When most people think of conservation in the Amazon, images of rainforests – burned and bulldozed for cattle pastures and plantations –come to mind. And, indeed, in the past two decades some 325,000 square kilometers of rainforest in the region have been lost.

Fewer of us remember that the largest river system in the world originates in the towering Andes and the more modest elevations of the Brazilian and Guiana Shields. Water flowing through the Amazon Basin nourishes millions of people and innumerable and incredible diverse species of wildlife. Covering nearly 40 percent of South America, these waters exceed in volume the world’s next six largest rivers combined.

Julie Larsen Maher/WCS

Threats to the Amazon come not only from deforestation, but also from dams, roads, human-induced climate change, gold mining, petroleum extraction, shipping and the unplanned growth of cities, whose expanding populations consume more and more of the Amazon River’s resources.

There is a crucial link between the river and those who live in the Amazon. From rural fishermen and indigenous people to villagers and urban inhabitants in cities like Iquitos, Peru and Manaus, Brazil, as many as 20 million people depend on the Amazon for clean drinking water, transportation along its network of rivers, subsistence and commercial fisheries, and water for agriculture.

Fishing the Marañón River – Pablo Puertas/WCS

Although extractives like oil and rubber have long attracted industry to the Amazon Basin, fish is the most important resource there. In the Basin you will find some of the largest freshwater species in the world, including the giant pirarucu, which can grow to nine feet and weigh 300 pounds, and many species that evolved with flooded rainforests to feed on fruits and other tree-borne foods.

Fish are the critical link between the environmental health of rivers and wetlands and the livelihoods of millions of people. Because they are highly sensitive to changes in water levels, chemistry, and sediment levels, fish are the best indicators of the overall health of the Amazon River system and link its habitats ecologically. As go fish and fish habitat (including flooded forests and floating meadows), so go pink river dolphins, black caiman, manatee, turtles, and other aquatic animals.

Fish Market in Iquitos – Pablo Puertas

A combination of infrastructure development and climate change could disrupt the natural signals, water quality, and habitats upon which migratory fish depend. All of these activities can now be seen in the western Amazon. During a recent visit to Iquitos, Peru, I observed signs of watershed deforestation, urban pollution, and extreme river-level events. Massive hydrocarbon exploration is reflected in the almost military-like fleet of helicopters at the local airport servicing dozens of new petroleum sites.

Not far from Iquitos, I encountered the first of two contrasting views of the relationship of Amazonians to their water resources. On a placid stretch of the Ucayali River, I watched as groups of pink river dolphins played as they moved along the river in search of any of dozens of fish species they feed on, while fisherman from a nearby village built on stilts to remain above seasonal floods stood in dugout canoes, silently casting their nets to catch the evening meal for their families.

Pink River Dolphin on the Marañón River – Pablo Puertas/WCS

I caught my second view way downstream in Manaus, a rapidly modernizing city of nearly two million built at the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Amazon River in Brazil. There, wealthier residents go to work in high rise offices. They drive SUVs, shop in one of several sprawling new shopping malls, and buy expensive, high quality fish to take home to their families in nearby suburbs and exurbs.

These two scenes share a common element – the water and forest resources on which so much else depends. Through its Amazon Waters initiative, the Wildlife Conservation Society is working with an array of stakeholders to develop a shared vision for the Amazon that recognizes the value of fisheries, wildlife, and their aquatic habitats, as well as the need to manage these resources sustainably in a way that contributes to the quality of life of people throughout the basin.

Fishing the Marañón River – Pablo Puertas/WCS

That vision may yet protect a fantastic array of aquatic species found in the Amazon’s waters: the black caiman – at nine to fourteen feet, the basin’s largest predator; the giant Amazonian river turtle, weighing up to 200 pounds and now threatened by poaching and habitat loss; and large catfish such as the dorado traveling upriver from freshwaters along the Atlantic coast all the way to the Andes – a nearly 4,000 kilometer trip and the longest freshwater fish migration.

Without healthy aquatic habitats, this unique wildlife could become as fleeting a memory as the rainforests that once grew so bountifully before the burning and bulldozing set in.

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Dr. Julie Kunen is Director of the Latin America and Caribbean Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Earth Day this year has been dedicated to presenting “the face of climate change.” Nowhere is this face more on view than in Arctic Alaska. Like the birds I study, I migrate to this fantastic landscape every summer.

At 231,000 square kilometers, Arctic Alaska is larger than Minnesota and encompasses most of the northern portion of the state and the entire Arctic coastal plain.

During the summer, the coastal plain transforms itself from a sub-zero inhospitable place to a vast productive wetland.  Millions of migratory birds from all over the world – including waterfowl and shorebirds – return there to breed on the tundra: timing their nesting activities with melting snow and a bountiful flush of insects.

