right hello everybody I’d like to give
this talk in memory of dr. Tony Witten
who was very sadly killed this last week
in a bicycle accident and he was one of
the best thinkers in wildlife
conservation in his work in the World
Bank and then places like fallen for no
international because he developed ideas
are developing small businesses in
communities to help them protect their
wildlife he looked at incorporating
ideas into belief systems and most
importantly he talked about getting
young people involved in wildlife
conservation and that’s what this talk
is about and if he was here today he
would tell you that we’re living through
the largest extinction event in the
Earth’s history this is the sixth
extinction and probably the biggest of
all of them and this time caused by a
single species mankind and young people
intrinsically get this more so often
than their parents generation and they
want to help and that’s what this
project is a is about I’m going to be
talking about an organization called
Operation Wallacea which is named after
Alfred Russel Wallace a contemporary of
Darwin and the co originator of the
theory of evolution by natural selection
but also the father of biogeography
because he spent his life traveling
around the world to remote locations
like the Amazon and the the Far East and
looking at the distribution of species
and there’s an area of the world that’s
called the Wallacea region that’s named
after him and that’s where this
organization started work and what they
do is they fund academics and we fund
200 academics and 75 PhD students and
that funding comes from tuition fees
that are paid by students 3,000 of them
every year who then go into these remote
locations in the world and help those
scientists now is it real science that’s
the first question well that’s an easy
one to answer because if it’s not being
published it’s not science and we’re
only working from the beginning of June
to the beginning of August every year
and so far we’ve published actually 330
papers now not than the four in
peer-reviewed journals including some
high-impact
like nature so it’s working from a
science our viewpoint of what it does
this method of funding allows you to
develop long term data sets because if
you apply for a grant you’ll get a grant
for three years that’s it at the end of
that you have to stop
whereas for ecology you don’t need three
years worth of data you need five 10 15
20 years worth and that’s what this
method of funding allows you to do now
there’s no point just doing research to
publish papers and plot the loss of
biodiversity so the whole idea behind
this is to structure the data so it’s in
a form that can be then used for
conservation intervention if necessary
and if it is necessary then the
scientists carry on monitoring to see if
that interventions actually working or
not so it’s based on real science so the
question is can students really help in
this sort of work well there are some
ways they can help so things like
citizen science which is where you train
people in a technique and then you go
off in the forest with supervision for
example and then they collect data and
those data are then directly used in
publications or management plans well
there’s a limited range of things you
can get students to do that the first
time in the tropics but there’s some of
them fortunately are some of the most
important bits that we have to do so for
example in a tropical rain for it’s one
of the most important bits of
information you need to know is how much
carbon is in there because about 20
percent of the world’s greenhouse gas
emissions are coming from deforestation
in developing countries and so wealthy
nations are then funding forestry
departments in developing countries to
get them to stop deforesting and the
amount of carbon they save is then
counted towards their national carbon
budgets and this is a huge business so
for example the Norwegians have given
the Indonesians 1 billion dollars in
order to be used for carbon credits so
when you go into a forest one of the
birth first bits of information you need
to know is what carbon is in there and
for that you need satellite data to look
at the distribution of forest and forest
types and then you need lots of students
to go in the forest and measure trees in
standard plots and you need two
measurements that’s all you need to know
the diameter at breast height of the
tree which means putting a tape measure
around it and you need to estimate the
height of the trees using a clinometer
now we know students can do that
accurately because we’ve tested it and
compared it with professional foresters
and the results are non significantly
different
let’s move to Africa you’re now in the
middle of a reserve that’s fenced three
metre fences animals inside people
outside that’s been a very successful
strategy in South Africa so much so that
in many cases the number of animals in
those reserves has grown to such an
extent they’re now right up against the
carrying capacity so when you go there
the first thing the manager is going to
ask you is can you tell me what the
carrying capacity of this reserve is and
for that you need to know two bits of
information firstly what’s in there now
and for that you need students and lots
of vehicles and you drive around the
reserve and every time you see a mammal
