seaturtle.org : MTN : ARCHIVES : Sign In

In the world of today, which is rapidly approaching what E.O. Wilson calls a "Malthusian precipice", where growing human populations will collide abruptly with diminishing world resources, none of us can afford not to be conservationists if we have any interest at all in assuring that our children and grandchildren have even a modicum of the quality of life that we enjoy. Being a human and being a conservationist must become synonymous, and quickly, if we are to avoid killing ourselves as a species.

Ideally there would be no dichotomy between science and conservation science. There would be
no more degrees and courses and textbooks for "conservation biology"; but rather conservation should become a broad and enveloping theme in all biology (all biologists should be conservationists), and policy experts and communications specialists, and economists and businessmen and women, as well as theologians. Conservation is in everyone's best interest, and it must become part of the fabric of human society, part of our culture and part of our permanent world view.

In the big picture, humans depend on nature for life, so we must seek ways to interact more harmoniously with it. Let us not fool ourselves, conservation is something we do for ourselves. Nature does not care if we protect her or not. She rolls with the punches and accepts whatever we do to her, makes the necessary changes and continues to evolve, just as she always has. Yet, we humans need clean air, water, and food - the things that Nature provides - or we perish. Beyond these basic needs, we also have aesthetic and spiritual reasons for needing Nature. I, for one, would like for my children and their children to be able to see the amazing spectacle of Mexico's migrating butterflies, the beauty of a Galapagos hawk in flight, the unparalleled majesty of the rainforest, and the almost mystical phenomenon of the arribada. So let's get down to the Common Sense of how we "do" conservation.

What might the mission be for a turtle conservationist? Most would agree that we want to "Save Turtles," ensure they do not go extinct. But a turtle is more than just what is inside its shell - it is only really a turtle when accompanied by its environment. So, I submit that our mission as sea turtle conservationists might be the following: "To maintain the global diversity of marine turtles and assure the natural integrity of the full range of ecosystems upon which they depend." You may be thinking that this makes the job too difficult, that it would be easier to just worry about the turtles. But if we ignore the big picture, the turtles (and we) lose in the end. A turtle is not a turtle in an aquarium. It is nothing without its surroundings, nor are the surroundings the same without the turtles, so we must conserve both if we are to conserve one.

I want to encourage you all to think about our common mission, and how you can contribute to it most effectively. It is precisely these types of fora that allow us to discuss and validate "where we are going" as a sea turtle conservation "movement", and to further develop a consensus amongst all of us on the goals, objectives and work that needs to be done, who will do it, and how.

I started working with turtles as a researcher in Georgia and in Latin America back in the disco era, but for the past 15 years or so I have been focusing more on biodiversity conservation in general. What I am going to offer at this point are some tidbits of advice based on the lessons I have learned, and how they might apply to turtles. These are my own personal "golden nuggets of truth," for what they're worth, and if nothing else I hope they encourage you to think about how what each of you does as a conservationist fits into the big picture.

Now if you are talking about biodiversity in general, and tropical forests in particular, we have devised several methods that allow us to focus-in on priorities. I can tell you about "hotspots" for biodiversity conservation - tropical forest areas that account for less than 2% of the land area, but more than 50% of the world's plant and animal species. I can tell you about a different kind of priority area - major wilderness areas, probably the only sites left where natural evolutionary processes still take place and where traditional humans still live with no knowledge of the outside world. I can go further to talk about priority areas by geo-political units, the "megadiversity countries," and I can even take it right down to micro-priority areas (e.g. subregions within the broad Amazon basin). Progress in determining priorities for the marine realm has been slow, but advancements have been made there too.

With regard to threatened species, conservationists rely on global assessments, such as the IUCN Red Data Books, to set priorities. Studies have been done that examine diversity, endemism and threats by life stages for a variety of species from manatees to monkeys. For some taxonomic groups, specific, consensus-based plans for prioritized conservation action are available. These are just some of the tools conservationists have developed for strategically taking conservation step by step, starting with what we perceive to be the most critical priorities first.

Now for sea turtles. Through the work of the IUCN Marine Turtle Specialist Group and others, we have done well at agreeing on threats to sea turtle survival and on some of the needed actions, but we have not yet developed a strategy that deals with clear priorities. I believe that, as a movement (the sea turtle conservation community), determining these priorities should be our first priority, because if we try to do everything at once, our chances of failure are great. We need to carefully consider and derive consensus on which species, habitats, and threats require the most immediate attention, and which of all the different methods for conserving turtles are the most efficient, then put a plan into action that takes things step-by-step, in proper order. My next bit of advice is the following:

I estimate that our knowledge of sea turtles for the purposes of conservation is at about the same level. Dr. Richard Byles was quoted in National Geographic magazine in 1994, "I know of no other branch of science where so much effort has been expended to learn so little." We have been spending time and energy, and lots of it, but not in a focused and efficient way. Our scientific understanding of sea turtles lags far behind other endangered species groups. We need to catch up. This does not necessarily mean more research, but rather more focused, conservation-oriented research. Remembering what I said earlier about establishing priorities, not all research questions are equally important for our mission as conservationists. It is useful perhaps to achieve yet another validation of the average number of eggs/nest for a given species, or yet another formula for calculating straight-line carapace length from over-the-curve measurements.but we need to ask ourselves, "Is this really the best use of our time?" ­ especially given that there are some big unanswered questions
looming out there about marine turtles, knowledge of which would contribute greatly to their conservation. Things like:

• What are survival rates in the wild?
• What is long-term reproductive success?
• What are the rates and variability of recruitment?
• What are real population sizes and how are they distributed?

I have a Taoist view of threats - threats are not bad or good, they just "are". They are usually complex and culturally driven. You cannot just identify them, list them in a publication and then insist that they go away through laws or strong-arming, or in the end they merely come back. You must study threats, take them apart, understand their complexities, and seek ways to ameliorate them that work for the long term.