Arctic Wetland Complex – Steve Zack/WCS

Working as a conservation biologist for the past 12 years, I’ve witnessed firsthand the growing impacts of a warming planet in Arctic Alaska – where climate change is occurring at a rate more accelerated than anywhere else on this planet.

As the trend toward higher spring temperatures, milder winters, and lingering autumns continues, there is tremendous uncertainty about how species like migratory birds will respond to a much warmer year-round landscape in the long-term.

Spectacled Eider – Cameron Rutt

In the past year, more than 80 science experts were involved in assessing 54 breeding bird species in Arctic Alaska. We found populations of nine bird species that were vulnerable to climate change impacts.

Two in particular – the gyrfalcon and common eider – are likely to be “highly” vulnerable, while seven other species would be “moderately” vulnerable to climate change. We also documented five species whose numbers may actually increase as the climate warms.

Common Eider – Steve Zack/WCS

The assessment will help conservation scientists unravel the mystery behind why a changing climate impacts some species more than others.

In the short-term, it appears that some species may be “winners” and others “losers” with respect to their ability to adjust their behavior to cope with climate change impacts.

Our ongoing research provides clear evidence that at least some bird species are nesting earlier as temperatures increase. Such a response to climate change may temporarily benefit certain birds by creating a sustained nesting period that gives them more time to raise chicks.

White Gyrfalcon – Steve Zack/WCS

The long-term prospects are far less certain. Scientists worry that the nesting cycles of birds that rely upon the emergence of insect larvae to feed their chicks could become unsynchronized, leaving hatchling chicks with little food to nourish their rapidly-growing bodies.

Over time, some tundra breeding habitats may be encroached upon by shrub and tree species from the south.  For shorebirds in particular, loss of crucial coastal habitats from sea-level rise and increasing human activities could severely impact populations at migration staging areas.

American Golden Plover – Cameron Rutt

It is unclear exactly how climate change will transform tundra habitats, but it is clear there will be dramatic changes.  A drying trend, which is already occurring in some parts of the Arctic, could parch wetlands essential to nesting bird species for both shelter and foraging.

Climate change is also influencing the predator-prey relationship between larger shorebird species and the red fox– an Arctic predator invading from the south that outcompetes the smaller Arctic fox.

Young Arctic fox pups. Arctic fox are known to be opportunistic predators and will eat birds eggs as readily as small mammals like lemmings – Steve Zack / WCS

We have seen more and more red foxes every year and fewer of the Arctic variety in the past decade.  Bird species like the American Golden-Plover can successfully defend their nests from Arctic fox, but would have a harder time against the larger red fox.

Buff-Breasted Sandpiper

While climate change challenges habitats and wildlife in Arctic Alaska, patient and careful observation helps us prioritize conservation planning efforts and safeguard breeding bird and other critical wildlife populations.

One thing is clear. Birds act as sentinels, and the climate changes confronting them now will in time express themselves in the lower latitudes where most of us live.

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Joe Liebezeit is the Arctic birds project leader for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

As we mark Earth Day this year with a recognition of “the face of climate change,” it is clear that the greatest threat to coral reef ecosystems is rising sea temperatures.

With corals across the globe bleaching due to advancing ocean temperatures, many of the world’s coral reef experts believe these centers of marine biodiversity may become the first casualty of climate change. But while the news on corals has been largely grim, it is not beyond hope.

Starfish – Tim McClanahan

First, the bad news. In the past 20 years, Caribbean corals have been smothered by algae, while bleaching events in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans have damaged huge swaths of previously healthy reef systems. A recent model published in Nature Climate Change predicts that 70 percent of corals are expected to undergo long-term degradation by 2030.

Yet these models represent an incomplete understanding of temperature-coral survival dynamics.

The notion that all is lost is misguided, and risks our resignation in confronting this crisis. Such a doomsday perspective ignores the resilience of coral reefs, our current incomplete understanding of their stress dynamics, and the ability of many of these systems to adapt to changing conditions.

Yellow Crinoid – Tim McClanahan

Knowing exactly which reefs will survive the extinction bottleneck to come is a critical step in knowing where to commit vital management resources.

Over the past few years, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and other like organizations around the world have published studies that offer solutions for identifying the corals most likely to survive our changing climate. One of these solutions is a “stress test.”

By combining layers of historical data, satellite imagery, and field observations gathered with scuba diving, marine scientists have produced a map that highlights low-stress places most likely to benefit from immediate conservation effort.

Tim McClanahan

As a result of the analysis we know, for example, that the oceans around Southern Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique across to northeastern Madagascar contain corals with high diversity and low to moderate environmental stress that merit protection in a region recently decimated by coral bleaching. These are also areas where millions of people depend on coral reefs for food, fisheries, associated livelihoods, and coastal protection.

