Among the most multitudinous of invertebrates, butterflies are also among the most gloriously symbolic of human aspiration. Ancient Greek poets, and modern science have been mesmerized by what butterflies say to our species.

Of the 175,000 or so butterfly species that have thus far been discovered worldwide, over 1,200 inhabit Malaysia, the majority in East Malaysia (Borneo). In Peninsular Malaysia, this exquisite diversity has found a home in the center of the country’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, at the Butterfly Park on Jalan Cenderawasih. Here more than 6,000 individual butterflies, among 120 species within a netted environment, reveal nearly 10% of all known regional species.

In a country that is rapidly losing precious habitat, this butterfly sanctuary profiled in Sanctuary: Global Oases of Innocence reminds us of our job in this generation. For if we fail to get it right in the coming few years and decades, there are no guarantees that any butterflies will survive.

For more information:

> Butterfly Park in Kuala Lumpur

Many years ago a remarkable woman, Marietta Van der Merhe, and her family, found themselves taking in orphaned wildlife from throughout Namibia. Today, their sprawling semi-arid sanctuary, Harnas (meaning “shield” in Zulu) is home to hundreds of otherwise doomed creatures. Namibia’s fewer than 2 million people and 800,000 square kilometers translate into a theoretically sparse human ecological footprint. But this impression is soon diminished with the realization that poachers’ snares and poisons are everywhere. Despite several famed national parks for elephants and lions, cheetahs and leopards, white and black rhino, buffalo, hippopotamus, giraffe and two species of zebra and primate, a dozen large antelope and seven smaller ones, over six hundred bird species, as well as the very rare African wild dog, Namibia is a war zone for wildlife. Given the privilege of profiling Marietta for Sanctuary: Global Oases of Innocence, she led us through her eco-tourist facility a few hundred kilometers from the capital of Namibia, out towards the beginning of the TransKalahari highway into Botswana.

Dozens of large cats (lions and cheetahs and leopards) and a dozen other species greet her the way family dogs would in more familiar surroundings. Elsa, Shabu, Macho, Dumah, Nekita: all were once clinging to life as orphans, their legs mangled, or their mothers slaughtered before their eyes: familiar stories throughout the world. A baby cheetah sits atop a large rescued turtle. The cats follow us as we go to meet Kevin, Mimi, Smittie and Violet — baboons Marietta and her staff have rescued. At one point eighty baboons lived with Marietta and her late husband, in their ranch house.

Later, we are mobbed by Stinky, Anna and Monsieur Robert, each a rescued native mongoose craving affection out on the grassy playing fields, where a young zebra wanders, as well as large ungulates. But it is the population of African wild dogs that is most remarkable here at Harnas. They represent the largest population of their kind in the world. Rescued from the horrible steel jaws of various devices left out by farmers for the purpose of killing these gorgeous, endangered animals, their coats are painted by nature with a fine Impressionist palette. Harnas is a true vision of paradise in the midst of hardship. The caregivers that work with Marietta Van der Merhe — family, locals and many having coming from Europe on three month internships — prove that the human heart is unlimited in its capacity.

For more information:

> Harnas Sanctuary: protecting an environment that includes all forms of life

Globally, there exist between six and eight distinct species of brown bear. The number varies because of the conspicuous variations in Alaskan populations. The approximately 50,000 remaining wild Brown Bears in Europe are distributed throughout ten wild populations, mostly in Russia, although 15,000 of them are in Eastern Europe, a few still roaming throughout the Alps in France and Italy, even into northwestern Greece. But the animals are at high risk, their numbers declining rapidly.

Fortunately, bears have many human friends in Europe and Russia. One such individual, Professor Pazhetnov, has raised 70 bear cubs and successfully released them into protected Russian sanctuaries that had few, if any remaining wild bears.

Moreover, since 1982, the Brown Bear has been legally protected in Appendix II of the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and natural Habitats, signed by 40 member states throughout the European Community. In Holland, where no known bears remain in the wild, Koen Cuyten, Project Coordinator and Head of Welfare for Alertis, part of the Dutch Fund for Bear and Nature Conservation, is working with colleagues in Georgia to change that situation. Alertis has managed to embrace compassion-in-action through the difficult conservation work involving captive management in a wild setting that adjoins some of the most densely populated human areas in Europe. Established in 1993, this Dutch Bear Sanctuary was able to mobilize Dutch support to rescue three bears from a bankrupt zoo in Georgia. The animals were going to be euthanized for lack of civil funding to take care of them. In April 2007, the bears arrived in Holland and were released into their new safe haven, along with several other previously rescued Brown Bears. At Alertis, for the first time in their lives, says Koen, “they could stand on grass, swim in a large pond, play with other bears, climb trees, and go into hibernation like other bears do.”