A good example of this approach is the Pro-TAMAR project in Brazil. The project sought to identify threats to sea turtles in Brazil, and soon discovered that the main threat was fishermen and their families. Project personnel were creative in their thinking, and they were able to successfully reduce this threat by employing the fishermen to help protect the turtles. Co-operatives were established for the fishermen's wives to make turtle motif handicrafts to sell to tourists to generate income. Childcare co-operatives were established to enable the women to work, knowing that their children were safe. Pro-TAMAR identified the threat, studied and understood it, then creatively found a way to diminish it in a fashion that will likely work for the long term. The people we need to be talking to, as conservationists are the people that pose the threat, whether they are fishermen or business leaders. Focusing on the turtles is necessary, and it is a lot more fun, but without confronting the threats posed by humans, and getting creative about how to deal with them, conservation will not occur.

In presenting my next point, I'd like to talk a bit about the difference between protection and management, both of which are important parts of conservation. Protection, in my view, is merely reducing the human threats on a species or an ecosystem, and it implies a hands-off approach. Management, however, implies a hands-on approach and can be defined as any activity that alters natural systems a little or a lot, we hope in favor of conservation. This would encompass sustainable use initiatives.

Management is risky unless you have a complete, and I mean complete, knowledge of how Nature works and you can predict and control all the impacts of your management interventions . . . not just the biological aspects, but also those defined as social or economic. But of course, we do [not] know biodiversity or sea turtles that well, so common sense would dictate that the best conservation approaches for sea turtles and for biodiversity avoid management and focus more on protection. Nature herself is the best manager, so usually the best management means "leaving it to Nature" to the extent possible.

There are no less than a zillion examples of how man, with all good intentions, has messed things up by trying to "manage" Nature without fully understanding the effect(s) of his actions. Typically we do not discover that our management is dangerous until after we have been doing it for awhile. And then it may be too late to correct the mistakes. For example, about half of Africa's elephants were killed over a ten year period because we thought that "sustainable use" was the way to manage them. We made the mistake of incubating turtle eggs in Styrofoam boxes for a long time before we learned about temperature dependent sex determination, and only then did we realize that our management, done with all the best intentions, may have had a negative impact on the turtles.

I am not recommending no management, I am recommending wise management. The past 20 years of "sustainable development" as a conservation "mantra" has led many to believe that everything can be sustainably used, yet to date we have very few (if any) good examples of true sustainable use. I have come to believe that sustainable use too often represents a very arrogant view, not to mention a very dangerous one. Until such time as we fully understand Nature and the dynamics of man's interactions with it, any management is risky, so our safest route is to:

I'd also like to briefly comment on policies and politics as regards conservation. Conservationists love to engage in politics, which is why we tend to occur in higher densities in places like Washington, D.C. and Mexico City. A vast number of treaties, conventions, laws, policies, White Papers, and resolutions have been produced in recent decades, and much has been accomplished at the policy level for conservation and for sea turtles, especially since the Rio Conference [the Earth Summit in Brazil] in 1992. And there is a political awareness of the need for conservation at the highest levels now that is unprecedented in the history of humankind. The danger is, of course, that we will lose sight of the fact that where the rubber hits the road, where the conservation really gets done, is not in Washington, D.C. or in Mexico City, but on the nesting beaches and in the fishing boats, at the interface between man and turtles. Policies are not an end, but only a means. Possibly our biggest challenge in conservation is "Closing the Gap." The gap between increasing interest in the importance of conservation at high levels of Government, and the actual on-the-ground success.

Lastly, a word about the importance of communication in the broadest sense. Policies that are not backed by a clear commitment of the people seldom work. Changing the way people view their relationship to Nature is the critical component of long term conservation success, be it sea turtles or biodiversity as a whole. As I said earlier, conservation is a social science. It is about people. When man as a species learns to live harmoniously with Nature, my job will be obsolete. Communicating this new paradigm (through the media, advertisement, education, training, face to face encounters and by example) needs to be an underlying theme of all we do. And do not be lulled into believing that our communications challenges are met simply because the world is now tied together by internet connections and satellite phones, thereby giving people easy access to enormous quantities of information. Providing information is just the first step. Our communications efforts will not be fully realized until that information is absorbed by people, and has created real changes in attitudes and behaviors ­ simply knowing that conservation is the "right thing to do" is still a long way from truly changing how one acts.

Here is a brief shorthand version of the points I have presented that I call the cornerstones, the key components of successful conservation:

• Science (biological and social)
• Protection/Management (protect the core, manage the rest)
• Economics (offer viable solutions)
• Policy (build the legal framework)
• Communications (Change human attitudes and behaviors)

Pessimistic assessments of the world's environment leave us feeling that there is nothing we can do to make a difference, yet I think there is a chance to make a difference and that optimism is the fuel that can drive us to keep going in conservation.

One thing we frequently neglect to remember is that conservation is an experimental science. There is no cook book approach that can be applied everywhere. The cornerstones I have presented are a nice framework, but they need to be applied in different ways at each site and with each species and human community, and the proper mix involves some guesswork based on knowledge of the situation and common sense. But guesswork is OK, and a whole lot better than doing nothing. We still have a long way to go in understanding biodiversity and sea turtles, but we do not have time to wait for all the answers before acting. Time is working against us in all branches of conservation.

When it comes to the details, do not wait for the great and mighty gurus of conservation to tell you how to do it, because you are the gurus - no one knows your local reality like you do. The best way to learn is to just do it, make mistakes, but be honest about them, and use the lessons you learn to improve your techniques. And if we all do this, and share these lessons with each other, then we will be able to get the job done.

In summary: