ALL ACROSS South-East Asia, thousands of fishermen are poisoning exquisite coral reefs with cyanide. They crush a couple of sodium cyanide tablets into a plastic container of water, then dive in among the reefs and squirt the toxic liquid into the faces of any fish that catch their eye. The poison is concentrated enough to knock out the fish without killing them, making them easy to catch in a net, or even with bare hands.
Hours later, the fish are recovering on a plane to Hong Kong, where customers in restaurants will pay $200 or more to choose a colourful coral trout or grouper swimming in a tank and have it cooked and served up at their table. Other fish might end up in aquaria in North America or Europe. But the reef itself 鈥� the coral polyps and algae that underpin these 鈥渞ainforests of the oceans鈥� 鈥� pays a heavy price too. Roughly a square metre of reef is destroyed for every live fish caught using cyanide, says biologist Sam Mamauag of the International Marinelife Alliance in the Philippines. Cyanide, he says, has turned many of the most biologically diverse reefs on the planet into marine deserts.
Many environmentalists would instinctively call a ban on the whole sorry business. And the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development, a body set up by the Philippines government to help preserve the biological treasures of its western islands, does indeed want to ban live reef fishing in the region. But it is meeting opposition from an unexpected quarter: the Philippines branch of the WWF, the world鈥檚 foremost conservation body, with backing from its international headquarters in Geneva.
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Hard to credit? A betrayal? Well, hold your fire 鈥� the WWF is just one among many science-based environment groups that are engaged in a savage reappraisal of their philosophy. In their self-imposed task of saving everything from rainforests and medicinal plants to elephants and whales, they are coming to a heretical conclusion: conservation 鈥� at least in its hard-line forms 鈥� is its own worst enemy. Far from saving endangered species and their habitats, it often accelerates their destruction, because it alienates local people and forces trade underground.
You would never guess this upheaval was going on when you read organisations鈥� promotional literature on the fight to preserve the planet鈥檚 last wildernesses. But the truth is they are beginning to think that banning hunting and fishing, erecting fences round forests to keep out poachers, and outlawing trade in endangered species are about the least effective ways of saving threatened species. Sometimes the best way forward is to dismantle existing protection laws and start again.
Several factors are driving this sea change. First, there is an admission that hard-line conservation has a chequered history, with more failures than successes, and that it often breeds resentment in local communities. Secondly, there鈥檚 the realisation that western environmentalists, however well-meaning, have no right to ride roughshod over local sensibilities. Finally, they are riding the current fashion wave: the idea that environmental protection and economic development don鈥檛 have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, there are conservation strategies that allow them to reinforce each other. And this ethos of 鈥渟ustainable development鈥�, first made popular at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro ten years ago, is taking many environmentalists in directions they had never anticipated.
Until the summit, many greens still agreed with post-war conservation pioneers such as the German zoologist Bernhard Grzimek, who decreed in his influential book Serengeti Shall Not Die that 鈥渁 national park must remain a primordial wilderness to be effective. No men, not even native ones, should live inside its borders.鈥� In the name of such ideals, tens of thousands of rural inhabitants across the developing world have been evicted from their homes to create national parks, and millions of local hunters have been branded poachers and turned into outlaws.
But this strict protectionist mantra is being replaced. During the 1990s, groups like the WWF and the World Conservation Union (IUCN) began to conduct what they called 鈥渟ustainability assessments鈥� of environmental objectives. Their goal was to show that governments鈥� existing development policies were unsustainable because they destroyed basic natural resources, and that a new, greener way was needed. But to everyone鈥檚 surprise, the assessments also shone an equally harsh light on conventional environmental policies. Many were found wanting, both morally and practically.
