Environment and Resources Ph.D. candidates collaborate with international partners
November 23, 2011
Protecting the elusive Andean bear
While one of South America's most elusive animals makes its way through dense and rugged mountain forests, Nelson Institute researchers snap away, capturing images of the Andean bear. At least their hidden cameras do, set to automatically take pictures when motion sensors pick up activity.
The cameras are mounted on trees by researchers from the institute's Carnivore Coexistence Lab in partnership with an Ecuadorian conservation group, Fundacion Cordillera Tropical (FCT). The goal is to gather valuable information about the secretive Andean bears while decreasing human impact on the species, according to graduate student Becky Zug.
Adrian Treves, a Nelson Institute associate professor and founder of the Carnivore Coexistence Lab, established a relationship with Fundacion Cordillera Tropical in 2007. Zug joined the project later that year to begin her master's work under the guidance of Treves.
In December 2010, the research collaboration in
Ecuador was recognized as the Rainforest Alliance
Eco-Initiative of the Month. Photo credit FCT.
"Andean bears may be indicators of the health of the forest," Zug explains. "Because the bears use a variety of habitats, if you can conserve the bears, you can conserve other species of animals and plants."
Throughout the first year of the project, local parabiologists trained by Zug were able to identify five Andean bears (distinguished by unique facial patterning) in an area spanning eight square kilometers.
"From this we learned ID methods and began building relationships with landowners, involving them by giving them photos and talking to them about the species living on their properties," Zug says.
Zug conducts her research within Sangay National Park, one of Ecuador's largest protected areas. In 1992, the park borders were extended across private land without any input from landowners. The research and related conservation efforts aren't without conflict, Zug says. Landowners fear livestock loss and crop damage, or that they'll have their land taken away.
"One of the big problems with Andean bears is that they can attack and kill livestock," she explains. "If you have five or ten cows and you lose one, you could be losing a good portion of your income and stability."
To minimize retaliation and conflict, Treves has, in partnership with FCT, led workshops on conflict mitigation. Landowners are given a suite of non-lethal options for handling Andean bears such as instituting a horseback patrol or guard dogs and good land management practices. Landowners then choose which option best suits them.
This approach has helped to increase trust with landowners and demonstrate the benefit of protecting a species so important to Ecuadorian culture and history.
"We're seeing increasingly educated landowners and communities who are learning about the value of bears," Zug explains. This is a crucial shift in perception since habitat loss and isolation are the biggest threats to the Andean bear, along with retaliatory killing and lack of knowledge about the species.
Changing hearts and minds about tiger conservation
Advocating for tigers from afar is easy, but it's another matter for people who live near the predators, where loss of livestock and danger to family members are all too real. Stir in the temptation of a lucrative black market and you have a recipe for an enormous conservation challenge - one that graduate student Anya Lim has taken head-on.
Lim taught primary school students living near Amur
tigers in China's Hunchun National Nature Reserve.
Lim - who, like Zug, is a member of Treves' Carnivore Coexistence Lab - is preparing for extended research at the Nam-Et Phou Louey National Protected Area in Laos, where people live in close proximity to Indochinese tigers.
The human-tiger conflict is deeply rooted in history and affects those living in the developing world. Laos, one of the poorest countries in Asia, provides a typical example.
"Local people depend on their livestock and tigers attack livestock. The human-tiger conflict began when local people retaliated against tigers," Lim says. Tigers are also highly valued in the black market for traditional medicines.
"In order to solve this issue, you need to look at several dimensions, including culture, history, the economy and social aspects, as well as tiger behavior." Working in partnership with the Wildlife Conservation Society, Lim plans to study the distribution of the Indochinese tiger population in relation to residents, then come up with ways to ease tension between people and the endangered predators.
Lim previously spent two and a half years at the Hunchun National Nature Reserve in northern China, researching ways to protect endangered Amur, or Siberian, tigers.
"When I first got there, I was kicked out of the village, they were so angry," Lim explains. "People in rural villages seldom see foreigners. Building trust takes time."
Lim asked her students to draw humans and
tigers together; this picture of a girl protecting
a tiger was one of Lim's favorites.
Lim approached the issue with respect for local customs and visited the village once a week. "By trying my best to understand how they lived, I was able to hear their true voice," she says.
While in northern China, Lim organized activities to improve relations between people and tigers and help residents feel proud to live amongst the animals, including a tiger festival and village movie nights with presentations on wildlife compensation law and what to do when encountering a tiger.
Lim determined that alternative sources of income are critical for locals. Compensation funds for the loss of livestock due to tigers are difficult to come by and, while many locals once derived income from capturing wild boars, the snares used to capture boars are highly dangerous to tigers.
As a "tiger-friendly" source of income, Lim introduced beekeeping in the community, with the skills and materials provided as long as locals promised to keep the forest free of snares. In the seven years since the program was launched, Lim says, more than 10,000 snares have been removed.
Seeking environmental clues to deadly virus outbreaks
For people in rural Bangladesh, poverty, minimal healthcare and a lack of infrastructure pose enormous challenges to their basic quality of life. Now a new problem has emerged that has proven deadly and daunting. Nipah virus (NiV), which causes encephalitis, respiratory disease and other severe illnesses, has been spreading across South Asia and has been fatal in three-quarters of 152 reported cases in Bangladesh.
Graduate student Micah Hahn is searching for environmental conditions that factor into NiV outbreaks. Understanding the relationship between land use patterns, other environmental factors and the spread of the disease may enhance our knowledge of its ecology and risk factors, and lead to preventative measures she says.
The International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh (ICDDR-B) has taken a leading role in Nipah virus research. Working in part with the ICDDR-B, Hahn has collaborated with leading professionals in the world of epidemiology.
Hahn's work searching for environmental conditions
that factor into Nipah virus outbreaks is but one part
of a broad effort to understand and control the disease.
"I'm working with the infectious disease branch," she explains. "The project leader is an epidemiologist; there are anthropologists, veterinarians and wildlife specialists. My part covers the ecology aspect."
Specifically, Hahn is looking at the habitat of fruit bats, which have been identified as the natural host of Nipah virus. Commonly known as Indian flying foxes, the fruit bats are highly attracted to the sweet sap of date palm trees.
During the winter months, villagers tap the date trees and collect the sap in small clay jugs for their own consumption. Hahn and other researchers believe Nipah virus is spread from fruit bats to humans when bats contaminate the sap by salivating and excreting in the containers.
Because the virus is occurring in very specific locations, Hahn and colleagues plan to compare villages that have experienced outbreaks with others that have not. "People are collecting sap all over Bangladesh, yet only certain villages are affected by the disease," she says.
Hahn's study will include visits to fruit bat roosting sites in case villages and control villages to gather, map and compare detailed data on trees in the area. Hahn also plans to look at larger patterns of landscape and disease occurrence using remote sensing imagery.
This type of village-level study - compared to individual-level studies focused on why one person got sick and another didn't - is fairly novel in epidemiology, according to Hahn, who works on the project under her advisor Jonathan Patz, a professor in the Nelson Institute and director of the new campus-wide Global Health Institute. Hahn hopes to return to Bangladesh in January.
Jenny Peek is a UW-Madison senior majoring in journalism and environmental studies.