you stop and then you take the
perpendicular distance from the trail to
the animal what species it is male
female condition and then carry on and
what you’re actually doing is this
process called distance sampling so if
you’re working on elephants let’s say
you have an elephant standing on your
trail you would have to be grossly
incompetent not to see it you’ve got a
hundred percent chance but as that
animal moves away that that probability
of observation will decline and the
shape of that curve depends on the
habitat because you can see elephants a
lot more easily in Savannah than forest
and partly on the type of species it is
a great I cut is much more hard to see
for example so you do that those curves
for every species and every habitat and
it’s all done automatically by computer
and you can then calculate exactly
what’s in there now we know what the how
much food they need because that’s
published for every species and if we’re
in there in the middle of winter let’s
say we’ve got two months to go before it
starts growing again so we can calculate
exactly how much herbage is needed so
then all you need to know is what’s left
in the reserve and for that you need a
line of students walking through the
reserve picking every leaf off up to two
metres in height and then looking at the
calorific value and total weight
obviously you have to have armed guards
and training and so forth in order to do
that but it provides a very accurate way
of working out exactly what the carrying
capacity is but there are lots of things
students can’t do you can’t send them
into a hundreth cloud forest and ask
them to count birds because there’s so
many species they couldn’t possibly do
it and so for that you have a leader an
expert who’s actually taking the data
but what the students are doing it is
they’re helping to speed that up so if
you do a point count what you actually
do is you’re going to record every
species you hear or see over the next
ten minutes so someone’s describing
someone’s time writing down the times of
each species someone’s using range
finders to estimate the distances and
someone’s looking all around the 360
degrees so they’re helping they can
speed that whole process up and that’s
the case in many types of surveys but
don’t get carried away we’re thinking
that scientists are themselves
infallible because they aren’t and this
is a good example there’s a technique
where you’re looking for reptiles and
amphibians in authority walk through the
forest and you search either side of a
transect and so we tested the efficiency
of this by hiding plastic frogs and
plastic snakes in a forest and we then
sent through students and then academics
and then local guides to check how
efficient they were and the most
efficient by a long way were the local
guides because they’re much more used to
seeing different shades of green in a
forest so wherever possible we try to
use new technology so that we can have
independent verification of the datasets
well let’s assume you want to count fish
on a reef so you want to know how many
fish on a particular reef you’re going
to use a technique called an underwater
visual sensors survey so you’re going to
dive down with your tape measure are you
going to put it along say the 10 meter
contour and you’re going to stop for
five minutes because you’ve scared the
fish away and now we’re going to swim
back a metre and a half above the tape
and you’re going to count everything
below you and a meat and a half either
side in a cube going forward so I’ll
play a little bit of video I hope I’d
like you to do it please I’d like you to
count every fish that you see I need a
name for every fish don’t miss any they
have to come in that box and you have to
get the length of every species and
that’s just a short bit of film from
Mozambique some of the reefs are much
more complex than that
using stereo video swimming along he’s
recording the fish and all the analysis
is then done back in the lab the
students put the names of the fish below
the the pictures and if they get it
wrong we know because we have an image
and the software calculates the distance
from the cameras to the fish so if it
doesn’t come in your magic box you don’t
count it if it does click on the front
and back on one screen and do the same
on its mirror image and it gives you the
lengths to plus or minus 5% now that’s
important because the best you can do
underwater is plus or minus 50% and what
you do is you take each of the lengths
and cube them in order to get the weight
of fish so this is a much more accurate
technique another one on the reefs is a
standard measure is how much coral core
is on a reef so you dive down now with
your tape measure again and this time
you’re going to swim back along the tape
and every time it changes from a hard
coral to a soft call to a sponge etc
then you’re going to note down the
distance and you’ll do that 20 30 times
in your come back to me and say ok the
answer is 30%
plus or minus 10% but next year it’s
declined to 25% and you can’t detect it
because your sampling is not powerful
enough so what this technique does is
you swim backwards and forwards with a
GoPro and it produces a 3d image on your
computer this is some dive gear we put
on some sandy bottom and then measure
the accuracy in all three dimensions and
it’s fantastically accurate so that
