Why Boycott Madagascar’s Rosewood and Ebony?

October 6, 2009 Stuart Pimm

Photo of baobab trees in Madagascar by Stuart L. Pimm

October 6, 2009

Representatives of Malagasy civil society, conservation and development organizations and the international community issued a statement today lamenting the ongoing destruction of Madagascar’s last fragments of forest for the illegal harvest and export of precious woods. Consumers of rosewood and ebony products are asked to check their origin, and boycott those made of Malagasy wood. The full statement is at the bottom of this page.

Conservation biologist Stuart Pimm writes about his observations of the diversity in Madagascar and how the current pillaging of the country’s natural heritage threatens not only to destroy decades of conservation work, but also ruin the one chance that communities adjacent to national parks have to escape poverty.

The Call to Boycott Madagascar’s Rosewood and Ebony Explained

By Stuart L. Pimm

Special Contributor to NatGeo News Watch

Madagascar has long been the worst country to be a tree. In the last year, things have got even nastier.

“To how many continents have you traveled with National Geographic,” people ask me. “Eight,” I reply with complete confidence. “But there are only seven continents!” I will not win the National Geographic Bee. I am unmoved, nonetheless.

Madagascar is the eighth “continent,” and no one who loves the great diversity of life on Earth would disagree. Almost everything a naturalist sees in Madagascar is unique to the place.

There are the lemurs, of course. But even to a birdwatcher, broadly familiar kinds of birds are so special to the island that they must have “Madagascar” in front of their names: Madagascar partridge, Madagascar pochard, Madagascar buttonquail–and on down a long list. It turns out that most of these birds are not all that familiar–they are peculiarly from Madagascar.

Simply, Madagascar is an entirely isolated world. It has landscapes that could be the sets for science fiction movies, and one odd lemur, the aye-aye, that is too incredible to belong in one.

Most of Madagascar’s trees–and other plants–are also unique.

Sadly, Madagascar is a wretchedly bad place to be a tree, even in the best of times. Most of the country has been deforested. A coup earlier this year ejected a democratically elected president. In the lawlessness that has followed since, the remaining trees are getting an even worse deal than they have in the past.

Along with other members of National Geographic’s Committee for Research and Exploration (CRE) a few years ago, we flew from the capital city, Antananarivo, towards the northeast end of the island–the Masoala peninsula, a place of exceptional diversity.

But almost as soon as we took off there was smoke in the air–and on the ground beneath us we could see fires, small and large. I know from looking at satellite images that many are large enough to be seen from space.

I first traveled to Madagascar with my then graduate student, Luke Dollar–now a National Geographic emerging explorer. On the ground, the problem was obvious. To clear their fields or to give a short flush of nutrients for the grasses on which their cattle feed, villagers set fire to the land.

The remnant patches of forest–often in national parks–would go up in flames too as the fire spread into them. Wherever we traveled, we saw forest edges that had been recently burned.

“Why should they care,” Luke asked. “They get no benefit from parks.” Rural areas of Madagascar contain some of the poorest people on Earth.

Luke, and my fellow CRE member, Professor Patricia Wright, spend their energies ensuring that poor people near Madagascar’s parks do benefit from the sanctuaries.

Luke founded a small restaurant near one park, for example. The committee ate there during our visit. (Rice and beans, French fries and eggs–a definite improvement on the food we ate during our field work in earlier years.)

With an income stream from the restaurant, the children in the village were all in school. Literacy is the first step on the ladder out of poverty.

Pat’s efforts in Madagascar are even more extensive. Near the Ranomafana National Park her lemur research helped establish, she’s created the research station where almost every young conservation biologist–Malagasy or foreign–goes to learn the craft.

“I watched an aye-aye from the dining room of the research center,” she told me on my first visit to the facility, bursting with obvious pride and excitement.

An entire community has come to depend on the benefits of Ranomafana and the money it generates from visitors.

All this makes what is happening now in Madagascar so tragic.

Reports from the field make it clear that in the last year there has been a surge in logging inside protected forests. The trees involved are mostly “rosewood” and “ebony,” Peter Raven told me.

