Senior Vice President of Global Programs, Paul Butler, celebrates the success of Shelly Cant and her Pride campaign to protect the Pintail Duck in Big Pond, Bahamas. Read how Shelly rallied her community to take Pride in their environment.

Shelly Cant, Pride campaign manager in Big Pond, Bahamas

Shelly Cant, who ran her conservation campaign in the Bahamas, took the stage. She talked about the implementation process of the Pride campaign and gave specific details about her wetlands campaign. Shelley noted that the results of her pre-project questionnaire survey really surprised her.

She found that the people did know about the island’s wetlands and were supportive of greater protection being afforded to them (83 percent); but they did not know “how they could help” or what they could do! Shelly noted that this simple exercise in information-gathering had helped her to define her campaign. Had she gone on the assumption that the public knew little, then time and resources may have been wasted relaying the “knowledge” that people already had; rather than focusing on actions that people could take!

Some of the wetlands that Shelly and her Pride campaign are trying to protect.

The project planning also helped Shelly identify the most significant threats facing the islands’ wetlands – these include irresponsible and unplanned development, illegal dumping, and invasive species. Because dumping is illegal, Shelly found it difficult to identify the “who” that lay behind the threat and therefore target them specifically. She and her agency, the Bahamas National Trust, decided to focus on the communities that live around the wetlands and to foster a sense of Pride for the wetlands that lie on their doorstep. With this, they hoped that the community members would become more active in reporting illegal activities, as well as in activities like clean-up, reforestation, and the removal of invasive species.

The campaign focused on getting these communities to “adopt a wetland,” and used the endemic Bahamas Pintail Duck as its emblematic species. Shelly said, “people seem to find ducks cute, and this species is our own!”  By the time of her return to Kent, seven wetlands had been adopted, three corporations had come on board, and the campaign seemed to have taken on a life of its own.

 
Shelley worked with schools and did puppet shows about the Bahamas Pintail Duck and preserving and protecting the wetlands of the Bahamas.

Because of the Bahamas Pride campaign led by Shelly the community around Big Pond adopted their wetland and have begun cleaning it and replanting vegetation. The next step is to rehabilitate another key wetland site and reconnect it back to the sea, nearly a century after it was enclosed!

Senior Vice President of Global Programs, Paul Butler – the first Rare Pride campaign manager − takes a look at Olivia Carballo-Avilez’s Pride campaign in Belize. Initially facing apprehensive community members, Olivia’s persistence made a lasting conservation impact in the communities surrounding the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary. Read how!

Olivia proudly shows off her poster of the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary and the posterchild of her campaign, the Jabiru Stork.

Olivia Carballo-Avilez works for the Belize Audubon Society and focused her campaign on the important wetland area of Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary and on the Jabiru Stork – the largest bird in Central America. Olivia spoke of the challenges of being a conservationist in areas where traditional values and behaviors do not always align with conservation goals of sustainable development. This is an area where people want (and need) economic development, as much as they do pristine resources. Olivia’s challenge was to use her campaign to encourage the area’s cattle farmers to pen their cattle and prevent them from straying into the wetland area where their dung raises nutrient levels in the water leading to algal blooms and eutrophication. Other wetland areas have been degraded by land clearing and over-grazing.

Initiating a culture of sustainable grazing was a goal of Olivia’s Pride campaign. She worked with farmers in the area, encouraging many to adopt sustainable practices. 

Olivia noted that while visiting the community early on in her campaign, she had her vehicle’s tires slashed and was left stranded in the village. While not common, I have seen this before. Several years ago a campaign manager in Indonesia had his life threatened, while another in the Philippines was run off the road by a logging truck. Conservation takes passion, commitment and guts!

Olivia went on to talk about more positive aspects, including some of the steps she took to try and change the hearts and minds of the residents around Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary. Several times she took local village leaders on a flight over the wetland (their first time on a plane) so they could see the area they lived in and some of the environmental impacts affecting it. Many of her materials (posters, her Pride mascot, and her Pride song) were equally well received. She spoke of going into a house and seeing a poster proudly displayed in the living area, and of children mobbing her mascot, Jimbo Roo the Jabiru.

Her campaign promoted ten ways that cattle farmers could help and encouraged them to sign pledges to adopt these practices – and one third of the resident farmers did. These “early adopters” will hopefully pave the way for more as Olivia continues to work in the area on these issues. But, due to her efforts in the past two years, trust in conservationists rose from 25 percent (pre-survey) to 50 percent (post-survey). Olivia concluded her presentation saying that on her last visit to Crooked Tree she was welcomed with a hug and not a cutlass.

Jimbo Roo the Jabiru Stork was the mascot for Olivia’s campaign and a favorite among many in the community. Clicke here to see a video of Olivia and her mascot!
Click here to listen to Olivia’s Pride song about Jimbo Roo!

A highlight of Olivia’s presentation was her dancing in front of the audience to her song! It was magnificent! Next up to present was Shelly from the Bahamas…

Click here to view a multi-media slideshow of Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary Featuring photography from Jason Houston.

Rare’s Senior Vice President of Global Programs, Paul Butler, continues to blog about the most recent graduates of the Rare Pride program. Here he focuses on Feria Narcisse-Gaston of St. Lucia and the symbol of her Pride campaign, the Saint Lucia Iguana.

Feria in her native Saint Lucia, known to some as the “land where the iguanas are found.”

Much of the previous week had seen the seven graduating Pride campaign managers preparing for the evening’s graduation event. They had returned to the University of Kent at Canterbury in the UK from “the four corners of the earth” with samples of their Pride materials and data collected from their post-project surveys. Under the guidance of our Pride program managers, the materials were reviewed and then each campaign manager was given training on presentation techniques.

Cathleen, who led the Mauritius Pride campaign, competently kicked off the evening and introduced each graduating Pride campaign manager. She talked about how similar, yet diverse they all were. The seven come from three oceans — the Pacific: Palau, Guam and CNMI; the Atlantic/Caribbean: Saint Lucia and the Bahamas; and The Indian Ocean: Mauritius. And, with the exception of Olivia, they are all from islands. Olivia is from Belize – but with its small population, and being completely surrounded by Spanish-speaking territories, it is an island all the same, even if it’s not completely encircled by the sea. The returning students are also all women and all have faced challenges in reaching out to their communities.

The Pride campaign managers then presented their work. Each described one step in the campaign planning and implementation process, using their own work as an example, and drew upon the experience of the others as well.

First to present was Feria Narcisse-Gaston from Saint Lucia who stepped up to the podium and spoke about the planning phase, one of the first parts of the Pride campaign. Having spent half my life in Saint Lucia, where I served as Conservation Advisor to the Forestry Department, I was all too aware of the complexities around her site in the northwest part of the island.

Her campaign focused on the dry littoral woodlands and beaches around the regions of Grand Anse and Louvet. These seemingly desolate areas are “off the beaten track,” and difficult to access by road. Yet, they have attracted the eyes of developers for many decades. With their long sandy beaches they are also areas where legal and illegal sand mining take place. More importantly, they are also home to a rich array of unique biodiversity: the Saint Lucia Wren, the Semper’s Warbler; the Rufus Nightjar, White-breasted Thrasher and the Saint Lucia Blackfinch. The beaches are the principal nesting site of the magnificent Leatherback Turtle and linking the terrestrial and shore biomes is the Saint Lucia Iguana – a species that feeds in the dry woodland forest, but lays its eggs in the warm beach sand. It was this species that Feria had chosen as her flagship species. Listen to Feria’s campaign song about the Saint Lucia Iguana!

Feria Narcisse-Gaston works for the Forestry Department and introduced her site by talking of the cultural importance of the iguana. Hewanorra, Saint Lucia’s original name, means “land where the iguanas are found.” The island came upon this name because of the iguana’s abundance at the time of the arrival of Carib Indians. Today, the species is gravely endangered, clinging on in remote dry areas like Grand Anse.

The Saint Lucia Iguana, the symbol of Feria’s Pride campaign.

Feria’s pre-project survey showed that people living around the site were totally unaware of the threats facing the area and of the legal status afforded to the iguana. Her campaign would strive to build this awareness in the hope that people would then speak up when development is proposed and recognize the environmental and economic value of northwest Saint Lucia.

Feria talked of the materials she had produced: posters, costumes, songs, comics and bumper stickers and how awareness of her key messages has increased significantly. Understanding of threats has risen greatly and knowledge as to the legal status of the Saint Lucia Iguana and other protected wildlife increased from 48 percent (pre-project) to 81percent (post project). Along with her colleagues, Feria recognizes that changing knowledge and attitudes is only the first step in reducing threats and generating sustainable conservation results. The changed attitudes must now be harnessed and used to argue passionately for sustainable development that brings jobs to local people, and which protects the land for water, wood, and wildlife, and not simply for the few who can afford a beach-side condominium.

Feria’s mascot greets children in Saint Lucia.

Feria’s presentation and the photos of her site, reminded me just how much I miss Saint Lucia. Next up was Olivia from Belize…
 

Rare’s Senior Vice President of Global Programs, Paul Butler, blogs about the last seven Pride campaign managers to receive their training at the University of Kent in England, Rare’s first training site. Paul reflects on the array of conservation campaigns that this institution has helped produce, as well as the origins of Rare’s Kent program which is permanently transitioning to Georgetown University in Washington. D.C.

The final seven Prirde campaign managers to graduate from the University of Kent. They are, Olivia Carballo-Avilez, Belize (top insert); Feria Narcisse-Gaston, St. Lucia (bottom insert); Cheryl Calaustro, Guam (standing, far left); Tublai Ililau, Palau; Shelley Cant, Bahamas; Cathleen Cybele, Republic of Mauritius; and Brooke Nevitt, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.


“Global Conservation is in Local Hands” was the theme of a graduation presentation that I attended Thursday, May 14th at the University of Kent in Canterbury, about six miles from where I live in the UK. It had been a long and busy day, putting together a talk that I’m giving at the International Parrot Convention later this month, while preparing an assessment to “evaluate” the on-going work of thirty campaigns that are active in the field, as well as trying to complete my half-yearly personal assessment plan, and respond to a cascade of emails. By the time 6 p.m. rolled around I’ll admit I was pretty tired; but that day was a special day and one that I literally had looked forward to all year long.

It is a time when a group of campaign managers return to their university to talk about the progress they are making toward their conservation goals, and about high and low points of their campaigns. Watching young people talk with passion and commitment about their sites and the complex issues they face always makes me proud to work for Rare and I feel privileged and fortunate to find myself in this job. That day was no exception. Indeed I was doubly excited as we had not one but two different groups of conservationists returning.

The event also represented a passing of an era, as it is the last time that we will run our program through the University of Kent, as we shift our English-language training center to Georgetown University in Washington D.C. – a stone’s throw away from Rare’s office in Arlington, Virginia. Having set up the Kent program back in 2001, there was certain poignancy about the occasion — watching the UKC lecture staff (Ian Bride, Bob Smith and others) who played such a key role in developing the initial curriculum, reflect on the fact that this is the last group of Rare Pride campaign managers that they are directly involved with.

In 2001, Paul signs the MOU with Kent University. Rare’s Pride English Program was housed at Kent until 2009. The training program at the University of Kent has produced 47 Pride campaigns.


The first conservationists to be trained at Kent, along with Rare staff and Kent staff. Paul Butler is center.

It was a time to reflect on the 47 students that have passed through the doors at Kent. Campaign managers from countries as far as the fields of South Africa, Sierre Leone, Mauritius, Seychelles and Kenya in Africa; to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), Fiji, Palau, Guam, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, and Samoa in the Pacific; to China, Thailand, Laos, Indonesia and the Philippines in Asia, not to mention Belize and multiple islands throughout the Caribbean. With an 85 percent graduation rate and many managers being given “distinction” for their studies we can all be justly proud of the relationship that has served our respective institutions well, as it has conservation. Past campaign managers can reflect on protected areas they have established (in Fiji, Indonesia, Palau, and the Philippines to name a few) and behaviors changed, as well as the fact that the majority have continued in their conservation careers.

The evening began with a poster session and an opportunity for the audience to walk around and see materials produced by the seven campaigns that were presenting that evening. Posters, t-shirts, bags, bumper stickers, songs and costumes were displayed, while our Pride campaign managers shared their stories.

Cathleen shows off some of her campaign materials.

Rare staff included Sean Southey, Vice President of the Pride English Program; Ariela Rosenstein, Rare’s Training Manager; Adam Murray and Annalisa Bianchessi who are both Pride Program Managers or mentors to the conservationists; as well as Duncan Thomas and Lisa Matusiak who had been working with the campaign managers  to help them  analyze campaign results, craft their final reports and prepare for the evening. We were joined by Rosemary Godfrey who left Rare last year after playing a pivotal role in developing the Kent program, and was its first Pride Program Manager. We all filed into the lecture hall took our seats and were welcomed by Sean who set the scene talking about Rare, Rare Pride, and the returning conservationists who had completed their Pride campaigns: Cathleen Cybele (Mauritius); Shelly Cant (Bahamas); Olivia Carballo-Avilez (Belize); Feria Narcisse-Gaston (Saint Lucia); Brooke Nevitt (CNMI); Cheryl Calaustro (Guam) and Tublai Ililau (Palau). Sean talked passionately about the seven women and their work; then the lights dimmed, the screen lit up and Cathleen took the stage…

Nigel Sizer, Rare’s Vice President of Asia Pacific programs, recently traveled to Hunchun, China, located on the border between North Korea and Russia. Hunchun is the home of Jianmin Lang, a Rare Pride campaign manager who works for the Hunchun Nature Reserve and is focusing on conserving Siberian Tigers. Nigel blogs about Lang’s conservation campaign, about the people of this remote region and the challenges of protecting the last few remaining Siberian Tigers.

Following flights to Bangkok, onwards to Beijing, and then another two hours flying north to Yanji, and finally a two hour drive, Rare’s China Director, Shiyang Li, and I arrived in the small town of Hunchun (pop. 250,000). Cool wind blew down from Siberia and low mountains near the Jilin Hunchun Nature Reserve. A very surly receptionist did not greet us on arrival, given we had the rudeness to wake her up in order to check-in.

The reserve covers an area of 108,700 hectares and abuts the border of North Korea in the south and Russia in the north. The target of the Pride campaign, which is in the final stages of planning, is saving the Siberia tigers that live in the reserve. There are thought to be between three and five of this, the largest of the big cats, at the site, about one quarter of China’s entire population of 20 of these huge predators. There are about another 100 tigers on the Russian side and the reserve serves as an important corridor.

The stunning landscape of Hunchun, China and North Korea in the distance.

The charismatic and incredibly committed campaign manager Jianmin Lang, known as Lang, made a clear and compelling presentation to us. He explained that the northern half of the reserve is the target for the campaign as this is the tiger’s habitat. Tiger activity has been recorded 196 times between 2002 and 2008. Camera traps have captured images of three different tigers, and tiger activities have been moving eastwards out of the reserve into other forest and land. Recently a tiger was caught on video by a military camera surveying the border.

The top threat to the tigers is being accidently caught in snares, vicious, simple wire traps, set by the hundred, illegally, in the reserve, to catch deer, wild boar and other species. It is thought that roughly one tiger per year comes to a sad, painful, slow death in the traps.

The Pride campaign in this area aims to dramatically reduce the number of snares being set, clean out the old snares, and engage the local communities as partners. Lang will encourage the community to patrol the vast area of forest and mountainside and keep wayward neighbors from indulging in hunting.

Lang is undoubtedly one of the stars of Rare’s first group of Pride campaign managers in China. He works long hours, is well organized and strategic, and has a great team supporting him from the staff of the nature reserve.

Crucially, Lang also counts on tremendous support from Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and their local officers, Ms. Liang, who is working with him day-in day-out on the campaign.

Lang, Li Yong, Nigel and Shiyang with a billboard promoting tiger conservation

Click here for more info on Lang’s campaign!
The Shocking Case of Ms. Che Junxia

Che Jinxia is an attractive, friendly, 27-year-old mother who met us to share the traumatic tail of being mauled by an adult Siberian tiger. There have been four reported cases of tigers attacking people since the reserve was established. Three of the cases involved tigers wounded by snares. Che’s case is the only one involving a tiger that was apparently unprovoked and seems to have viewed the human being as prey. Below is her shocking account.

Che Jinxia, survived an unprovoked tiger attack.

“Two years ago, on May 19, 2007, at 5 a.m., together with my husband, I went out to the mountain to collect wild vegetables in the forest.  We separated from each other and he went down the hill and I went up, alone.  I asked my husband to go with me but he wouldn’t.

The tiger was watching me for half an hour I am sure, but I did not realize.  I was wearing an orange coat and collecting plants under a tree.

Suddenly the tiger made a noise and I saw it about 10 meters away.  In one pounce it was right in front of me.  Its head was this big (she gestures with her hands held about 50 cm apart) and its hair was all standing on end. I put my hands up in from of me to protect my face and throat.  I am sure it wanted to bite my neck.  I remember the tiger’s face right in front of mine, just 30 cm away. The tiger bit my hands and arms about six times and scratched my arms. I screamed repeatedly and the tiger suddenly ran away.

Marks the tiger left on Che’s arm.

My husband heard my screaming and came up the mountain, but when he arrived the tiger had gone. When it ran away I was afraid it would come back, and as soon as it had gone I started walking and then passed out.

I knew tigers live on the mountain but I had always been told they would never attack people, now I know that’s not true. Some people think that because of the clothes I was wearing it mistook me for a cow, but I am sure it watched me for a long time before it attacked, so I am not sure.