On a wider scale, coral experts have created a map of the world’s corals with data on the exposure of these centers of biodiversity to stress factors, including high temperatures, ultraviolet radiation, temperature variability, and overfishing by humans.

By identifying corals where biodiversity is high and stress factors are low, we can protect what is most likely to survive in a scientifically meaningful way. For all who wish to see corals and the ecosystems they support endure, implementing targeted management should be our primary concern even as we encourage industrial nations to reduce their carbon emissions.

One of the best ways for us to save corals under climate pressure is to support changes by coastal fishing communities that use these ecosystems. In eastern Africa, the very communities that most rely on coral reef fish populations are already leading the way on this.

Mtwara Fishermen, Tanzania – Tim McClanahan

In Kenya, for instance, a consortium of communities have banded together in an effort to identify the most effective forms of fisheries management. Through a system of marine protected areas, fishing closures, and the banning of certain types of gear (fine-mesh fishing nets and traps), local communities have found they can conserve fish populations — an important factor in how corals cope with climate change.

We may not be able to save all reefs, and coastal nations and coral reef managers face some difficult decisions in the years to come. But resignation can create inaction when research, advocacy, and implementation of promising models for adaptation are most needed.

Powder Blue Tangs – Tim McClanahan

What we can do is to make sure conservation efforts pursue a strategy that targets improving the health of the most resistant coral reef systems around the world and supports communities in the efforts to conserve or adapt to impending change.

Our global energy portfolio will change slowly but key decisions and actions to protect coral reefs, which can come faster and cheaper, are imperative in the short term.

This Earth Day, let’s celebrate how such actions are already increasing the chances that coral ecosystems have a future.

The Author at Work

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Dr. Tim McClanahan is a coral reef fisheries expert at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Along Ecuador’s eastern border with Peru sits Yasuní National Park (YNP). At close to one million hectares, Yasuní is the largest expanse of protected lowland tropical forest in the country. Designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1989, the park is one of the world’s biodiversity jewels, containing at least 170 species of mammals, well over 596 bird species, more than 382 fish species, and a fantastic variety of flora.

Yasuní National Park is one of the world’s biodiversity jewels, containing great numbers of mammal, bird, fish, and plant species – Galo Zapata/WCS

Yasuní National Park and its surrounding area are also home to the last representatives of the Waorani and Kichwa ethnic communities, which have co-management agreements with the Ecuadorian government over land within YNP. If Yasuní’s unique biodiversity is to be conserved, the government, conservation organizations, and other local stakeholders must work in tandem with these groups.

The jaguar is the largest cat in the Americas and the third largest in the world, but these predators face risks that range from habitat depletion to human-wildlife conflict – Julie Larsen Maher/WCS

This is especially so given the growing pressure in Ecuador to exploit its vast natural petroleum and gas deposits. The construction of roads to facilitate energy exploration has provided access to previously wild areas. While it is possible to manage access to oil roads in order to reduce the movement of indigenous people into new areas (and the deforestation that often goes with it), these roads can have significant impacts on wildlife and their ecosystems.

In certain cases, oil companies have provided financial subsidies to encourage the use of roads by local people. Limited to the immediate surroundings of their community, traditional hunters would have never killed more than two or three animals in any single day. Today, local hunters can kill as many animals as they can carry to the edge of the road, where free transportation will give them a lift home or to a nearby market.

The construction of roads to facilitate energy exploration in Ecuador has provided access to previously wild areas – Julie Larsen Maher/WCS

Because these new influences have transformed the goal of hunting from subsistence to trade (with significant impacts on local wildlife), WCS has advocated against the creation of new roads in Yasuní National Park. At the same time, we design and support efforts to improve living conditions of indigenous groups without threatening their internal social organization or the integrity of the natural ecosystems where they live.

For instance, we have been working with Kichwa and Waorani communities to promote financial and environmental sustainability through community-based natural resource management projects. Such partnerships have helped protect two species of river turtles through community-based participatory management strategies, in which local people are trained to collect turtle eggs, raise them in captivity, and re-release them into the Napo and Tiputini Rivers.

Roque Alvarado, a Waorani from the Timpoca community, participates in a WCS-assisted effort to protect endangered “charapas” turtles living along the river banks in the Amazon – © Julie Larsen Maher

WCS also seeks to ensure that local people have a central role in the management and larger governance of the YNP, providing assistance with community mapping and management planning, territorial demarcation, and strategies to mitigate conflict between different indigenous groups. We have also worked to build the technical, financial, and administrative capacities of indigenous organizations.

All of these efforts help local communities to function autonomously while managing resources sustainably, and improving their quality of life. As economic development encroaches on previously undisturbed wild places across the globe today, conservation groups must increasingly assist impacted communities organizationally while engaging local people as stewards of biodiversity. Our work in Yasuní shows that these collaborations are essential and achievable.