Peter is the chairman of National Geographic’s Committee for Research and Exploration and has overseen many National Geographic grants to local and international researchers in Madagascar.

In his other capacity as president of Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter is responsible for a large staff in Madagascar. Missouri Botanical Garden runs a multitiered botanical training program in the country, with a network of local collectors working in parks and reserves.

Peter Raven is truly in the middle of the country’s research and conservation.

Rosewood and Ebony

I asked Peter for more information about the rosewood and ebony trees, for these common names are misleading.

“Rosewood is Dalbergia, a legume, and it has some 47 endemic species in Madagascar, and Diospyros, ebony, which is also being logged, we now believe has nearly 200 species–a remarkable array of endemics in each case,” he told me. (“Endemics” are those species found only in the country.)

I’ve not seen the illegal logging firsthand in Madagascar. But I know the way it works in other countries. The essential ingredients are a good river and bad policing. You select a tree near a river, fell it with a chain saw, float it downriver. There will always be someone to pay for the chain saw, so long as he doesn’t get caught.

So who buys these trees? Try typing “Madagascar rosewood” into Google. The first couple of hundred entries are almost all about guitars. And I gave up checking after that.

There’s a lot of money to be made in poaching trees that provide beautiful wood that we desire. Do you know where your guitar came from?

There was a time when people thought that leopards looked best as skins draped over expensive women. Then we learned that they never look more beautiful than when they’re in their natural habitat.

I hope there will be a time when we’ll agree that there is nothing so lovely as a tree. (I borrowed that.) Except, perhaps for the lemur sitting in it.

But more than anything, there is nothing more precious to behold than the children in the schools that tourist dollars build.

Text of statement released today by conservation groups regarding forests and export of wood from Madagascar:

Malagasy government’s decree for precious wood export will unleash further environmental pillaging

Recently Madagascar’s transitional government issued two contradictory decrees: first, the exploitation of all precious woods was made illegal, but then a second allowed the export of hundreds of shipping containers packed with this illegally harvested wood.

Madagascar’s forests have long suffered from the abusive exploitation of precious woods, most particularly rosewoods and ebonies, but the country’s recent political problems have resulted in a dramatic increase in their exploitation.

This activity now represents a serious threat to those who rely on the forest for goods and services and for the country’s rich, unique and highly endangered flora and fauna.

Precious woods are being extracted from forests by roving and sometimes violent gangs of lumbermen and sold to a few powerful businessmen for export.

Madagascar has 47 species of rosewood and over 100 ebony species that occur nowhere else, and their exploitation is pushing some to the brink of extinction.

Those exploiting the trees are also trapping endangered lemurs for food, and the forests themselves are being degraded as trees are felled, processed and dragged to adjacent rivers or roads for transport to the coast. No forest that contains precious woods is safe, and the country’s most prestigious nature reserves and favoured tourist destinations, such as the Marojejy and Masoala World Heritage Sites and the Mananara Biosphere Reserve, have been the focus of intensive exploitation.

Currently thousands of rosewood and ebony logs, none of them legally exploited, are stored in Madagascar’s east coast ports, Vohémar, Antalaha, and Toamasina. The most recent decree will allow their export and surely encourage a further wave of environmental pillaging.

Malagasy civil society, conservation and development organisations and the international community are united in lamenting the issue of the most recent decree, in fearing its consequences and in questioning its legitimacy. Consumers of rosewood and ebony products are asked to check their origin, and boycott those made of Malagasy wood.

October 6, 2009

CAS California Academy of Science

CI Conservation International

DWCT Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust

EAZA European Association of Zoos and Aquaria

ICTE Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments

MBG Missouri Botanical Garden

MFG Madagascar Fauna Group

The Field Museum, Chicago

Dr Claire Kremen, University of California, Berkeley

Dean Keith Gilless, University of California, Berkeley

Robert Douglas Stone, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

WASA World Association of Zoos and Aquariums

WCS Wildlife Conservation Society

WWF World Wide Fund for Nature

Zoo Zürich

Categories: Madagascar, Saving Nature Collection

Better REDD Than Dead When It Comes To Climate Change

September 28, 2009 erinwilligan

The meeting on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) convened by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the United Nations, New York. Photo courtesy United Nations

