch of forest, but there’s a deep gash into that forest where agriculture has spread along the valley. But elephants and other species want to cross from one patch of forest to another which causes a lot of damage to local people. So we’re creating a forest corridor so that the elephants and other species can move between those patches safely and not bother people; they have freedom to roam.

 

What do you believe is the best practice for conservation?

Conservation is always local.

 

The people who live in these areas have lived there for generations. Their lives are there. What we can do is to work with them in a respectful way and see if we can help them make different choices for their lives.

 

Having local partners solves a lot of problems because they understand the local issues. There’s no way I could go into those places and tell those people what to do. What I can do is help local groups. I can empower local groups so they can solve the problems.

 

Solving problems is not always easy, but they are idiosyncratic. A problem one part of the world has will be dffierent to a problem in another. It’s always local, and you’ve got to work with people who understand the local politics.

 

When I look at local, small local conservation groups around the world, I’m hugely impressed by them. These are not famous organizations. These are small, local groups of people. They’re often very passionate about the places where they live and the places that they care about.

 

What is the scientific process that you follow?

We’re working on scientific papers now to try and identify exactly where the places in the world are that have not been protected properly, places that are the priorities for establishing national parks and other protected areas. Now that work will take me a year or a couple of years to finish with my team. We’ll then publish a paper. That will probably take another year, and it might be several years beyond that before we can make practical actions from that.

 

When you finally get to that act of planting a tree, it’s enormously rewarding.

It’s that continuum from really rather esoteric, sometimes rather theoretical science, through to the empirical science, through to the practical applications of that science, right down to planting a tree. Some of the things that I’m doing now are consequences of science that I did a decade ago.

 

We are very energetic at using our science to make a difference.

 

Do you ever plant the trees yourself?

Oh, you bet. I think that’s the part I like the most.

Help Us Plant Trees

Help us make habitat whole again by restoring and protecting vanishing ecosystems.

Categories: News, Saving Nature Collection, Science

Saving Nature In China

November 20, 2018

by Stuart Pimm

Saving Nature in China

I’ve just spent three weeks in China — my second visit this year. It’s part of an overall commitment to conserving China’s biodiversity that now accounts for a month to six weeks every year of my time.

Why China?

Well, in large part it’s because China is so important for its exceptional biodiversity. China holds 15% of the world’s vertebrate and 12% of its plant species. Its ecosystems range from permanent ice fields to tropical moist forests. Importantly, it is becoming an international leader.

The International Convention of Biological Diversity’s Aichi targets specify quantitative targets for areas protected (target 11), stopping loss of natural habitats (target 5), and the extinction of threatened species (target 12), while underscoring the vital importance of the ecosystem services natural ecosystems provide (target 14). In 2020, China will host the Convention’s 15th Conference of Parties. Under President Xi, improving the environment has become a national priority.

China is also looking outward, to developing infrastructure across Asia and particularly Southeast Asia. One of my reasons for being in China was to attend a conference, organised in part by Professor Binbin Li, a former Ph.D student of mine and now an assistant professor at Duke University Kunshan.

Binbin and I have published key papers on identifying which areas of China are important for biodiversity. In particular, we have examined to what extent protecting giant pandas protects other species and also what places are important for species across Southeast Asia (Saving Nature Vice President, Dr. Clinton Jenkins, was a co-author of the latter paper, too.) There’s a lot we can do as conservation professionals to help our Chinese colleagues. I have seven papers in giant pandas (and many others on other issues) because I’ve been able to help with analyses and structuring conservation work using skills and experiences I’ve developed elsewhere.

Is there an Important Role for Saving Nature in All This?

Well, yes, but it’s a distant vision. The Saving Nature model helps local conservation groups buy and restore land to reconnect isolated landscapes. We take this approach because almost all the key places for threatened species are in fragmented landscapes. It’s a niche, of course, but one we fill very successfully. We can’t buy land in China, but the model of reconnecting habitat fragments applies there as is does elsewhere. So, we’re talking with our Professor Li and other colleagues about how to apply our approaches there.

Finally, mitigating the effects of the infrastructure projects of the Belt and Road Initiative will require understanding where these projects intersect key areas for biodiversity. Identifying them — and looking for ways to minimise their harm to biodiversity— has to be a first step. So, no, we aren’t building habitat corridors in China yet. But keep watching this space.

Categories: China, Saving Nature Collection

How Can I Teach High School Students the Carbon Cycle?

arbon_Cycle-animated_forest

September 14, 2018

Stuart Pimm

Teaching children about the carbon cycle doesn’t have to be confusing. Once they understand the relationship between trees and climate change, they can be climate change ambassadors to friends and family. Here’s an exercise that Saving Nature’s President Stuart Pimm does with high school students.

HOW CAN I TEACH MY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT THE CARBON CYCLE?

Because it’s a science class, Pimm starts with two key facts. He’ll be talking about tons of carbon — and burning one ton of carbon produces 3.7 tons of carbon dioxide. Second, he’ll be using the metric system.  