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Galo Zapata is the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Ecology and Wildlife Management Coordinator for Ecuador.

 [Note: This is the third in a series of blogs by Calvelli celebrating the history and conservation of the American Bison.]

Native American groups joined with bison producers and conservation organizations in 2012 to initiate a campaign called Vote Bison. The campaign, which grew to include 35 coalition members across the nation, had a simple goal: to urge all members of the U.S. Congress to support the National Bison Legacy Act, which would designate the American bison as our country’s National Mammal.

The Vote Bison campaign continues in 2013 and is currently working with Congressional champions in the 113^th Congress. The participation of Native American tribes derives from cultural and spiritual connections to the American bison, or buffalo, spanning many centuries – one that is richly reflected in Native American historical and religious narratives.

American Bison herd in Yellowstone National Park (Julie Larsen Maher/WCS)

The largest land mammal in the Western Hemisphere (bison can grow to be six feet tall and weigh more than a ton) was, and remains, a critical resource for Native Americans. Through the ages, various tribes have used every part of the bison – as food, for utensils and clothing, and in religious rituals.

The Lakota nation, for example, used buffalo hair in headdresses and to stuff pillows and weave ropes. Other tribes have used bison fat in soap, cooking oil and candles; the skull as a religious altar; the bones for eating utensils and jewelry; and the bladder for food pouches and medicine bags. Even the stomach lining was used as a cooking vessel.

The spiritual staff seen here represents all of the Intertribal Buffalo Council’s member tribes. It was taken in January 2003 near Miami, Okla. (Photo credit: Intertribal Buffalo Council)

Bison numbered over 30 million at the time of the United States’ founding, but that number dwindled to a mere 1,000 with the westward expansion of the United States. The American Bison Society, founded at the Bronx Zoo with the support of President Theodore Roosevelt, helped to restore bison numbers with animals transported west by rail from the Bronx. In the next century, bison numbers rebounded to nearly half a million.

Today, more than 60 tribes are involved in bison restoration on Native American land in places like South Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma and New Mexico, with a combined herd covering more than one million acres.

Jim Stone is executive director of the Intertribal Buffalo Council, an organization with 58 member tribes in 19 states. He promotes bison as a leaner, healthier alternative to beef to combat the high rates of diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease that many Native Americans suffer from.

Stone’s own tribe, the Yankton Sioux in South Dakota, has in the past century witnessed the gradual erosion of buffalo culture within their community. Before the early 1990s, the last time the Yankton Sioux harvested buffalo on their reservation was in 1886.

A pair of American Bison at the Bronx Zoo. (Julie Larsen Maher/WCS)

“When you’re an oral society and there’s no reason for a given story to come to the surface, it tends to be forgotten,” says Stone. To recover some of this lost history, the Yankton Sioux visited other tribes, who shared prayers and some of the lore associated with the bison.

Though Congress did not pass the National Bison Legacy Act in 2012, the legislation enjoyed bipartisan support in both the House and Senate of representatives across the nation – from Hawaii and Colorado in the west to Ohio and Connecticut in the east. The proposed bill generated more than 85,000 letters of support to members of Congress.

This year the legislation’s supporters, including the Yankton Sioux and other tribes, will push hard once again to honor the American bison as our nation’s iconic mammal.

Representatives from the Blackfeet nation visiting the Bronx Zoo in 1913. Staff at the Wildlife Conservation Society met with some of their descendants in Montana last fall (Copyright WCS)

It is that iconic status that led to the choice of the bison on the buffalo nickel; to being featured in the logos of numerous sports teams, businesses and academic institutions; and to serving as the state mammal of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. In addition to their historical significance, bison also benefit grassland ecosystems and hold significant value for private producers.

We must continue to raise public awareness of the important cultural, economic, and ecological role of the American bison as we seek to establish formal recognition for this magnificent animal.

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John Calvelli is Executive Vice President for Public Affairs at the Wildlife Conservation Society and Chair of the Executive Committee of the International Conservation Partnership (ICP), which is comprised of representatives from the major global U.S. conservation organizations.

If a place on earth motivates a Bar-tailed Godwit to fly more than 9,000 miles from southern Australia, the Buff-breasted Sandpiper to fly 8,500 miles from the pampas of Argentina, and Arctic Terns to fly some 11,000 miles from Antarctic, well, that place must be something special. That special place is the coastal plain of Arctic Alaska, where these birds and millions of others come to breed in a still-remote nursery on top of the world.

Bar-Tailed Godwit - Steve Zack

News from the wildlife conservation world is rarely good these days, with expanding wildlife trade, climate change, and the ever-growing human footprint pushing wildlife populations into smaller and smaller havens. Yet the announcement from the Department of Interior regarding plans to balance energy development and wildlife protection in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve (NPR-A) – the biggest piece of public land in the United States – is great news for wildlife from across the globe.