September 28, 2009

By Stuart Pimm

Special Contributor to NatGeo News Watch

BETTER REDD THAN DEAD WHEN IT COMES TO CLIMATE CHANGE

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

Swapping field clothes for a suit and tie, conservation biologist Stuart Pimm attended a United Nations event last week on forests and climate change. He was among world leaders and distinguished thinkers and activists invited to publicly express their commitment and support for the role of forests as an option to mitigate the emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The forest event followed the Summit on Climate Change, convened at the UN a day earlier “to mobilize political will and strengthen momentum for a fair, effective, and ambitious climate deal” in Copenhagen this December.

Officials from almost every country will gather in Copenhagen to try to agree a new climate treaty as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the first phase of which expires in 2012. The conference, also known as COP15, is widely regarded as a critical opportunity for humanity to try to get a grip on the problem of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

The meeting on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) convened by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the United Nations, New York.

United Nations, New York, September 23, 2009, 5 a.m.

Another morning when the alarm goes off while it’s still very dark. When I dress, it’s not my boots and field khakis that I put on, but a white shirt, fumbling at this early hour with the cufflinks, and a charcoal grey suit.

The flight to New York is just over an hour. Then a taxi. It can’t get me very close to my destination. First, I see what must be every policeman in the city, then the traffic slows to a crawl, then a standstill, and I continue my journey on foot.

Different Kind of Jungle

This morning I’m off to a different kind of “jungle” and it requires different field clothes. The United Nations General Assembly is in session and I have an invitation to watch a “high level event.” What happens here may decide whether the world’s forests, their biodiversity, and their indigenous peoples, have a future.

The last few blocks have the feel of a street fair. Lots of noisy people waving posters, shouting slogans–and one, carrying a placard reading simply “Indict him!”, nearly knocks me over. I wonder who the “him” is, thinking there might be 192 national leaders to choose from, then remember that some would be “her,” so that narrows the field just a bit.

Finally, I reach the right street corner, see someone holding a small sign “REDD,” and, in short order, I am whisked through security into the relative tranquility of the UN building.

REDD: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation

REDD is for “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation.” It is a UN program that seeks to generate income for countries that provide sustainable management of forests while also contributing to important reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

There’s a lot of science involved and the world’s forests are at stake. I worry: will this meeting of the world’s top politicians–its presidents and prime ministers–have got the message?

The United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, introduces the proceedings. He recognizes the commitment to the meeting–more than 85 governments are represented in the room, 18 of them by their heads of state.

Then he nails the key points:

Deforestation causes 20 percent of the emissions of global greenhouse gases.
Hundreds of million of mostly poor people live in forests and depend on the ecosystem services they provide.
Forests harbor the greatest share of the planet’s biodiversity.
Some background: A total of 183 countries have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol–an agreement to reduce the greenhouse gases that are disrupting the planet.

People often think that this is entirely a problem for industrial nations, such as the U.S., European countries, Japan, and so on. If so, the list of top emitters would surprise: after China and the U.S., come Brazil and Indonesia.

Brazil and Indonesia get to that position because of their high rates of deforestation.

Stopping Deforestation is a Bargain Compared to Other Solutions

Under the Kyoto Protocol, developing countries cannot receive credit for the benefits their forests provide as the major stores of global carbon. REDD aims to change that.

Brazil’s neighbor, Guyana, still has most of its forests. Its president, Bharrat Jagdeo, gave the event’s most forceful presentation. “We all profess to know how important forests are,” he started, then asked why REDD hadn’t been given the attention of other solutions. “We need to correct that this afternoon.”

Certainly, there were technical problems, he noted, but there are also technical problems with alternatives such as employing renewable energy. He felt that countries were focusing too much on REDD’s difficulties. “This is the lowest-cost [greenhouse gas] abatement solution,” he said. Indeed, studies done by the Union of Concerned Scientists show that about U.S. $25 billion in forest conservation would prevent a billion tons of carbon going into the atmosphere.