How much does a tree weigh?

No one answers.  

“Imagine a tree as a cylinder. The volume of a cylinder is its area — that’s pi r squared” — the class groans — “times its length” — more groans. But that’s the hard part.  

Quickly, students estimate that a good-sized tree in the forests of eastern North America has a diameter of about one metre (so about three feet) and maybe ten metres (about thirty feet) tall. The volume comes to 7.85 cubic metres.  

How heavy is wood is easy!” Pimm tells them.  

Pimm reminds them of Archimedes and bath tubs.  

“Put a stick in water, keep it upright, and notice that about 70% of it is underwater. That’s the specific gravity of wood.”

A cubic metre of water weighs a ton, so the tree weighs about 70% of that, and 70% of 7.85 is 5.5 tons. 

arbon_Cycle-animated_forest

How much of wood is carbon? 

“Well weigh a piece, dry it, then burn it: the carbon has burned off as carbon dioxide.” 

The answer is that wood is about half carbon — and so that one tree is 2.75 tons of carbon.  

The class goes outside and measures how many trees of different sizes there are in an area of forest. Trees are not perfect cylinders, of course, but this simple exercise teaches some basic algebra and physics — which high school teachers love, even as their students groan. It also gets the students excited about how to improve the estimates, including how to estimate the height of a tree. (Simple algebra too, using the tool on the iPhone that estimates angles.) 

Scaling up one tree to estimate carbon emissions from deforestation 

The class comes back inside. There are good data online that show how much forests shrink each year. Look at satellite images on Google Earth that show that many forests are being cleared by burning them.  

In an afternoon’s class, one can get sensible, if rough, estimates of the planet’s most important land-use change and of how much it contributes to the increase in the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  

Certainly, these exercises make other important points. To do them correctly, one needs to spend a lot of effort in a lot of places to estimate the full range of values expected and how they vary across Earth’s different ecosystems. (The methods suggested here wouldn’t work well outside of Phoenix, Arizona, for example.)

 

When one has those values, then scientists can work out how best to predict them — from data obtained from satellite imagery, for example. Green places in the Eastern USA have more carbon than the desert southwest. But no satellite can save the hot, steamy, hard work of measuring trees! That’s fundamental

Putting Knowledge into Action

At Saving Nature, our work to reforest areas high in biodiversity solves two most pressing environmental problems the world faces—mass species extinction and global warming—at the same time!

 

We invite you to join us in this ambitious effort!  Donating to Saving Nature puts trees in the ground for biodiversity, and sequesters carbon from the atmosphere. 

Girl on Train Tracks analogy for Climate Change
Categories: Climate Change, Saving Nature Collection, Science Corner

Data Shows Limited Recovery for Hawaiian Sea Turtle

Two green turtles basking. Courtesy Mark Sully, NOAA/NMFS Hawaii Monk Seal Research Program. Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
Two green turtles basking. Courtesy Mark Sully, NOAA/NMFS Hawaii Monk Seal Research Program. Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
Two green turtles basking. Courtesy Mark Sully, NOAA/NMFS Hawaii Monk Seal Research Program. Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.

May 26, 2013

By Stuart Pimm

Historical Data Suggests Hawaiian Sea Turtle Recovery is Limited

Hawaii is famous for its tranquil beaches, surfing, and for pairing pineapple with pizza. But it is Hawaii’s green sea turtles that are one of the most popular tourist draws today. 

Hundreds of thousands of tourists trek to Oahu’s North Shore every year to see these creatures haul out of the ocean to bask on the sand under the tropical sun. 

The turtles seem so numerous today it is easy to forget that only a few decades ago most feared their extinction. The population had been harvested for food – like fish – by local residents and for a commercial fishery that targeted turtles. All harvests were banned in 1978, however, and surveys by NOAA scientists have documented a steady increase in nesting at one rookery ever since.

As a result of this rebound, some have called for the species to be removed from federal protection, de-listed as a threatened species, and for harvests to reopen.

A new study published in the journal Ecography, however, demonstrates that 80% of the historically major nesting sites for the population are extirpated or dramatically reduced and shows how this concentrates the risks posed by climate change. 

The authors of this synthesis represented a diverse collaboration of ecologists, geographers, and historians – in what’s become known as the discipline of historical ecology.

Dr. van Houtan, an outstanding young scientist, who last year, was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, by President Obama, for his work on turtles.
Dr. van Houtan, an outstanding young scientist, who last year, was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, by President Obama, for his work on turtles.
Green turtle and monk seal harvest on Laysan Island, unspecified date, courtesy State of Hawaii
Green turtle and monk seal harvest on Laysan Island, unspecified date, courtesy State of Hawaii

Historical ecology is deceivingly simple.

Modern scientific data are chronologically limited, forcing scientists to look at proxies such as ice cores, sediments, or tree rings for long-term data sets. In historical ecology, researchers mine historical records for any information on the abundance, distribution, or demographics of wild populations. 