means you can take the reef out of the
water and put it on your computer and
then instead of estimating coral cover
you can directly measure it now if
you’re in the tropical rainforest if
you’ve got the Guyanese forests for
example you’ve got a thousand bird
species there you have to know the calls
of every bird species and the contact
calls and the flight calls until you
need a very high level of expertise so
better way is to put out microphones in
the forest and record the calls and once
you’ve done that we can then look the
screaming see how very common bird in
the Neotropics you can then or you can
train the software to identify the key
species so what are we doing all of this
for well firstly to find new species to
science and we found many dozens of new
species to science including that new
tarsier species which was found in one
of the Indonesian forests and
I’m eight undiscovered primate and this
last summer we photographed this
swallowtail butterfly and in a remote
province in northern Fiji and none of
the experts can identify it it appears
to be a species new to science and if it
is it’s the first new species of
Swallowtail in the last 50 years
that’s the Linnaean shortfall a lack of
information on species but we also need
information on where existing species
are around the world and there’s a lot
of lack of information that as well this
is called a Wallace E and shortfall and
it’s important because when you classify
the conservation value of species you do
that based through a large extent on
their ranges and in many cases that’s
based on the guesswork now in some cases
we can go in and find species and a much
wider range than they thought to be in
other cases we find them in much less
range than they used to be so the
question was can students really help in
science in the field like this and I
think the answer that is yes there are
some things they can directly measure
and we use those data there are many
things they can help scientists with
speed up that whole process and of
course they can also get involved in the
new technology stuff but sending
students out there doesn’t just get data
it changes people if you put someone in
a hammock in the middle of the Guyanese
rain forest surrounded by Jaguars and
Pumas for two months or get them diving
on a remote reef they come back change
people and they come back infused for
protecting wildlife and their wildlife
ambassadors and that’s to a large extent
what we’re trying to create the next
generation of wildlife ambassadors thank
you
[Applause] [Music]
this talk in memory of dr. Tony Witten
who was very sadly killed this last week
in a bicycle accident and he was one of
the best thinkers in wildlife
conservation in his work in the World
Bank and then places like fallen for no
international because he developed ideas
are developing small businesses in
communities to help them protect their
wildlife he looked at incorporating
ideas into belief systems and most
importantly he talked about getting
young people involved in wildlife
conservation and that’s what this talk
is about and if he was here today he
would tell you that we’re living through
the largest extinction event in the
Earth’s history this is the sixth
extinction and probably the biggest of
all of them and this time caused by a
single species mankind and young people
intrinsically get this more so often
than their parents generation and they
want to help and that’s what this
project is a is about I’m going to be
talking about an organization called
Operation Wallacea which is named after
Alfred Russel Wallace a contemporary of
Darwin and the co originator of the
theory of evolution by natural selection
but also the father of biogeography
because he spent his life traveling
around the world to remote locations
like the Amazon and the the Far East and
looking at the distribution of species
and there’s an area of the world that’s
called the Wallacea region that’s named
after him and that’s where this
organization started work and what they
do is they fund academics and we fund
200 academics and 75 PhD students and
that funding comes from tuition fees
that are paid by students 3,000 of them
every year who then go into these remote
locations in the world and help those
scientists now is it real science that’s
the first question well that’s an easy
one to answer because if it’s not being
published it’s not science and we’re
only working from the beginning of June
to the beginning of August every year
and so far we’ve published actually 330
papers now not than the four in
peer-reviewed journals including some
high-impact
like nature so it’s working from a
science our viewpoint of what it does
this method of funding allows you to
develop long term data sets because if
you apply for a grant you’ll get a grant
for three years that’s it at the end of
that you have to stop
whereas for ecology you don’t need three
years worth of data you need five 10 15
20 years worth and that’s what this
method of funding allows you to do now
there’s no point just doing research to
publish papers and plot the loss of
biodiversity so the whole idea behind
this is to structure the data so it’s in
a form that can be then used for
conservation intervention if necessary
and if it is necessary then the
scientists carry on monitoring to see if
