The Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve is presently the largest protected area in all of the 7 United Arab Emirates, which encompass 83,600 square kilometers. With increasing development in Dubai, desert habitat and wildlife are vanishing. Over 4.7 million human inhabitants and feverish consumerism has left the biological heritage of this outstanding region in jeopardy, challenging the leadership to target some of its enormous oil, gas and international trade surpluses for conservation efforts. The Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve (DDCR) which surrounds the eco-tourist resort and preserve of Al Maha (Arabic for the rare flagship species, Arabian oryx) is one unprecedented example, the brainchild of Managing Director Tony Williams, and the vision of the founding fathers of Dubai, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum and his sons.

With Al Maha resident naturalists Greg Simkins and Ryan Ingram, DSF was able to document for Sanctuary some of the biological treasures that are protected in the 225 square kilometer DDCR, as well as the research and monitoring ongoing there to expand the biodiversity database. With continuing eco-tourism to the area and intensive survey work, the fenced protected area will likely expand in the future, while setting a remarkable example of high scientific stewardship for the rest of the Gulf region.

Using camera traps, and daily observational records, Greg, Ryan and team have found over forty resident avians, twenty-one reptile and a dozen mammal species. Shrubs include a known 26 varieties, in addition to four grass and six tree species.

As for the gorgeous ungulate, the oryx, there are now an estimated 5,000+ living in their former ranges that include the U.A.E.. Al Maha and DDCR are crucial components of that success story.

For more information:

> Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve

> Wildlife Middle East News

With a population under 500,000 as of mid-2007 and projections indicating little demographic change for the next fifty years, Suriname still has more than 95% of the country’s habitat in a virtually untouched situation. That’s 38 million acres of wilderness, or the equivalent of more than six Yellowstone National Parks. It is the size of Wisconsin or Bangladesh or 163,265 square kilometers.

This is where Conservation International President Dr. Russell A. Mittermeier did his Ph.D. dissertation back in the mid-1970s while a graduate student at Harvard. While studying several native primates here, he fell in love with the country. CI’s long-time commitment to Suriname, both financially and scientifically, has helped maintain and document what is the core area in the largest remaining tropical rainforest expanse on Earth: the Guyana Shield. This geologically-unique area encompasses not only the vast majority of Suriname, but also upper Amazonian forest spread contiguously across some six hundred thousand square kilometers of Amapa State in northern Brazil, French Guyana, Guyana and parts of Columbia and Venezuela.

While in Suriname to profile some of its remarkable and creative biodiversity conservation for Sanctuary: Global Oases of Innocence, DSF was hosted by Dr. Mittermeier and CI staff, including Conservation International’s Executive Director for Suriname, The Honorable Wim Udenhout, former Prime Minister of Suriname and Ambassador to the U.S. among many other nations.

Dr. Mittermeier was in Suriname to meet with a tribal chief in the far South to persuade him and his peers of the wisdom of setting aside a large tract of forest in their domain, along the Brazilian border. His argument comports with that of all conservationists today who attempt to facilitate practical ways of compensating governments and indigenous people for maintaining their precious habitat. Countries like Suriname proffer a lure for multinationals seeking to become carbon neutral: incredible forests, unique species and a rich and diverse cultural heritage. All that Suriname asks in return for conserving its forests is a revenue stream to mitigate any adverse economic pressures within the country. That in situ, carbon-neutralizing formula needs to be realized, or grown into a global strategy with the same market base as other forms of equity.

The Trio Amerindian Chief that Dr. Mittermeier met with seemed to agree. So does the country’s Minister of Physical Land Planning and Forestry, Dr. M. John Tjie Fa, with whom we met at the research and eco-tourist camp of Raleigh Vallen, a region of small cataracts in the jungle named after the great Renaissance explorer Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh tried to find this place, and was said to have thought it to be the original Garden of Eden.

Given that this is one of the largest standing great tropical rain forests on the planet, its Central Nature Reserve all but uninhabited; with more fresh water per capita than any other country (and the cleanest water, at that); and that these tropics host a known 722 birds, 185 mammals, 152 reptiles, 95 amphibians, and 790 fish species, of which about 3% are endemic – Raleigh was not mistaken. Donors, NGOs, conservationists and governments everywhere need to help Suriname maintain this precious jewel which she has duly enshrined.