From the point of view of the developed world, Sweden’s prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, spoke on behalf of the European Union. He too started with the importance of forests–home to “70 percent of the world’s biodiversity.”

Enough to Effect Real Change?

Deforestation was running at “13 million hectares [50,000 square miles] per year between 2000 and 2005,” Reinfeldt said. Unless the world’s nations could reduce that by half by 2020, there would be no way to keep the planet from warming at least two degrees, he warned.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not attend. Neither did British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. But a British official read Brown’s statement. Yes, public funding was vital, the British agreed, but so too was the private sector who could use carbon markets to offset their emissions. (Companies could compensate for their carbon emissions by investing in carbon-trapping opportunities like forests.)

With colleagues, I have spent a career documenting forest-loss and the species extinctions it causes. Would this science get onto the political agenda? I need not have worried. It has.

But would the broad international agreements on the science be enough to effect real change? The core point is will there be adequate funds to do this?”

REDD is About Human Rights

While president Jagdeo applauded Norway’s financial commitments and Brazil’s efforts to reduce deforestation, his main point was emphatic: “the core point is will there be adequate funds to do this?” Can enough money be raised through carbin markets and other global sources to make forest conservaton sustainable?

I knew from previous events, drinks and canapés would follow. From the windowless meeting chamber, we trouped into a lounge with an impressive view overlooking the river.

I wasn’t just there for the snacks, for there were short talks by two women who I have long admired, but never met.

Wangari Maathai is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, rewarded for her work in environmental conservation, women’s rights and–so relevant to the day’s events–planting trees.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz chairs the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She played a central role is getting the UN to adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Yes, REDD is about billions of tons of carbon. And about millions of species. Maathai and Tauli-Corpuz understood that. But their unique and powerful message is that REDD is about people–whose lives and whose homes are destroyed when we clear the world’s forests.

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!

Please support our forest restoration and connectivity efforts, and help fight climate change for a sustainable future!

Categories: Climate Change

Pythons in Florida Everglades

September 6, 2009 Stuart Pimm 1 Comment

Burmese python caught in Everglades National Park Photo courtesy NPS

September 6, 2009

By Stuart Pimm

Special Contributor to National Geographic Voices

Pythons have invaded the Everglades, where they flourish in warm, wet habitat that has an abundant buffet of native species to feast on.

The giant snakes were imported to North America as pets, but released or escaped into Florida’s wetlands they are proliferating, challenging alligators for the top of the food chain, and potentially positioning themselves to invade much more of the United States.

Conservation biologist Stuart Pimm has dedicated his life to protecting species–but an infestation of 16-foot alien snakes in Florida’s iconic Everglades National Park has got him wondering how to eradicate this one. He is worried about the impact on indigenous species–and what could happen if pet owners release other big reptiles into the watery wilderness.

Everglades National Park, Florida

Most April mornings for the last 15 years have started well before dawn, with a cup of coffee and the drive into Everglades National Park. We’re in the helicopter while the sun is still below the horizon. No brilliant conversation at this hour.

Through my headset I hear, “Seven eight four, one six three bravo hotel.” A women’s voice echoes, “seven eight four, one six three bravo hotel.” Our pilot replies, “heading west from the Beard Center to 80 46 30, 25, 41 15, four souls on board, two and half hours of fuel.” The women’s voice repeats the numbers.

“Roger that, thank you,” and the conversation ends. There is no chit chat. We let the Park know where we’re going just in case the helicopter breaks down–which happens, but not often.

The sun is still not up and the colors are muted. The stands of pine trees are dark green, the prairies are dark buff. There’s a mist over them, gray in this light, but thin, translucent, rumpled by the most gentle breeze. Anything stronger would destroy the veil. It’s thin enough, sometimes, that I will stand with my head above it when we land.

The helicopter leaves and I listen in complete solitude. There’s a faint “bzzzz” to the north, so I check “one” on my clipboard. The Cape Sable sparrow– one of the rarest birds in North America and one found only in the Florida Everglades, is at home.

I know what you want to ask. Alone–and a very long, tough walk from the nearest road–what happens if I run into an alligator (there are lots of them), or a cottonmouth (you smell them first), or a Burmese python? A Burmese python?