The size of Indiana, the NPR-A is one of the most remote places in the world. Yet during its short summer, thawing winter snow and ice thaw reveal thousands of lakes and wet tundra near the coastal plain in the Arctic’s largest wetland complex. Millions of migratory birds arrive from every continent and from every ocean to nest and rear their young. Caribou in the hundreds of thousands also use the coastal plain as a nursery. The environs of Teshekpuk Lake, in the heart of the NPR-A, provides the most important landscape of all for wildlife in the Arctic.

Caribou - Steve Zack

The NPR-A started out as a Naval Petroleum Reserve in the 1920s. In the 1970s administration of the reserve passed to Interior’s Bureau of Land Management. Three Special Areas were delineated because of their wildlife values: Teshekpuk, for breeding birds and calving caribou; Utukok, as the migratory corridor for the biggest caribou herd and its attendant predators; and Colville, where raptors nest in bluffs above the region’s biggest river. Special Areas didn’t necessarily mean special protection from development, however.

Over the past decade, extensive leasing for oil and gas development has occurred in the northern part of the NPR-A, including within the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area. While public attention was on the oil vs. wildlife debate in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the east, the larger and more wildlife-rich NPR-A was off the public radar. It was around that time that I had the opportunity to begin fieldwork in the Arctic for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Pacific Loon - Steve Zack

My fellow scientists and I have come to understand and document the tremendous role that western Alaska (all contained within the NPR-A) plays for Arctic wildlife. In considering this landscape rich in many resources – oil, gas, mineral, and animal – we sought to identify how best to conserve wildlife amid the expected expansion of energy development westwards from the Prudhoe Bay oilfields. The question was always one of balance, as there was no credible argument to be made for precluding development in a National Petroleum Reserve.

At the same time, Congress has made clear since the 1970s that wildlife conservation is also a management priority. There are many interests competing for prominence within this idea of “balance”: energy companies, politicians local and national, native Inupiats interested in subsistence, sportsmen hunting winter populations of waterfowl in the lower 48 that migrate to Alaska to breed, environmentalists, and the general public interested in public lands.

Long-Tail Jaeger - Steve Zack

Science built a strong case for wildlife protection around Teshekpuk and along the coastal plain, and for Utukok as a migratory corridor for caribou. The key conservation study, however, was that of the U.S. Geological Survey, which reassessed the oil potential of the NPR-A and found the reserves to be only 10 percent of what had been originally estimated. That assessment, and the associated relinquishment of oil leases because of poor returns in test wells, helped create more room for wildlife protection in Arctic Alaska.

Arctic Fox Pups - Steve Zack

I, too, have migrated (by plane) every spring for the past decade from my home in Portland some 3,500 miles to the Arctic to be with the far-flung birds like the Bar-tailed Godwit, the Buff-breasted sandpiper, and Arctic terns. I am pleased that balance has been found for both conservation and development in this remote place. It means that the work I love will go on. But it also means that migrations essential to the survival of countless irreplaceable species can and will continue into the future.

Dr. Steve Zack, Coordinator of Bird Conservation for the Wildlife Conservation Society, is based in Portland, OR but can often be seen migrating with birds worldwide.

On Thursday, November 1, Americans of all stripes came together in celebration of National Bison Day.  In doing so, they recognized the unique role that the American buffalo has played in the history, culture, and ecology of the United States.

Grazing by bison over the centuries stamped out our nation’s vast Great Plains. For Native Americans, bison are the subject of stories and myths passed down across generations. They were also a critical source food and clothing.

National Bison Association

Today, sales of bison, or buffalo, meat in the United States are on the rise, and with good reason. Bison provide a leaner, healthier alternative to beef. A 100-gram serving of cooked bison contains 2.42 grams of fat while the same serving of beef has a fat content of 10.1 grams. That difference has made bison meat attractive to consumers, constraining the supply of market-ready animals.

To meet this growing demand, bison producers have proliferated into every state in the nation, with some 4,000 farmers and ranchers in all. Last year was one of the strongest yet for bison production – a $300 million business and a key contributor to the health of rural economies in the United States.

With nearly 200,000 bison residing on private ranches it might be hard to imagine that this iconic species, after occupying the plains of North America for thousands of years, nearly went extinct a mere century ago.

Julie Larsen Maher

At the time of the United States’ founding, bison numbered over 30 million. Westward expansion, industrialization, and the effort by American settlers to gain an advantage over Native Americans dependent on bison led to a wholesale slaughter of this great animal in the mid-19^th century. By the 1880s, only 1,000 buffalo remained.