The evidence for the failure of conventional conservation is everywhere. It simply takes too much land, for one thing. Take Kenya, which has turned more than a tenth of its land into strictly protected parks and reserves. But the majority of its large mammals still spend most of their time outside the parks, says former Kenya Wildlife Service director David Western. And there is a deeper problem. Wildlife habitat is often better outside the parks, because human activities in savannah grasslands such as the Kenyan parks region are an integral part of the richest habitat. The traditional cattle-herding communities here may have helped promote the high density of wildlife, say ecologists. 鈥淭he ending of human activity such as fires and shifting cultivation in the parks has reduced biodiversity,鈥� says Western. 鈥淭hose human activities created the patchiness of terrain that encouraged more species.鈥�
And the interests of people must be considered, too. 鈥淭here is no point in creating protected areas if they fail to recognise the requirements of the people who live in or around them. That can only lead to conflict and reduce the chances of success,鈥� says Claude Martin, a zoologist with long experience of running African national parks who is now director-general of WWF International.
Hundreds of millions of the world鈥檚 poorest people depend on wildlife to survive. And if they can鈥檛 make a living from nature鈥檚 forests and animals, then they will probably eliminate them with guns or chainsaws to free more land for farming. 鈥淧arks and other protected areas will be overrun by people鈥檚 needs for land unless the parks serve the needs of the local population,鈥� says Thomas McShane, a former programme officer for Africa at WWF International who now heads their tropical forest division.
In Rwanda, for example, conservationist Dian Fossey tried to protect endangered mountain gorillas by maintaining their forest habitat in pristine condition. She saw locals as the gorillas鈥� enemies. And she fought to exclude tourists. But her efforts backfired, says McShane. Hunting and deforestation threw the gorilla population into serious decline. Only after Fossey鈥檚 murder in 1985 did the Mountain Gorilla Project, established by groups like WWF seven years before, succeed in reversing her strict conservation strategy by bringing tourists into the area in significant numbers. Their revenues provided an incentive for local people to protect rather than hunt the gorillas. Since then, despite the risk that tourists may bring human diseases to the gorillas, their numbers have been increasing.
Green groups鈥� reappraisal of their strategy even extends to such icons of the strict-conservation approach as elephants and whales. WWF, which lobbied for the ivory-trade ban that began in 1989, will support the resumption of routine international trade in ivory once it can be policed to exclude poachers and smugglers. That day may not be far off, says Martin. A new worldwide system for monitoring trade should soon allow the swift identification of poached ivory. And in future, DNA techniques for pinpointing the source of ivory could help further.
One day, WWF may also support the resumption of commercial whaling. Already the hard-line protectionist policy adopted by the International Whaling Commission, an intergovernmental body that has imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling for the past 17 years, is in disarray with increasing numbers of whales taken under the guise of 鈥渞esearch鈥�. Whale numbers have recovered so much in recent years that we can no longer logically oppose the resumption of regulated commercial whaling, said Shigeki Komori of WWF Japan in an internal newsletter leaked to the press last year.
There are ethical as well as practical objections to hard-line conservation. Dogmatic environmentalism, says Martin, is 鈥渋n some ways as narrow and selfish as the imperialism of old. Imperialism imposed a system of development that took little or no account of the rights and needs of local people. Too often, that same charge can be levelled against conservation projects.鈥� The charge is especially potent against WWF, whose founders, including royals such as Prince Philip, were white hunters-turned-conservationists.
Most environmentalists outside the hard-core animal rights groups say they are in favour of conserving traditional cultures. In practice that usually involves preserving their hunting traditions. So WWF quietly supports the Inuit, who hunt polar bears, and the Gwich鈥檌n people, who hunt caribou as the animals travel through northern Canada and Alaska on one of the greatest mammal migrations left on Earth.
Even Greenpeace makes compromises. The organisation that made its name two decades ago in a crusade to 鈥渟ave the whales鈥� now supports the rights of aboriginal communities, such as the Makah on the American Pacific coast, to hunt grey whales. Similar thinking has encouraged environmental scientists to change their minds about bans on everything from African bush-meat hunting to the harvesting of Chinese medicinal plants. Now they want to hand over control of these natural resources to local communities. And sometimes that will mean allowing the killing of endangered species.
The Amazon manatee is the largest of the animals that live in the largest rainforest on Earth. This denizen of the flooded forests is seriously endangered, following mass slaughter for its blubber during the mid-20th century. Though the beast is now protected under Brazilian law, forest dwellers still hunt it for its meat. And it is delicious, according to zoologist Jose Marcio Ayres, who managed the Mamiraua Ecological Reserve in the heart of its habitat until his death earlier this year.