Art, restaurant menus, ethnography, newspaper articles, and naval journals have all shown to be rich sources of information for species as diverse as Atlantic cod, African rhinos – and Hawaiian sea turtles.

I think most ecologists are fascinated by the idea of historical ecology. Who wouldn’t want to travel centuries back in time and see wild nature?” said study author Dr. Kyle Van Houtan, who leads NOAA’s Marine Turtle Assessment Program, based in Honolulu. 

The question with historical observations has always been how they might be organized to inform conservation management today.” 

Gaining Insights Before Exploitation

To answer that question, Dr. Van Houtan and his team scoured historical information in a host of museums, libraries, and Internet databases like Google Books and Project Gutenberg. They were rewarded with hundreds of historical accounts of sea turtles in Hawaii.

In Hawaii today, more than 90% of the green turtles nest on a low-lying coral atoll in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. However the study found nesting was significant and widespread across Hawaii, even a major nesting area on the island of Lanai that was hunted to oblivion shortly after World War I.

This historical perspective this study provides is important then for context for the recent decades. Many species on the U.S. Endangered Species Act were listed there in the 1970s, when their populations were at all-time historical low points. 

According to Dr. Van Houtan, “the unprecedented modern population bottlenecks probably are not the basis for setting recovery targets, healthy populations are. This is where historical data are useful – to give insights before exploitation.”

Figure from the paper showing modern and historical data on green turtles.
Figure from the paper showing modern and historical data on green turtles.

 

The study appeared this week in the Early View at the journal Ecography. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0587.2013.00245.x/abstract

Categories: Hawaii, Research, Saving Nature Collection, Science

Oil and Gas Can Coexist with a Thriving Amazon

A tanker waits to pick up oil

May 16, 2013

by Stuart Pimm

Oil and Gas Development Does Not have to Destroy the Amazon

When one thinks of the Amazon, it is usually of lush rainforests or indigenous people living amongst a wild landscape. Certainly, that is part of the Amazon’s story, but there is more, some of which may be a surprise. There is a good chance that the Amazon also produced the gasoline that powered your car today. The vast forest holds not just biological and cultural riches, but also hydrocarbon riches. The font line of the conflict between a wilderness wonderland and the modern petrochemical age is the western Amazon, one of the most biologically and culturally diverse zones on Earth.

A Framework of Best Practices for Hydrocarbon Development in the Amazon

Now a new scientific study by NGS grantees Clinton Jenkins and Matt Finer, along with engineering expert Bill Powers of E-Tech International, proposes a 10-point framework of best-practices for hydrocarbon development in the Amazon. 

By combining advanced engineering criteria with consideration of ecological and social concerns, they present solutions for reducing the many potential impacts of hydrocarbon development.

For example, by using extended reach drilling (ERD), a technique to reach a larger subsurface area from a single drilling location, it is possible to greatly reduce the total number of needed drilling platforms as well as access roads for a given project, says Clinton Jenkins of North Carolina State University. 

Using ERD along with other key components of best practice, such as reduced pipeline right-of-way and a prohibition on new access roads, could reduce project-related deforestation by more than 75 percent.

NGS Grantee, Dr. Clinton Jenkins stands amid felled trees in Peru. Logging is a
NGS Grantee, Dr. Clinton Jenkins stands amid felled trees in Peru. Logging is a familiar threat to the Amazon, but not the only one.
A tanker waits to pick up oil
A tanker waits to pick up oil

Avoiding Conflicts

According to Clinton Jenkins, it is not just better engineering that can prevent problems. The vast majority of currently planned drilling wells, production platforms and pipeline routes overlap sensitive areas such as protected areas, indigenous territories, critical ecosystems and vital watersheds. By identifying these types of potentially conflictive overlaps early in the planning process, best practice can be essential to avoiding future conflicts.

While the findings in this study will be applicable across the Amazon, the direct focus is the department of Loreto, a vast Amazonian region in northern Peru that is home to extraordinary biological and cultural diversity. Loreto recently made headlines when the Peruvian government declared an environmental state of emergency following years of extensive oil contamination.

In the words of author Dr. Matt Finer of the Center for International Environmental Law, 

Loreto makes an ideal case study because it is one of the largest and most dynamic hydrocarbon zones in the Amazon. Following the state of emergency, there is an added urgency to develop methods to minimize the impacts of any future development.”

The study also concludes that utilizing best practices should not increase project costs and may actually be cheaper in the long run. According to author Bill Powers of E-Tech International, “The engineering section of the guidelines addresses the full range of key project components. In addition to greatly reducing negative impacts such as deforestation, we found that best practice does not impose substantially greater costs than a conventional project, and may in fact reduce overall costs.”

Click here for the
Open Access Study

The research was funded in part by the National Geographic Society.

Categories: Peru, Research, Saving Nature Collection, Science

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