DSF was honored to be able to come photograph the bears at Alertis and to feature Alertis’ remarkable efforts in the book Sanctuary at a time when the Dutch are struggling to enact the expansion of natural habitat in their small country (from approximately 1.66 million acres in 2007 to 1.8 million acres by 2018.) If achieved, that would put nearly 20% of the country back into a natural or semi-natural condition and hopefully relieve the ecological pressures that have to date resulted in 29% of all known in situ biodiversity being threatened with extinction across the Netherlands.

Holland is also one of the countries profiled in “No Vacancy” in which sociologists, demographers and health experts describe how the Netherlands has championed women’s rights, being one of the co-initiators in the late 1960s of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and remaining one of its strongest supporters.

For more information:

> Alertis: Fund for Bear and Nature Conservation

Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, has been politically Chilean since the late 19th century. Its ancient legacy of ecological disarray offers a message to humanity that transcends political boundaries. DSF went to Rapa Nui to chronicle that story for “Hotspots”. There DSF filmed the last few remaining endemic species (a tree and a skink) and paid homage to the environmental restoration efforts underway by both students on the island and by the Chilean Forest Service.

Easter Island resonates as a symbol of the human species gone awry and bears searing relevancy for the 21st century. Nearly one hundred percent of what once existed on Rapa Nui is gone — including parrot species, at least twenty-one species of native trees, huge seabird diversity and abundance. Today the last remaining indigenous tree is restricted to just a few individuals — Sophora toromiro.

What was once paradise for the first Polynesian immigrants arriving by open canoe after weeks and weeks crossing wild seas, is today a bleak yet oddly beautiful place. One of the great cultural sites on Earth, hosting the huge stone Moais — statuary relics of a civilization that nearly vanished, on this largely denuded, depauparate island — Rapa Nui is also home to a contemporary renaissance, wherein the more than 3000 locals are attempting something of a poignant ecological redemption. Local traditions, language, music and custom, are thriving; and students are engaged, as is the forest service, in wide-scale ecological restoration, with at least sixteen native plant species being reintroduced.

Rather than viewing Rapa Nui as a failure, in the film “Hotspots” DSF views it as both a cautionary tale and an opportunity to learn, from the past and move forward armed with news tools, new wisdom, new paradigms for the future of safeguarding life on earth.

In one of the world’s oldest known literary adventures, the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh, circa 2000 B.C., the royal protagonist Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, searches for the God Ut-Napishtim said to know the secret of immortality. The quest takes Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu (a wild man reared among gazelles) to Dilmun, reputedly the original paradise (a rival claim with Yemen’s Socotra) and the subsequent Cradle of Civilization. Dilmun was located in what is today’s Kingdom of Bahrain, an archipelago comprising 33 islands and just over 710 square kilometers off the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia in the Gulf of Salwa. Its capital is Manama. The country is populated by fewer than 750,000 residents.

This small country hosts over 300 bird species, 18 mammals, 250 plant species numerous reptiles, a rich, though largely undocumented invertebrate world and tremendous marine biodiversity. In the last decade, conservation biology has taken hold of the country’s consciousness, in good part due to His Majesty Sheik Hama bin Isa Al Khalifa, King of Bahrain. At the invitation of the Vice President and General Director of the Public Commission for the Protection of Marine Resources, Environment and Wildlife, Dr. Ismaeil M Al Madani, and his staff, DSF was able to document for Sanctuary one of three protected areas in the country, Al-Areen, a region of native habitat set aside for protection in 1975. Today, it is home to numerous species threatened in the Gulf, including Reem Gazelle, Nubian Ibex, Sable Antelope, Beisa Oryx, the incredibly rare Scimitar-Horned Oryx, Wild Goat, Barbary Sheep, Asiatic Onager, Defassa Waterbuck, Addax and Lesser Kudu.

For more information:

> Alreem Environment, Environmental Issues, Biodiversity, and more