Ayres wanted to conserve the manatee as much as anyone. But, though hunting manatees was illegal, he persuaded the Brazilian government to make an exception for forest dwellers. He encouraged the hunters to develop their own quota system to ensure this valuable food would not go extinct. 鈥淏ans have been tried in many reserves in the Amazon, but they don鈥檛 work,鈥� he told New 杏吧原创 last year.
Hunters can help
This project has been supported by both WWF and the Wildlife Conservation Society, based at the Bronx Zoo in New York. Sandra Charity of WWF Brazil says: 鈥淗unting bans make conservation an enemy of the people. Our strategy is to work democratically with the villagers to help them protect their resources.鈥� Data is hard to come by, but Ayres claimed that manatee numbers fell while hunting was banned, but have revived since hunters were given control.
It is not yet clear just how far the new breed of environmentalists will be willing to take this approach. Many people would draw a firm line against hunting apes, for example, even by indigenous people. 鈥淎pes are close to humans, so for many it is an ethical issue,鈥� says Martin. 鈥淚 have sympathy for this position.鈥� But even here, he refuses to condemn hunters outright.
Political expediency, too, plays a part in the shift away from traditional conservation. 鈥淚f we go for the ideological protectionist approach, nature and conservation will always end up being sidelined,鈥� says Jeff McNeely, IUCN鈥檚 chief scientist.
Even the more traditionally minded groups such as Conservation International (CI) are moving with the times. Four years ago in the journal Science, the organisation called for the 鈥渙utright protection鈥� of rainforests and accused groups like WWF of being 鈥渃o-opted鈥� by people opposed to conservation. CI鈥檚 president, Russell Mittermeier, denies that its policies have changed, but it now projects a much softer image. Even within biodiversity hotspots, it is promoting projects that, as CI鈥檚 mission statement puts it, 鈥渄emonstrate that human societies are able to live harmoniously with nature鈥�.
But others still hold firm to older conservation principles. Richard Leakey, the former director of the Kenyan Wildlife Service 鈥� whose rangers regularly shot poachers 鈥� calls the idea that wildlife should pay its way 鈥渨rong-headed鈥�. 鈥淚 fear that conservationists who use bottom-line reasoning for saving the animals they love are actually dooming them to extinction,鈥� he says. In cash terms, wildlife will always be worth more dead than alive, he argues. Such views are still widely heard among groups campaigning for animal rights, but much less so among environmentalists involved in practical conservation efforts.
Even so, the implications of the new approach constantly surprise its practitioners. When WWF last year launched a sustainability assessment of the trade in live reef fish in the Philippines, all its environmental instincts pointed towards calling for an outright ban. And an environmental assessment that focused strictly on the fish and the reefs on which they lived would have reached that conclusion, says Nilo Brucal of WWF鈥檚 Manila office, who coordinated the WWF assessment. But the more the researchers broadened their view to include the political, social and economic context, the less sense a ban made.
Brucal eventually concluded that an effective ban on trade in live reef fish would push fishermen back into the conventional 鈥渄ead fish鈥� trade. 鈥淏ecause dead fish sell for only a fifth as much as live fish, they would take five times as many fish from the sea 鈥� probably using a lot more cyanide,鈥� he says. And if the ban proved ineffective, then it would freeze out the law-abiding fishermen and leave the waters free for the cyanide fishers and other illegal operators. 鈥淏anning would just drive the whole business underground,鈥� says Brucal. 鈥淭he fish would be collected at sea by smugglers and we鈥檇 have even less chance of controlling the trade than we do now.鈥�
Instead, Brucal wants local communities to work harder to police fishing. But his decision is raising eyebrows around the green world. After all, Brucal and WWF are in the strange position of endorsing the continuation of a trade that is fuelling the destruction of some of the world鈥檚 finest coral reefs. Are they complicit in this ecological carnage, or the brave pioneers of a new approach to conservation? The world will have to wait and see. What is certain, though, is that environmentalism doesn鈥檛 look so simple any more.