As I discussed in my last blog, efforts undertaken by the American Bison Society, founded at the Bronx Zoo with the support of President Theodore Roosevelt, helped to restore bison numbers in the western plains of the United Sates with animals transported from the Bronx. Over the next 100 years, bison numbers rebounded to nearly a half million.

This year’s Bison Day activities spanned the country, from New Mexico and South Dakota in the west to West Virginia and Washington D.C. in the east. Kids and adults painted bison murals at New Mexico’s Wind River Ranch Foundation while South Dakota’s Museum of the American Bison hosted historical talks and a chance for youngsters to try homemade bison-shaped cookies.

Julie Larsen Maher

National Bison Day is one of the signature components of legislation now working its way through the United States Congress.  At a time of deep partisan gridlock, the National Bison Legacy Act, which would make the bison our National Mammal, boasts broad support among both Democrats and Republicans. The bill has 18 sponsors in the Senate and 13 in the House, split about evenly by party.

As our National Mammal, the bison would take its place alongside the bald eagle as one of America’s most recognized and revered animals.

A broad coalition that includes bison producers, conservation groups, and Native Americans has formed a campaign called Vote Bison (www.votebison.org) to urge all members of the U.S. Congress to support the National Bison Legacy Act. Their efforts have resulted in over 76,000 emails to national legislators in support of the legislation, which we hope to see passed this year.

Bison in Support of the National Bison Legacy Act - Chip Weiskotten,

In the meantime, bison producers will continue working to introduce a healthy and sustainable meat alternative to Americans.  Federal regulations prohibit the use of both artificial growth hormones and growth-inducing antibiotics in bison. That helps explain why bison meat is increasingly found today in natural food stores, at farmer’s markets, and in restaurants.

Bison evolved to graze in herds to avoid predators. The action of their hooves turns the soil and buries seeds while their urine and manure provide critical nutrients. Dave Carter, Executive Director of the National Bison Association, has said, “As we introduce healthy bison meat to a new generation of Americans, we are also restoring a vital part of the ecological health to our grasslands.”

Julie Larsen Maher

Bison have contributed so much to the history, culture and ecology of North America. It’s time now for us to give back. Vote Bison and help the bison become our National Mammal.

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John Calvelli is Executive Vice President for Public Affairs at the Wildlife Conservation Society and Chair of the Executive Committee of the International Conservation Partnership (ICP), which is comprised of representatives from the major global U.S. conservation organizations.

The Volcanica Central Talamanca Corridor in Costa Rica is one of several biological corridors in Central America created to ensure the movement of critically endangered species across the region. It was difficult to motivate struggling local farmers to support this effort based solely on conservation, but they depend on the land for many uses. Broadening the corridor effort beyond conservation to provide livelihood benefits and improved ecosystem services like clean water was the key to success.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that to feed the world’s growing population over the next 40 years we must find ways to increase food production by 60 percent. Most proposed solutions target demand alone by increasing crop yields. An alternative approach gaining increased attention recognizes the mutual dependency of agriculture and conservation. The results are promising – putting more food on more tables while bringing additional benefits to the environment and rural communities.

Terraced agroforestry system in Konso, Ethiopia shows how conservation and agriculture can work together - The Christensen Fund

Integrating biodiversity conservation and ecosystem restoration in Costa Rica is providing healthier and cheaper ways to make vital crops more resilient – for example, by controlling coffee pests. Market initiatives such as the Rainforest Alliance and Starbuck’s C.A.F.E. certification help ensure that landscapes are managed to protect wild biodiversity while providing income for local communities maintaining productive agroecosystems.

Another initiative – Seeds for Needs, A Bioversity International project that won the World Bank’s 2009 Development Marketplace Award – shows that access to agricultural biodiversity is critical in adapting food production to climate change. Sweet potato and taro are the most important staple crops in Papua New Guinea. Working with farmers, gene banks, and local partners, varieties of these plants were identified that can withstand the temperature, rainfall extremes, and predicted shifts in pest and disease outbreaks that are expected with a warming planet. Pre-selected varieties were then matched with locations where they should produce good yields under those circumstances.

Quinoa growing in wild areas of Peru - Bioversity International, Danny Hunter

These are just two examples that demonstrate how conservation and agriculture can complement each other. We know from our combined experience working for many years, and in many parts of the world, that there are numerous other cases in which conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity by farmers tending fewer than 2 hectares of land has proved successful.

Momentum is building for this approach. New collaborations like the Landscape for People Food and Nature Initiative, led by Ecoagriculture Partners, are informing new thinking on how to scale-up whole landscape approaches that meet conservation and agriculture goals. That work will play a critical role in engaging the attention of policymakers.

Funders are also playing their part. Both traditional conservation-focused groups and new multi-donor entities such as the International Fund for Amplifying Agro-Ecological Solutions are starting to recognize the interconnectivity between conservation and food production, biodiversity, nutrition, and livelihoods. They increasingly support projects that deliver on several levels rather than concentrating on one specific objective.

