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In this Issue
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| Tirumala septentrionis (Dark Blue Tiger Butterfly) |
Cethosia bibles (Red Lacewing) |
South China's international wildlife trade is the theme in this issue – one of the greatest failures of conservation in the region, and often likened to a gigantic vacuum-cleaner stripping Asia's forests of their animals. What can be done about it? TRAFFIC's James Compton and Chris Sheperd highlight the challenge with reference to the region's disappearing pangolins, finding hope from a major regional workshop and the working group formed to follow up on it. Similarly concerned about the trade in slow lorises, Angelina Navarro-Montes, Anna Nekaris and Tricia Parish find a receptive audience for their creative training workshops among Asia's enforcement officials. The China efforts of another NGO, the Wildlife Conservation Society, are described by Zhang Mingxia of their new Guangzhou office: they plan to build on past work on TCM and transboundary trade with awareness-raising in this "lion's den" of consumption. Michael Lau looks for inspiration to Hong Kong where some ingredients of environmental education, combined with enforcement, succeeded in bringing the trade in forest wildlife (though not yet of timber or marine fish) under control.
From recent attitude surveys, further discussion is needed on how to shift attitudes in support of conservation – as elsewhere in the world, the greatest damage is often done by the most highly "educated". At the same time, if these edible wildlife species are to outlive our own generation, enforcement officials must do their work with the urgency and resources required.
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Polyalthia rumphii
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Phyllium celebicum |
Other news in this issue includes reports on climate science, sustainability and economics with implications for all of us, and the latest from the China Programme. Elsewhere, KFBG Studentship holder Jiang Aiwu tells of the earth-shaking discovery of a new bird species, unobtrusively rock-hopping in the limestone forests of Nonggang. Meanwhile we turn the spotlight on one of the wildlife trade's major victims, the Chinese Pangolin, and one of Hainan's rare orchids.
This issue's Conservation Pioneer is a little different: He Huaxun emphasises making managed ecosystems sustainably productive, but draws lessons from natural forests and their thriving soil. It's a reminder that conservation must be integrated with meeting a looming food-security challenge. As Duncan Brown's 2003 book points out, the cheap-oil era has replaced cyclic nutrient flows with wasteful linear ones, reducing the world's resilience. But the cheap-oil era is drawing to a close – high time we re-designed our food systems along ecological lines.
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