For more information:

> Conservation International, Suriname

> Central Suriname Nature Reserve

Along with the 32 square kilometer Tijuca National Park (Floresta de Tijuca) above Rio de Janeiro, Bukit Timah’s 183 hectares of primary tropical rainforest in the heart of Singapore, protected since the 1880s, represent one of the truly unique urban ecosystems on the planet. This Nature Reserve is consistent with a country and a city whose verdant celebrity has evolved with deliberate finesse. With three nature reserves covering roughly 2000 hectares in total, and an additional 4000 hectares spread out over 242 parks, the country of 4.5 million people hosts a density topping 18,652 people per square mile, a $130 billion GNP and a nearly $25,000 per capita income. Yet, it remains one of the great green capitals in the world.

Bukit Timah harbors more tree species than all of North America, and a previously recorded 840 flowering plants, 100 species of ferns, more than 100 bird species, over 240 vertebrates and a plethora of invertebrates. Eleven kilometers from the heart of the city, Bukit Timah, as documented in DSF’s Sanctuary book project, has few equivalents anywhere in the world.

For more information:

> Bukit Timah National Park

Bialowieza National Park in eastern Poland, is the last remaining true primordial forest in all of Europe. It represents what Europe looked like prior to the last Ice Age ten thousand years ago when the European Bison, or Wisent, first described by Aristotle, was numerous. Today that species — distinct from the Canadian Wood and American Prairie bison — is still under threat. Approximately 3,500 remain in the world, half of them living in the wild. A large proportion live in Bialowieza and on the Belarusian side of the contiguous forest. What makes Bialowieza particularly crucial for future conservation strategies in Europe and globally, is the fact that the forest is not swept clean of its deadwood. The deadwood is the key to invertebrate abundance, and a rich suite of taxa, including numerous species of woodpecker.

With our friend and colleague Tomasz Wesolowski, Chairman of Avian Ecology at Wroclaw University, and one of the foremost experts in Europe on cavity-nesters like the woodpeckers, we explored in depth and recorded for DSF’s Sanctuary the forest, in hopes of helping to draw attention to the ongoing plight of Bialowieza. Despite her celebrity — it was the first national park out of 23 in Poland and was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979 — the forest margins continue to lose trees to foresters. With botanic wealth unequalled anywhere in Europe (hosting as many as 1,050 flowering plants and13,000 known animal and insect species) and an old-growth paradigm in place that scarcely exists elsewhere on the Continent, Bialowieza is a critical indicator of the future health of all ecosystems in Europe. Satellite imagery confirms the alarming pattern of patchy and degraded forest across this part of Eastern Europe. Few sanctuaries remain. In Poland itself, the total amount of fully protected area in the whole country is no more than 1%.

For more information:

> Bialowieza National Park, Poland
(Here is the English Translation)

The Peruvian section of the DSF film “Hotspots” was motivated by the recognition that the Tropical Andes represent, in Dr. Mittermeier’s words, “the global epicenter of biodiversity because it has far more species than any other hotspot on the planet: 1,728 species of birds of which nearly 600 are endemic . . . 1,155 amphibian species thus far recorded…Reptile diversity, more than 600 species, mammal diversity nearly 600 species. So you’re getting an enormous concentration of animal life in the tropical Andes and plants are just off the charts. You’re looking at 30 to 35 thousand plant species in this hotspot, which is about one and a half million square kilometers . . . more than 10% of all the world’s plants and about 15,000 of those are endemic and found nowhere else. This area is just an endless array of valley and mountains and each valley is a barrier to distribution. So you’re getting an enormous turnover of different life forms as you go north or as you go south . . . a fabulous region, unlike almost anyplace else on our planet.”

Near the Tambopata Research Center, a globally important field station for parrot research, four individuals of the recently discovered new species of titi monkey of the genus Callicebus showed themselves and were filmed by DSF for “Hotspots”. This was probably a first for the Peruvian side of the border though many months before, they were observed on the Bolivian side. The DSF “Hotspots” crew was also able to capture for the first time ever on film, just after midnight, the rarely seen Southern Amazon Bamboo Rat, Dactylomys dactylinus.

At the famed clay licks, DSF “Hotspots” film crews documented the daily parrot ritual, much debated as to its function in avian physiology. Thousands of parrots of diverse species feed on the clay which contains high levels of sodium that might be crucial to neutralizing the toxins in the birds’ normal diets. Other species, peccaries and monkeys, for example, also were filmed feeding on the claylick which may argue for a broader theory of the importance of sodium and the various dietary methods of combating its absence amongst many terrestrial vertebrates.

One of our critically important goals for filming this portion of Peru for DSF’s “Hotspots” is to convey the iconic fragility of, and threats to, parrots worldwide. They are the victims of poaching, the pet trade and serious habitat loss. Poachers know where the clay licks are, and what time of day the birds are likely to assemble. Protecting these particular areas takes on the same level of global importance as protecting water holes where animals congregate anywhere in the world. Most importantly for all of the Psittaciforme genera and species is good habitat and that means large areas like Tambopata, and solid buffer zones within a conservation master plan.

For more information:

> Conservation International, Peru

> Rainforest Expeditions in Peru

> InkaNatura Travel: Conservation through tourism

Antananarivo is the capital of Madagascar, a nation of 17.3 million people that is emblematic of all the 35 biological hotspots on the planet, where some 300 million people live within 10 kilometers of the protected areas found there. Many of those people are poor and their livelihood — poverty alleviation — is critical if conservation initiatives are to succeed. If conservation initiatives are to succeed, poverty alleviation is crucial. Over 300 million people live within ten kilometers of the world’s hotspots and many of those people are poor. They are also the same pool of local knowledge and human resources from which park and eco-tourist guides, and the next generations of ecologists will likely be recruited.

In filming “Hotspots”, DSF and our film’s host, Dr. Russell A. Mittermeier, President of Conservation International, explored several key sites within this country, 400 kilometers off the East coast of Africa, exploring critical issues and Endangered species.

Because the country has been separated from the African mainland for some 160 million years, her isolation has prompted a unique evolutionary force that has unleashed countless endemic species found nowhere else on earth. These include the remarkable Lemurs. At Andasibe, DSF filmed the giant Indri, the Mountain Gorilla equivalent for Madagascar. Tragically, in some parts of the country, people are still hunting this magical creature for food.

And at the remote Sahamalaza Scientific Research Camp in northwestern Madagascar, DSF filmed the work of six Swiss and German scientists studying other endangered Madagascar primates, including a new species of Pygmy Lemur, and Sclater’s Blue-Eyed Black lemur, one of approximately sixty of the most critically endangered primates in the world. DSF was the first to ever film this species on the verge of extinction. Fewer than a thousand individuals are confined to forest fragments threatened on all sides by man-made fires. Dr. Mittermeier told us, “Its future depends in part on the willingness of the government to set aside a protected area, but perhaps more than anything else, on the dedication of a handful of individual researchers, and their willingness to stay in a place like this over the long term, and also the relationship that they’re able to develop with local communities to make sure that local communities also have a buy-in and an interest in the future of the species.”

For more information:

> Conservation International, Madascar

> Fanamby: Maintaining Protected Areas

Mount Fuji will soon be without snow, though such climate-related perturbations are not new to this country of several recent extinctions, including the Pungitius sinensis, Minami-tomiyo, a freshwater fish last seen in a creek in Kyoto in the early 1950s. But, it is the moss species that DSF recently sought to document photographically and scientifically for Sanctuary. Moss in Japan holds iconic value for the Japanese the way a Giant Panda does for the Chinese. At the many moss temples throughout the Kyoto Greenbelt, such as Saiho-ji, Ryoan-ji, Ginkaku-ji, Manshuin, Kingkaku-ji and Sanjen-in, centuries of protection have created a striking challenge for future environmental policies in the country. While some Japanese continue to slaughter whales, and the nation as a whole consumes vast quantities of fish, the monks and garden practitioners sustain an aesthetic orientation to nature conservation that has few rivals anywhere on earth, a tradition dating back to the world’s first gardening manual, the Heian period Sakuteiki, by Tachibama Toshitsuna.