Farmers in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia grow vegetables with a rural development model linking agriculture and local markets to natural resource management. WCS's COMACO business model rewards farmers with increased commodity prices for adopting improved land management and farming practices that can sustain higher food crop yields while reducing potential conflicts with natural resources - Julie Larsen Maher, WCS

One of the outcomes of the recent 2012 IUCN World Conservation Congress was the ‘Call to Action for Agriculture and Conservation to work together.’ This call needs to be followed by a commitment to work with a broad range of partners to gather evidence about what works on the ground. It will be vital to analyze and draw lessons from these experiences and present them in a way that will compel decision-makers to rethink policies.

If we are to find long-term sustainable solutions to food and nutrition security and biodiversity conservation, the policies we need in the future require conservation and agriculture sectors to collaborate. It is not enough just to increase production. Agriculture and conservation have to come together to work with rural communities if we are to have a food secure future.
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Emile Frison is Director General of Bioversity International, the world’s leading research-for-development organization on agricultural and tree biodiversity. Cristián Samper is President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society and an international authority on conservation biology and environmental policy. Ken Wilson is Executive Director and CEO of The Christensen Fund, a private foundation supporting the resilience of living diversity at landscape and community level around the world.

This summer marked the sad and untimely death of the most famous tortoise in the world, Lonesome George. When speaking of turtles and tortoises time, of course, is a relative thing. At an estimated 100 years of age, this Galapagos native was still relatively young by the standards of his genus. Nevertheless, with his demise on June 24, the Pinta Island tortoise is believed to have officially gone extinct.

George and his fellow Pinta Island tortoises fell victim to centuries of relentless exploitation and callous interference by humans into the fantastically-adapted seascape so wonderfully documented by the great naturalist Charles Darwin nearly 200 years ago. Mariners removed giant tortoises from the islands to serve as food on long voyages while introduced goats thrived in the Galapagos on the vegetation that previously sustained tortoises like George.

Burmese Star Tortoise - Myanmar - Critically Endangered - Photo by Brian D. Horne

Sadly, George’s story is not unique. The armored shells of turtles and tortoises represent one of the most uniquely adapted vertebrate body plans and have served to protect these animals since prehistoric times. But evolution’s best defense mechanisms provide little protection against humankind’s willful determination to slaughter these incredible creatures. In our modern globally-integrated economy, turtle hunting will never be a sustainable industry. Turtles neither mature fast enough nor produce enough offspring to withstand even moderate levels of continual harvesting.

For decades, Wildlife Conservation Society scientists like the late John Behler and Brian Horne have crisscrossed the globe to study rare turtles and tortoises and prevent their demise. Dr. Horne, like other experts in the field, believes that the international trade of wild-caught turtles is the main factor in driving more than half of the 330 species of turtles close to extinction. On a percentage basis, turtles as a group are now more at risk of extinction than birds, mammals, or amphibians.

Golden Coin Turtle Hatchling - China, Laos, Vietnam - Critically Endangered - Photo by Julie Larsen Maher

Far too often, we find a greater number and diversity of turtles in markets (typically stacked in crowded crates, sitting in their own filth in seedy shops and back alleyways) than we do in the wild. The rise of Internet commerce as a major market for the illicit sale of protected turtle species and the rapidly emerging economies of South and Southeast Asia are endangering the world’s turtles at an unprecedented rate.

The bulk of the world’s wild-caught turtle trade is to serve the demand in China for human consumption and their perceived medicinal benefits, and to supply the international exotic pet trade.  The scope of this trade is not measured in numbers of individuals but in tons of live turtles that are collected and sold on a daily basis. During a three-day survey of southern Chinese markets in late 2011, WCS was able to document that the species for sale represented over a third of the world’s turtle diversity. Confronted by the magnitude of the trade, it is hard to imagine there can be a single turtle or tortoise left in the wild at current rates of exploitation.

Red-Crowned Roofed Turtle - Bangladesh, India, Nepal - Critically Endangered - Photo by Brian D. Horne

The impact of these markets is truly global, as we found turtles from every continent where they occur and many that are listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the highest level of trade protection, regulating commercial trade of a species. Loopholes in laws and failures in enforcement facilitate the trade of huge numbers of these critically endangered species.

In 2011, the Turtle Conservation Coalition identified the 25 most endangered turtles, two-thirds of these being found only in Asia and heavily impacted by trade in and to China. Most of these rarest species are estimated to have fewer than 1,000 animals remaining in the wild, with some species able to be counted in the tens or single digits.  However, WCS believes that turtle species can be saved from extinction through field conservation efforts and captive breeding.

With the goal of preserving wild turtle populations and preventing further extinctions, we have made an institutional commitment to reduce the illegal trade in these animals. As a part of this effort, we will work to ensure that there are adequate protected areas for maintaining self-sustaining populations of the world’s most endangered turtles.

Roti Island Snake-Necked Turtle - Indonesia, Timor-Leste - Critically Endangered - Photo by Julie Larsen Maher

With our partners the Turtle Survival Alliance, the Turtle Conservancy, and the Asian Turtle Program, we are also developing captive breeding projects both within the US and abroad. The end goal of these breeding programs is to be able to return offspring of these assurance colonies into the wild.

For turtle species numbering in the hundreds or less, we may only have a few years before we lose these marvels of evolution forever.  We have the ability to make a difference, and we have the ethical responsibility to respond.  We must act now to ensure that future generations have the opportunity to spot a turtle in the wild and that no species finds itself — like George — reduced by human greed or mismanagement to one last, lonesome representative.

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Jim Breheny is Executive Vice President & General Director for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Zoos and Aquarium and Jonathan Little Cohen Director of the Bronx Zoo.

Jeju, Republic of Korea, September, 2012

The passenger pigeon was once among the most abundant birds on the planet, sometimes flying in flocks so vast they reportedly darkened the skies. Likewise, tens of millions of North American bison once thundered across the American Great Plains. As the United States emerged as a major global economy in the late 1800’s, both species experienced catastrophic losses due to overhunting. Yet when they arrived at a conservation crossroads, facing extinction or survival, they traveled two very different paths.

In 1914, the passenger pigeon went extinct. The bison nearly vanished as well, but its peril was recognized, responsibility was taken, and recovery resulted. Thanks to these three ‘R’s’ of conservation – combined with the work of the American Bison Society, the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo, and different branches of the U.S. Government — we have 30,000 wild bison in conservation herds today, and plans for further recovery herds. The future looks good for the species.

American Bison - Julie Larson Maher / WCS

As we convene in Asia this week at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Jeju, South Korea, it is hard not to see parallels here with the stories of the passenger pigeon and bison. Asia is now the major center for global economic growth and, like the United States, this growth has come at a major cost to its native wildlife.

Today, many species are at a crossroads. Will they take the path of the passenger pigeon or the bison? The fate of some, including the baiji (Yangtze river dolphin) and the kouprey (a species of Asian wild cattle) have already been decided. They tragically went the way of the passenger pigeon. Still standing at the crossroads are tigers, orangutans, Asian rhinos, Asian river turtles, Asian vultures, sharks, and a host of other lesser-known species.

Amur Tiger - Julie Larsen Maher / WCS

The species themselves cannot decide which path to take. Rather, as with the bison, humans can assist in their survival by following the three “R’s”: recognizing the problem, taking responsibility for solving it, and putting species back on the path to recovery.

At no point in history have we been so able to recognize how well or badly species are doing. The science of assessing the status of species in the wild is ever-more robust. The IUCN’s Red List is a powerful method of encapsulating and interpreting the wealth of knowledge accumulated on the last 3,200 tigers, the last 40 Javan rhinos, or the collapsing range of the Asian elephant. Recognition is not our weakness; responsibility is.

Indian Rhino - Julie Larsen Maher / WCS

Ultimately, responsibilty for conserving species, their habitats, and the ecological services they provide, rests with governments and the legal and practical frameworks that they establish. There is no question that today, standing in the world’s economic engine room, most of the countries of Asia have the resources to respond. Now they must take responsibility for doing so.

We also have positive and powerful precedents. Project Tiger, announced in 1972, was possibly the greatest example of a host government—in this case India—taking responsibility for the fate of a species. By doing so it sent a clear message that India alone would be held accountable for the future of wild tigers. That commitment – nearly unprecedented – led to a rare example of a major Asian species achieving a sustained recovery (the third ‘R’) in the parts of India where resources were focused.

Today, while problems and challenges linger, India remains committed to ensuring that tigers are conserved effectively within its boundaries. Similarly, in the Western Forest Complex in Thailand, the Thai Government is taking responsibility for protecting its tigers and taking bold steps to overcome the poaching pressures.

This World Conservation Congress highlights the many ways in which the international community – through knowledge, collaboration, resources and a shared conviction – can assist governments, local communities, and civil society in reaching their conservation goals. However, these resources only have value if governments take ultimate responsibility for conserving the species within their borders. Nowhere is this now more necessary than in Asia, a continent fully in charge of its own destiny and that of its species, with – in most but not all cases – the capacity and resources to succeed.

We recognize the challenges, we know how to recover species and habitats, and we stand ready to support those governments that have accepted that the responsibility is ultimately theirs.

Elizabeth L. Bennett, PhD, is Vice President for Species Conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Joe Walston, PhD, is Executive Director for the WCS Asia Program.