The alligator and cottonmouth belong in the Everglades, but I really don’t relish the prospect of meeting a 4-meter (13-foot) constrictor, curled up on her eggs, as I wait for the helicopter to return to pick me up. I’m just not a snake person. And the pythons do not belong there.

There are snake people, of course. And the problem is that there are people who thought they were snake people, but grew out of it. Well, the snake grew them out of it, more correctly.

One of the Ten Largest Snakes in the World

The Burmese python grows to be one of the ten largest snakes in the world. Without doubt, it’s a beautiful animal. And a very popular pet. Type the name into Google and you immediately get advice on how to care for one.

It also comes with a warning too few people heed: They can grow to more than 5 meters long (16 feet) and weigh more than 80 kilos (200 pounds). And you have to feed them. And they get very large very quickly.

What starts out as a cute, mouse-eating novelty, can become a liability in a couple of years.

I talked to Dr. Nicolette Cagle, a Duke University colleague who did her Ph. D on snakes. Her husband, Mark–a vet–was an essential part of the conversation: It took both of them to hold Boa, their pet boa, as can be seen in the photo below.

Boas are snakes related to pythons and, like pythons, grow quickly to a large size. “They’re fascinating creatures,” Nicolette told me, “so many people are afraid of them–but there’s no reason to be.

For the most part, they’re even-tempered–we like to show her to school groups.”

Nicolette and Mark have had Boa since she was just over a meter (four feet) long. But handling such a large snake requires dedication.

So, what to do if you are unable to manage such a large reptile?

If you live in South Florida, the temptation often proves irresistible–you let your pet go.

Many people have done this, even though this is against the law and there are humane alternatives. The result is that today the Everglades is home to perhaps thousands of Burmese pythons. And they’re breeding.

It’s not just pythons that are immigrants in the Everglades. The waters of this unique freshwater marsh have been populated by a veritable United Nations of tropical fish species. They too were dumped by owners who tired of them.

There are green iguanas across southern Florida, too–and the list of alien species that have taken up residence in the Sunshine State goes on.

The damage that such invasive species cause is huge and, in the Everglades, many native species could be at risk. Alien species of all kinds are eating native species, or their food. Pythons could be emerging as the Everglades’ alpha predator.

On the far side of the world, the brown treesnake was responsible for eating all of Guam’s birds to extinction in the wild. That’s what can happen when an alien predator is introduced into a habitat where it has no natural enemies. (You can read more about the Guam situation on the USGS Web site.)

Python hunters have been recruited to go after the snakes in Florida. But even with the help of snake-sniffing dogs, the bag has not been impressive thus far.

What I do for a living is to understand why species go extinct– and what we can do to prevent extinction. In this case, we want to know how to make Burmese pythons extinct in the U.S. wilderness, somewhere they do not belong.

So what are this species’ vulnerabilities?

I talked to Dr. Lucas Joppa, another Duke University snake expert. “These pythons have an amazing advantage in the Everglades,” he told me. “They are superb predators on the land–and they are superb predators in water, too.”

A weakness, however, may be the python’s need for warm places to lay its eggs. After giving birth, female snakes remain with their eggs for over a month to keep them warm,” Joppa added.

Joppa thinks one way to control pythons in the Everglades may be to provide them with a kind of battery, or solar-powered electric blanket. “Create somewhere nice and warm to lay eggs and that’s where mother python will be in the breeding season.”

Ironically, pythons are threatened with extinction in the wild, Joppa noted. “They’re hunted for their skins and for their meat.”

Hiss-kabobs

Even if python stir-fry, or my personal suggestion, hiss-kabobs, might not catch on, the skins could create interesting incentives for python hunting.

Perversely, because the snake is listed by CITES — the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species — trading python skins internationally is illegal.

Burmese pythons top the list of reptiles for sale by pet dealers, but they are not the only species on the list.

Boas are a popular pet and have the same size issues as pythons. Are they and other big snakes also headed for the Everglades?

I worry that the worst is to come.

Categories: Florida, Research, Saving Nature Collection, Science