“What I’ve learned is that they will actually cut down the rate of deforestation by at least 20 percent by building these new homes.”

Rare trustee Ruth Yeoh joined CEO Brett Jenks and VP. Asia Nigel Sizer during part of their extensive field visit to Pride campaign sites in China and Indonesia in November, visiting with staff and partners in Bogor and Kunming. She also made the trek to visit a Rare Pride campaign with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in the Meili Snow Mountains, located between the Salween River and the Mekong River, in the extreme edge of Northwest Yunnan Province on the Tibetan border. TNC has enlisted Rare’s help gaining adoption of a new home construction model that uses less wood for both building and heating. Below you can hear Ruth’s reflections on the visit in an interview with Brett.

“It is without question the epicenter of marine biodiversity for the planet.”

Mark Erdmann, Senior Advisor to Conservation International Indonesia’s marine program, speaks to Rare CEO Brett Jenks about the importance of the Coral Triangle and how Rare’s methodology is a key factor in helping to reduce threats to this ecological resource.

One of Rare’s China team members, Tingting blogs about her participation in the Siberian Tiger Festival as a representative from Rare…

Hunchun city, also known as the “Hometown of the Siberian Tiger”, is one of the largest habitats for Siberian tigers in China, and Rare (Rareconservation.org) is working to help protect those remaining tigers by inspiring hunters to develop non-hunting economic alternatives and strengthen local law enforcement in order to reduce poaching.

Rare launched the Hunchun Nature Reserve Pride campaign in October 2008 to help protect the last remaining tigers with support from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) China Program. The campaign is intended to inspire local communities to get involved in conserving the Siberian tiger.

On November 12th we were invited to join the “First Siberian Tiger Festival” at Hunchun city, which was organized by the local Hunchun government, the Hunchun Nature Reserve, and WCS, and was supported by Rare and the Hunchun Tourism Bureau. The purposes of the festival were to inspire the public to take pride in Siberian tiger conservation, recognize that the Siberian tiger helps make their city valuable and attractive, get local government officials involved in the cause, and inspiring people to take action by refusing to eat wild animal meat.

The festival lasted for two days and included an academic forum, group discussions, a massive parade (with more than 2,000 participants), and an exhibition of wildlife specimens and students’ calligraphy and paintings. What impressed me the most was at the opening ceremony the governor of Hunchun city promised he wouldn’t eat wild animal meat and asked the people to follow his lead. This was the first time the governor of Hunchun appealed to the people about this issue.

(First prize painting by Cui Xiangyu, Hunchun City middle school student.)

After the festival we visited the Xiacaomao and Guandaogou villages, targeted areas of the Hunchun Pride campaign. We planned for setting up farmer patrol teams in the villages, with 14 members altogether. Their main responsibilities would include preventing farmers — both within and outside the villages — from illegally hunting the wildlife,  clearing snares, and monitoring the wildlife. Also, in order to increase the farmers’ income and inspire the local community to get involved in Siberian tiger conservation, Rare’s partners took villagers on study tours to learn about breeding cattle in stables and helped them to develop agriculture in order to address economic development.

A brutally heavy snow storm stopped our planned unveiling ceremony for the farmer patrol teams. The snow, however, did not stop our fervor. We led focus group discussions among the farmer patrol team members and the participants actively shared their opinions of the patrol teams, the difficulties they were concerned about, and the bright future they expected through breeding cattle in stables, etc.

Click here to see Rare’s photo gallery from Hunchun Nature Reserve.

On Nov. 7, 2009 Rare held a festival related to their Black-necked Crane pride campaign at the Dashanbao Nature Reserve in Yunnan Province, China (I wrote previously about the campaign here). The festival included a number of different activities and attracted a large crowd. The following is a photo essay of the event.

I’m not sure when Rare’s Dashanbao festival officially started, but soon after the Black-necked Crane mascot first emerged, he attracted a large crowd of locals, and the lively event was underway.

The volunteers who handed out information on the Black-necked Crane and the Dashanbao Nature Reserve were quickly mobbed by curious local villagers.

Participants and passers-by spent a lot of time looking at the picture boards we had set up. I overheard a few people proudly pointing to and discussing where their village is located in relation to the scenery.

The local young man that we found to wear the crane costume did a great job. He seemed to become increasingly comfortable with time and he did his best to mimic the Black-necked Crane’s distinctive playful dance, delighting everyone.

The children were so excited about the crane mascot that it was difficult to move them far enough away to leave room for the singing and dancing of our volunteers.

We set up a number of games for the children, including this one in which participants had to try to locate the crane’s eye on the photograph after being blindfolded and spun around in circles. Participants accumulated points for successfully completing the games and later traded them in for prizes.

I was not the only person shooting photos during the festival. The presence of photographers and foreigners definitely added to the excitement of the event. I took over one hundred shots during the event, and was photographed hundreds of times by others. I felt like a celebrity.

Our volunteers staged multiple puppet shows about protecting Black-necked Cranes, demonstrating how environmental degradation impacts the cranes. They were received very warmly by the local children. Overall I felt that the festival was quite successful. The puppet show was especially effective as it both attracted attention and conveyed a message. With the excitement expressed by the local children throughout the event, they are sure to remember this day for a very long time. Thus, the next generation is being prepared to take on the role of local environmental stewards.

Nigel Sizer, Rare’s VP of Asia Pacific, blogs about his trip to Tibet with Rare’s CEO Brett Jenks.

I have yet to meet a Tibetan that cannot sing, dance, tell elaborate stories, or tolerate sub-zero temperatures in clothes that I would be comfortable wearing on a tropical beach at home in Bali. And their pride in their culture and traditions is overwhelming.

This afternoon we were given a fabulous welcome by the proud inhabitants of Yongzhi Village. Nestled 3,000 meters above sea level on a small tributary of a tributary of the Yangtze, and a two-hour drive from the district capital of Deqin, Yongzhi is the site of a unique Pride campaign aiming to help Tibetans adopt green architecture. The conservation objective is to dramatically reduce the use of wood logged in the surrounding slow growing pine and spruce forests.

The village elders lined the cobbled, ancient alleyways of the village offering a truly Tibetan greeting when we arrived. The old ladies in all their finery spun small prayer wheels, and the men held out both hands, palms up in welcome. Toothless smiles lined the way as the sun speckled through the ancient, sturdy, gnarled walnut trees surrounding the village.

Our small group, including Rare’s youngest board member, Ruth Yeoh, and her partner, Ken, as well as Jin Ligang and Shen Lei, who assist Rare with government relations in their spare time, and run Stonebridge China, a top notch consulting firm, had come to Yongzhi to see Pride in action. They were not disappointed. Rare’s partners, the District Environmental Protection Bureau and The Nature Conservancy, have helped the villagers start to build four new homes that will serve to demonstrate improved architectural practices, reducing wood use in construction and, most importantly, reducing the woodfuel needed to heat the houses during their 30-50 years of habitation.

The Pride campaign in Deqin District helps to root the new building styles in Tibetan culture and ensure that local people welcome the approach and spread the word. Yongzhi is the perfect village to start this transformation because it serves as a gateway to the area for thousands of Tibetan Buddhist pilgrims who spend months in the region visiting shrines, holy mountains and waterfalls.

Yongzhi may be high on the Tibetan pilgrims’ list of places to go, but it certainly is not frequented by many foreigners. It felt like we were the first, and this, of course, was the perfect excuse for a party! Not that they needed one. We were told that the villagers have a party every night, with singing and dancing in their local community center.

Following a surprisingly tasty dinner, at about 9p.m. we were called to join the festivities. The community center was already full, with many families — from babies to grandparents — dressed in traditional garb. The head of the village called us to sit on the dais, atop red silk and welcomed us, “…on behalf of the 107 households of Yongzhi.”

There followed an impressive, apparently impromptu repertoire of unaccompanied singing, led by the most beautiful young women and the strongest young men in the village. The Pride campaign came to fore with a hilarious set of comedy skits, getting laughs at the expense of stereotypical pilgrims, foreign tourists and local guesthouse owners. The serious underlying message was all about the merits of green buildings, with their superior comfort and attractiveness, indoor toilets (a true novelty in the village where until recently only one of these devices existed — imagine what that means in the depth of winter in a snow storm) and reduced woodfuel needs. The entire community was enraptured. Comedy is little used in Pride campaigns, and this was a great reminder for us all about how powerful it can be.

And then, to our naïve surprise, it was our turn! We huddled and urged each other to get down onto the floor and sing our favorite song or preferably several. Where were the stars of the annual Rare talent contests when most needed? Lamentably, pathetically, none of us was up to the task, or brave enough to entertain the expectant hoards.

Expectant silence filled the air around us. Happy smiles started to droop. We had to perform. Presidential leadership was required, and as usual at Rare, was forthcoming. Brett took a deep breath, and protesting to us quietly that he simply cannot sing, took the floor.

The hall was hushed, Brett took a deep breath, all around focused on the expected melody, staring intently at Brett’s face. And then, to everyone’s amazement, including mine, he performed a perfect handstand and paraded around the dirty floor upside down – twice!

The crowd went wild. Young men puffed out their chests eager to meet this athletic challenge to their manly supremacy. Beautiful village girls swarmed forward to place decorative silk garlands around Brett’s neck, and we all breathed a huge sigh of relief!

Brett Jenks, Rare’s CEO, blogs about his trip to Asia, where he visited Pride campaigns taking place in China and Indonesia. Follow Brett’s adventures as he witnesses local conservation efforts to protect endangered species in Asia and shares how the Pride campaign model can support lasting conservation impact in this part of the world.

I started off my day with a video Skype conference call with my kids, Ben and Emma.

They took turns pulling each other off-screen and interrupting each other’s stories about homework, basketball and the weather. It’s amazing to sit in a hotel room in Kunming and have a video conference with 11- and 13-year-old children in Arlington, VA.

I couldn’t be more proud of the work the China team is doing. It was only about 11 months ago that Nigel finished hiring this team and they have already launched Rare’s globally accredited Master’s Degree in Communications for conservationists at Southwest Forestry College, built a network of hundreds of local government officials and conservation organizations and launched a first cohort of Pride campaigns addressing a range of complex and important issues.

While the campaign in Meili Snow Mountain addresses energy consumption and green building, campaigns elsewhere are doing some pretty fascinating things:

• In Hunchun Nature Reserve, the local government and Wildlife Conservation Society are saving the last remaining Siberian tigers in China.
• In Baima Snow Mountain, local villagers are learning how to reduce the consumption of fuelwood by using solar water heaters.
• In Gaoligong Mountain Nature Reserve, the campaign manager is working to increase the use of energy-efficient stoves, electric stoves, and electric rice cookers in local households.

Not bad for a start up conservation program in China in year two!

There is a long list of what’s working, and it’s great to hear it directly from our field staff after a year of dramatic change at Rare:

• Rare’s partners appreciate the careful planning of each campaign and are surprised by the rigor of our new approach to “removing barriers to behavior change.”
• The mascots of the first China campaigns are getting rave reviews.
• Partnerships with NGOs, government officials and Southwest Forestry College are all very positive, which is not always the case in these complicated and interdependent arrangements we make.
• The new Master’s degree — which is accredited by University of Texas at El Paso but taught here in Kunming, China — is well received by partners all over the country. (We had been worried that the Chinese would thumb their noses at a foreign Master’s but quite the contrary.)
• The rollout of training has been better than expected. Hearing this from the China team is a big deal given that we gave them about four months to translate the new global Master’s curriculum and then learn to teach it, when some of our staff don’t even have Master’s degrees. This was a monumental task and they deserve huge kudos for getting it done.

Not surprisingly, there is an equally long list of what we are going to improve. One of the big ones is a sense of confidence that little old Rare can make an impact in China. Our staff has watched The Nature Conservancy relocate its China headquarters to Beijing from Kunming and reallocate staff to work more on national conservation strategies.

The message from some partners has been clear: China has 1.4 billion people. What are a handful of Pride campaigns going to do?

It’s a fair question, but I’d argue that most of China’s biodiversity lies in the southwest where high mountains, diverse climates and cultures and relatively low populations are not only conducive to Rare’s approach but, in fact, necessitate it . The Chinese have a saying:

“The mountains are high and the emperor is far, far away.”

The fact is, like many multinational companies, we are learning that you can’t succeed in China simply by having support in Beijing.

Many of the threats to nature in the most biologically diverse areas are local. Those threats are cultural and they have to do with local forestry, home construction, fishing, water usage, agriculture, etc. National reforms don’t make the desired impact unless municipal leaders act on and enforce them.

What does work in China is the scaling of locally-proven methods. The government, once it finds something that works, has no problem rolling out solutions far beyond the scope of any NGO I’ve ever seen. So if Rare can get a few models working in the coming years and train the local leadership needed to replicate them, the bet we’re making is that the municipal and even provincial governments will take them and run.
But confidence will only come in time.

Other things we’re going to fix:

• We need to improve the project management skills of our staff and campaign partners. These projects are increasingly complex. It’s not easy coordinating NGOs and government offices to provide new skills and financing while running social marketing programs to mobilize communities, especially when you expect results in just a few years. Some of what we’re doing is unprecedented and the management skills to make it work must be newly developed and then taught throughout our network.
• Priority-setting: As we consider what environmental threats to prioritize and what local conservation solutions we aim to roll out next year, our team is hearing an array of partner and expert voices, each with their own strong opinion about where we should focus. It’s great to be in demand, but we have some difficult decisions to make.
• Mastering a new way of working. The China team has a new curriculum, plus they’re rolling out a much-revised version of the traditional Pride campaign; and because Rare is growing and taking seriously global quality control, they have to grapple with new systems for reporting and the expectations of social media use and online storytelling. It’s a lot to manage for any team, much less a group of five in Kunming. While I know they’re going to do it, I am not sure they know it yet.

>>Brett’s Slideshow

Brett Jenks, Rare’s CEO, blogs about his trip to Asia, where he visited Pride campaigns taking place in China and Indonesia. Follow Brett’s adventures as he witnesses local conservation efforts to protect endangered species in Asia and shares how the Pride campaign model can support lasting conservation impact in this part of the world.

Sad day — time to leave the mountain.

Even though Rare’s board chair Wendy Paulson had advised me against the donkeys and mules, which she thinks are terribly uncomfortable, the group decided to ride them up the steep climb to the mountain pass, after which we walked the three hours down to the cars. Given the eight-hour drive we had after the hike, it was a good idea to save a little energy.

Ligang and I get prepared for our lazy ramble up the mountain. An hour later we were happy to be off the mules and a quarter of the way to our destination. (photo by Nigel Sizer) 

But the donkeys made for some embarrassing photos, and, for the most part, we’re pretty uncomfortable putting all this stress on the donkeys. The upside is that it brings good revenue for the local communities who maintain the donkeys and provide the guide service.

Mid-hike, Ligang, Lei, and Shiyang stop for a final Yak butter tea and some warmth by a local villager’s fire.

Three hours of hiking and eight hours of driving later and we were back in Shangri La, at a temple-like hotel, complete with hot showers, heat in the rooms and while this was the eighth night in a row in a new room with a new bed, it was warm, and I have no complaints.

>>Brett’s Slideshow

Brett Jenks, Rare’s CEO, blogs about his trip to Asia, where he visited Pride campaigns taking place in China and Indonesia. Follow Brett’s adventures as he witnesses local conservation efforts to protect endangered species in Asia and shares how the Pride campaign model can support lasting conservation impact in this part of the world.

Nov. 9th was literally the coldest night of my entire life.

It was 20 degrees in my room, and for 90 minutes before falling asleep, I was under the covers, wearing as many of my clothes as I could gather without actually getting out of bed to do so: wool socks, capilene long johns, wool undershirt, wool sweater, wool cap. And still I couldn’t get warm. We all laughed about it the next day, but it was cruel until everyone fell asleep.

We began hiking up to the waterfall on the 10th.

the view of our hike route early in the morning. Nowhere to go but past the temple and up the mountain.

while my party works laboriously to get up the final few kilometers to the sacred waterfall, stopping to take deep breaths and rest our legs, inexplicably, whole families of elderly Tibetan men and women, and some children, hike next to us, singing, chanting, smoking cigarettes as they breeze up the mountain.

Lei under the sacred waterfall after what felt more like a “summit” than a hike. We’re now at 4100m.

While Mr. Ma pays tribute to the waterfall, bathing in the mist falling from 1000 ft above, I pose for my birthday photo, complete with a lucky rainbow, Tibetan offering to future generations, and prayer flags. (photo by Nigel Sizer)

Mr. Ma assured us that this was a 45-minute hike to the top and that we’d be back for lunch at noon and ready to pack our bags for the trek to Lower Yebong Village, where we had meetings with local villagers. Mr. Ma has a “unique” sense of time.

Several times during our multi-hour hikes and drives he said, “Just 10 minutes more,” only for us to find that we had hours to go. In fact, we regularly turned his 10 minutes into 60 at a minimum, and Ken at one point decided to give Mr. Ma a nice watch he’d purchased in Singapore.

Maybe the next party Mr. Ma guides will benefit from Mr. Ma’s new timepiece.

Before dinner, Nigel and I sat down with Ruth to discuss her thoughts on supporting Rare’s Asia program. Overlooking the glacier-topped valley, Ruth talked of her Chinese heritage and a new desire to support Rare’s work there, in part to honor her grandfather, who started YTL, the Malaysian conglomerate her father now runs, and for which she is a chief investment officer.

Our host, who doubles as the lodge’s chef, has just returned from New York City. He was the first community member to travel to the United States, where he was interviewed by The New York Times for his work on PhotoVoice, an indigenous photography contest in which local villagers photograph their surroundings for a traveling exhibit. He may be a good photographer, but he’s also a very good chef. And with the cold air and all the hiking, we savored every bit of stir fry, hot pot and our first cold beer in over a week.

>>A few notes on eating meals together in China I picked up on the internet

>>View more photos from this hike

Brett Jenks, Rare’s CEO, blogs about his trip to Asia, where he visited Pride campaigns taking place in China and Indonesia. Follow Brett’s adventures as he witnesses local conservation efforts to protect endangered species in Asia and shares how the Pride campaign model can support lasting conservation impact in this part of the world.

We reluctantly left Yongzhi Village early in the morning.

After the welcoming we received, the traditional dancing in the evening, and the fact that our campaign and the four pilot green homes are just getting started, it would have been nice to stick around a few months and chip in to make this project happen, but we have a four hour drive to the foothills of Mt. Kawagebo and then a five hour hike up the side of Mt. Kawagebo.

It was time to get going.

Yak butter tea, a staple for the Tibetan people living at the base of Mt. Kawagebo, is an acquired taste for some outsiders.

Over breakfast, Mr. Ma told us that the Yongzhi community center where we sat for three hours the evening before is on the verge of being condemned. The roof is caving in and community members have pooled about $5,000 to rebuild it using green building methods, but they need another $3500 to finish the job. Together, our party commits to asking friends and family to contribute to help them finish the project.

This will be a great way to give something back to such a wonderful people and continue the process of building sustainable technologies into traditional Tibetan construction practices.

If you’d like to contribute, please click here. Rare will collect the funding and pass through 100% of the funds raised. Just make sure you specify that your funds are for the Yongzhi Green Community Center.

Leaving Yongzhi. A road less traveled, but one I hope never gets paved.

Nigel and Mr. Ma point the way for our hike up to Yubeng Village. You can see the route of our hike just by following the light blue trail to the top and then heading right all the way to the top of the treeline.

At the top of the first peak, around 4000 feet, we met a Buddhist monk from Yebong Village, headed out of town as we prepared to finish the hike to town. (Photo by Nigel Sizer)

As it turned out, we started climbing the mountain too late in the day, and we had to spend the last hour hiking in darkness to Lower Yebong Village. This turned into a comedy of errors. Only a few of us had flashlights.

Mr. Ma barely knew the way, we were at about 3500 meters, it was below freezing, we had been hiking and sweating for four hours, and we were giddy and exhausted. At one point, Mr. Ma suggested we take a short cut across a pasture, and we all dutifully began climbing a fence in the dark.

Then Lei and Lingang noticed a traditional log ladder which we all used to climb onto an adjacent path. (The next day, we found that the one really tough looking bull in the whole village was standing alone in that pitch black pasture and would probably have had a less warm greeting for us than our Tibetan friends.)

>>Brett’s Slideshow

>>Rare Pride in Action at Meili Snow Mountain Nature Reserve!

Brett Jenks, Rare’s CEO, blogs about his trip to Asia, where he visited Pride campaigns taking place in China and Indonesia. Follow Brett’s adventures as he witnesses local conservation efforts to protect endangered species in Asia and shares how the Pride campaign model can support lasting conservation impact in this part of the world.

The Rare-TNC Pride Campaign in Meili Snow Mountain:

The Meili Snow Mountains rise between the Salween River and the Mekong River, in the extreme edge of Northwest Yunnan Province on the Tibetan border. The region is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a good portion is largely still wilderness. Fir and spruce forests up the mountainsides are home to snow leopards, Asiatic black bears, red pandas, and thousands of species of plants. This is also the rhododendron epicenter of the world and supposedly even more beautiful in spring.

Rare is partnering with the Municipal government and TNC to develop and promote a model for home construction that uses less timber in construction and much less fuelwood to heat. TNC has been working on green energy here for years, and the Pride campaign is designed to accelerate adoption of green building practices over the next few years.

>>Read more about Rare’s campaign in Meili Snow Mountain

>>Brett’s Slideshow

>>Meili Snow Mountain – the Highest Mountain in Yunnan, China