With the assistance of Conservation International Japan and two of Japan’s leading bryologists, Dr. Yoshitaka Ooishi, a young Ph.D. from the Laboratory of Landscape Architecture, Division of Forest and Biomaterials Science in Kyoto, and his teacher /mentor, the famed Dr. Hiroyuki Akiyama, a scientist with the Museum of Nature and Human Activities and the foremost expert on Japanese moss, DSF recently documented some of the dominant species of moss across Kyoto. Moss may well prove, like amphibians, to be indicator species sensitive to climate change. Ironically, in the hundreds of tranquil gardens throughout Japan, and particularly across Kyoto — whose very name signals the crisis of global warming and humanity’s struggle to curb greenhouse gas emissions — moss species lie at the very heart of an aesthetic revolution now at risk. Indeed, at Saiho-ji, the decline in resident moss species’ diversity appears to be occurring with quite unexpected rapidity.

Japan’s 28 national parks and many other designated areas of natural protection comprise nearly 17% of the country, or almost double that of the United States. As of 2007, there were known to be “32 Critically Endangered and Endangered species” throughout the country’s 370,000 square kilometers. Japan is one of the newest designated “hotspots.” Will the nation’s 127.5 million residents find the tools to save what’s left? We hope the work by scientists like Dr. Hiroyuki Akiyama will help pave the way for a better understanding of the fragility of nature, as has been so magnificently portrayed in Japanese art, literature and in the spiritual gardens themselves.

For more information:

> Japan Environmental Education Forum
(Here is the English Version)

DSF’s commitment to Bhutanese environmental protection and indigenous culture stems from the recognition that the country has managed to create one of the greatest blueprints for successful conservation anywhere in the world, with a protected network encompassing over 28% of this important Buddhist nation in an eastern Himalayan hotspot. In the 1970s the Fourth King, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, established a constitutional precedent by which at least 60% of all primary forest canopy in the country would remain inviolate. To date, more than 70% of Bhutan’s native flora and fauna remains pristine.

The former director and founder of the country’s National Biodiversity Centre, located in the hills above the nation’s capital, Dr. Ugyen Tshewang, is a Dancing Star Foundation Research Fellow. He is the new Governor (Dzongkag) of the most eastern province, Trashi Yangste. Dr. Ugyen Tshewang’s outstanding contribution to preserving the biological heritage of Bhutan and the Eastern Himalayas sets an impressive example for conservation worldwide. A scientist, animal protection advocate and global ecologist, Dr. Ugyen Tshewang implemented a comprehensive gene bank for preserving the rare native species of the country, oversaw the national herbarium and sustains major work with respect to the country’s national parks, protected areas and biological corridors. Recently, Dr. Ugyen Tshewang was also charged with overseeing the nation’s Biodiversity Action Plan, under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

DSF’s President, Dr. Michael Tobias, was the single international consultant as part of the BAP 2009 Technical Group for Bhutan’s third five-year blueprint for conservation in the country as stipulated by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. The book, Biodiversity Action Plan 2009, was published under the auspices of the Ministry of Agriculture, Royal Government of Bhutan, in Thimphu during December, 2009, with funding by the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme).

Bhutan is the last chapter in DSF’s book, Sanctuary, in which the authors document the biodiversity and indigenous culture of Bhutan’s ninth and one of the most recently protected areas in the inaccessible far east of the country: the Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary. Her Majesty, Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck, Queen of the Fourth King (Druk Gyalpo) of Bhutan, and Founder of the Tarayana Foundation, kindly authored the Foreword to Sanctuary.

For more information:

> Tarayana Foundation, a non-profit working to uplift and enhance the lives of vulnerable individuals and communities in Bhutan

> New Botanic Garden for Bhutan

> Bhutan Profile

> Bhutan Section of the World Wildlife Fund organization

> Royal Society for the
Protection and Care of Animals

> Royal Society for
Protection of Nature

Bhutanese Hazelnut Project: Agro-­‐Ecological/Sustainability Initiative in the Eastern Himalayas
DSF has helped facilitate a major new project for Bhutan’s farmers through consultation assistance with key leaders throughout the government, particularly the Ministry of Agriculture, at the request of Mr. Daniel Spitzer, head of the Hazelnut Project and one of the world’s leading sustainability/business experts (as well as a Tibetologist), and his chief scientist, Dr. Andrew Watson, one of the foremost crop specialists in the world.

Learn about the project:
> Happiness and Hazelnuts: Daniel Spitzer digs into Bhutan’s soil to make a profit and sustain livelihoods

> FDI proposal to grow Hazelnuts in Bhutan