I spent two months in the hospital recovering. The bones in my arms and hands were broken.  Ever since then I have had nightmares, I will never go into the forest again, and I am even afraid walking around the village. I don’t go out at night.  I fight a lot more with my husband now and he says my personality has changed.  After this other people also went less to the mountain.

It is very dangerous living here, everywhere I go a tiger might jump out at me.  Maybe there are many more tigers than before.

Last week in the next village three cattle were killed and last night one of my relatives heard a tiger on the mountain.”

Che was clearly deeply traumatized. She said that she had wanted to get therapy, but that was not possible in this region — there are no qualified doctors. She talks with her husband and others and that helps. Her daughter hates tigers because one attacked her mother.

This was the only person who made negative references to tigers in all of the conversations over two days we spent in the villages. Our partners explained that tigers are generally viewed as very special, magnificent animals in Chinese culture.

Village Life

The villages around Hunchun and the reserve are tiny, rustic hamlets, with few young people who have headed off for more stimulating life in the towns or even to work in the factories of South Korea. It’s bitterly cold and snow-bound for about four months each winter. We were lucky to be visiting in spring. The trees were in fresh leaf, filling the valleys with a lime green hue, lush and full of life. It was hot in the sun-filled daytime and refreshingly cool at night. Later in the season the mosquitoes and flies will emerge, the valleys will be bursting with the late summer harvest, and huge piles of firewood will be set down in readiness for the winter.I interviewed the heads of two of the villages, two very different men engaged in remarkably different enterprises and making good livings:

Li Yong, Head of Guandaogou Village
Li’s main income is from raising frogs in a valley that he leases from the reserve. He has paid about $30,000 for the ten-year lease and harvests about 60,000 frogs each year, from which frog oil (a medicinal supplement like fish oil made from the frog uterus) is made and sold for about $600 per kg.  (Think about processing those frogs, by hand, for a summer job!)

There are 38 households in the village with 102 people, only one other family is in the frog business, the others are involved in bee keeping, cattle-raising, and logging. Several families are active in hunting for local consumption.

Wild boar are a pest and often destroy crops, foraging in groups of 20-40.  The government provides compensation.

Li supports plans to set up patrols as he wants to conserve wildlife.  He will select responsible villagers to participate in the patrols which will help to prevent other villagers from setting snares (he knows the families that do this), remove old snares, and stop outsiders from setting snares.

Snares are mainly set in winter. A man will set between 30 and 200 snares and inspect them every couple of days. If they are caught they are fined, the last such case was in 2007, with a $400 fine paid. He will select the families most active in setting snares to become part of the patrol.

Mr. Dong Zixan, Head of Xiacaomao Village
Dong Zixan was born in Xiacaomao village 44 years ago. His parents and most of the others in the village came to this site in the 1950s fleeing famine in Shandong Province.  When he was born there were 10 families and now there are 60 — with 230 people total.  Young people leave because it is boring in the small village. He also complained that life is very dull, and he only has to work about three or four months on the farm and the rest of the time is idle. I told him he looked healthy, strong, and stress free which got a good laugh.

Xiacaomao village, where Nigel met and interviewed Dong Zixan.

His main income is from cattle.  He has 11 of them and sells the calves for fattening.  He has four hectares of corn and beans, and also collects wild vegetables in the forest. He earns about $700 a year from the cattle, and about $120 from the forest vegetables, and also sells some of the corn and beans.

There are about 400 cattle in the whole village grazing on about 400 hectares. In summer the cattle move out into the forest and this is when some are killed by tigers. He has never seen or heard a tiger, but his neighbors have.

Last year one of his cows was killed by a tiger and he is waiting for compensation. The government pays compensation, but it takes years and involves approvals at various levels from different agencies. Wild boars also destroy crops around harvest time, and he has been promised compensation for that too.

Two or three people from the village actively set snares, along with some outsiders. He knows who they are but it’s hard to catch them. Those who keep cattle hate the snares because cattle get trapped and die. Every year two to three cattle die like this. If he sees someone setting snares he reports it to the police or army.

Dong likes the idea very much of setting up village patrols to remove snares and prevent trapping.  Shiyang asked him if he could show us some snares.  He ran outside and came back with two old snares that had caught one of his calves. He also came back with a rusty old “break-leg” trap, now illegal in most countries, which he said was used for trapping wild boar. We set the trap and stuck a stick in it. It snapped shut with a terrifying thud. Dong told as that he has found much larger “break-leg” traps that he believes are intended for catching tigers, and he no longer takes volunteers out on patrols for fear they might step in one and lose a limb.

Nigel with Dong Zixan holding a break-leg trap for catching wild boar