DSF’s work in Yemen has been especially rewarding. Yemen as a whole presents a sobering profile. Her 21 million people are destined to exceed 71 million by 2050 at current trends. 74% of the nation is rural, male life expectancy a mere 59, females 63, with a daily income average of US$2.27.

It is not surprising, then, that there is widespread trafficking in wildlife and rapid loss of habitat. At least twenty species are known to be Threatened and Endangered, and the Arabian leopard in Yemen all but lost.

But Yemen also harbors an international success story, a treasure, that is spectacular, namely, her “Galapagos of the Indian Ocean,” the island archipelago of Socotra where, for Sanctuary: Global Oases of Innocence, we documented rich cultural traditions and remarkable indigenous biodiversity.

Scientists are making new discoveries almost daily on Socotra, a remote mountainous island South of Oman, East of Somalia. In the last 120 years, expeditions to the island have unveiled a veritable ecological renaissance of Socotran zoology. The island is a living font of biodiversification, most notably, among its bottle-trees: Dorstenia gigas gypsophila, Dendrosicyos socotrana, Adenium socotranum and obesum and, the most famous of all, Dracaena cinnabari or Dragon’s Blood.

The island’s bird life is extensive, with 178 known species recorded here and at least seven endemics. This abundance of taxa coincides with one of the oldest known island sites of continuous human habitation in the world. Today, the population hovers somewhere around 44,000 people. Their linguistic deep lineage pre-dates the Arabic language by millennia, though Arabic is spoken in the Socotran capital of Hadibo.

With kind assistance from the local United Nations -supported Socotra Conservation and Development Programme, we were able to trek into several protected areas and document the Socotran mountain people and their traditional customs of sustaining rare resources and vegetation within numerous ecosystem types.

Once thought of as a kind of Garden of Eden, Socotra retains its unique character. Here are wild Socotran asses, camels, endemic dragonflies, sparrows, breeding Egyptian vultures, but most of all, the woody-based herbal eco-systems supporting wild floral kingdoms biologically unique. The Socotran mountain people have passed down a legacy — so rare in today’s world — of total devotion to sustainability. For thousands of years they have lived in this mindset.

For more information:

> Socotra Archipelago Conservation and Development Programme

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

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

The filming of “Hotspots” throughout New Zealand encompassed over one hundred interviews with key scientists and others working to save endangered species and habitat, on Stewart Island/Rakiura, Ulva Island and Codfish Island (Whenua Ho), in Fiordland National Park, with the Department of Conservation in Te Anau and Burwood Bush, at Pukaha Mount Bruce National Wildlife Sanctuary, at the Grand and Otago Skink site at Macraes Flat in Central Otago, at Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in the heart of Wellington, at the Westshore Wildlife Reserve in Napier, at the Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust reserve, in the city parks of Auckland, and at Tiritiri Matangi Open Scientific Reserve, as well as dozens of other reserves and extraordinary locations throughout the country.

Some of the remarkable species captured on film include: a Short-tailed Bat pup, Kakapo, Kokako, Blue duck, several Kiwi, various Tuatara, Skinks, Kaka, Kea, Kakariki, Fantails,
Keruru, Silver eyes, Stewart Island Black Robins, Little Blue Penguins, Yellow-Eyed Penguins, New Zealand Fur seals, Bottle Nosed Dolphins, Paradise Ducks, Hihi, Tomtit, Saddleback, Weka, Pukako, Brown Creeper, Grey Warbler, and many others.

DSF was grateful to have the strong collaboration of the Department of Conservation throughout this endeavor, and was pleased to be able to screen the very first showing of the film for the Southland Conservator and key staff of the Department of Conservation in Invercargill, and then for DOC staff on Stewart Island/Rakiura prior to a large public screening at the Waikato University Performing Arts Center, co-sponsored by the Botany Department of the University and the Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust.

(see Maungatautari ratesplace on global map, in the Waikato Times.)

One spin-off from the “Hotspots” filming throughout New Zealand to date is a special documentary short for the Department of Conservation and the Alexandra Museum Exhibition on the Grand and Otago Endangered Skinks.

For more information:

> Skinks return to Alexandra after 30 years

> Department of Conservation Museum and Art Gallery

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

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