that interventions actually working or
not so it’s based on real science so the
question is can students really help in
this sort of work well there are some
ways they can help so things like
citizen science which is where you train
people in a technique and then you go
off in the forest with supervision for
example and then they collect data and
those data are then directly used in
publications or management plans well
there’s a limited range of things you
can get students to do that the first
time in the tropics but there’s some of
them fortunately are some of the most
important bits that we have to do so for
example in a tropical rain for it’s one
of the most important bits of
information you need to know is how much
carbon is in there because about 20
percent of the world’s greenhouse gas
emissions are coming from deforestation
in developing countries and so wealthy
nations are then funding forestry
departments in developing countries to
get them to stop deforesting and the
amount of carbon they save is then
counted towards their national carbon
budgets and this is a huge business so
for example the Norwegians have given
the Indonesians 1 billion dollars in
order to be used for carbon credits so
when you go into a forest one of the
birth first bits of information you need
to know is what carbon is in there and
for that you need satellite data to look
at the distribution of forest and forest
types and then you need lots of students
to go in the forest and measure trees in
standard plots and you need two
measurements that’s all you need to know
the diameter at breast height of the
tree which means putting a tape measure
around it and you need to estimate the
height of the trees using a clinometer
now we know students can do that
accurately because we’ve tested it and
compared it with professional foresters
and the results are non significantly
different
let’s move to Africa you’re now in the
middle of a reserve that’s fenced three
metre fences animals inside people
outside that’s been a very successful
strategy in South Africa so much so that
in many cases the number of animals in
those reserves has grown to such an
extent they’re now right up against the
carrying capacity so when you go there
the first thing the manager is going to
ask you is can you tell me what the
carrying capacity of this reserve is and
for that you need to know two bits of
information firstly what’s in there now
and for that you need students and lots
of vehicles and you drive around the
reserve and every time you see a mammal
you stop and then you take the
perpendicular distance from the trail to
the animal what species it is male
female condition and then carry on and
what you’re actually doing is this
process called distance sampling so if
you’re working on elephants let’s say
you have an elephant standing on your
trail you would have to be grossly
incompetent not to see it you’ve got a
hundred percent chance but as that
animal moves away that that probability
of observation will decline and the
shape of that curve depends on the
habitat because you can see elephants a
lot more easily in Savannah than forest
and partly on the type of species it is
a great I cut is much more hard to see
for example so you do that those curves
for every species and every habitat and
it’s all done automatically by computer
and you can then calculate exactly
what’s in there now we know what the how
much food they need because that’s
published for every species and if we’re
in there in the middle of winter let’s
say we’ve got two months to go before it
starts growing again so we can calculate
exactly how much herbage is needed so
then all you need to know is what’s left
in the reserve and for that you need a
line of students walking through the
reserve picking every leaf off up to two
metres in height and then looking at the
calorific value and total weight
obviously you have to have armed guards
and training and so forth in order to do
that but it provides a very accurate way
of working out exactly what the carrying
capacity is but there are lots of things
students can’t do you can’t send them
into a hundreth cloud forest and ask
them to count birds because there’s so
many species they couldn’t possibly do
it and so for that you have a leader an
expert who’s actually taking the data
but what the students are doing it is
they’re helping to speed that up so if
you do a point count what you actually
do is you’re going to record every
species you hear or see over the next
ten minutes so someone’s describing
someone’s time writing down the times of
each species someone’s using range
finders to estimate the distances and
someone’s looking all around the 360
degrees so they’re helping they can
speed that whole process up and that’s
the case in many types of surveys but
don’t get carried away we’re thinking
that scientists are themselves
infallible because they aren’t and this
is a good example there’s a technique
where you’re looking for reptiles and
amphibians in authority walk through the
forest and you search either side of a
transect and so we tested the efficiency
of this by hiding plastic frogs and
plastic snakes in a forest and we then
sent through students and then academics
and then local guides to check how
efficient they were and the most
efficient by a long way were the local
guides because they’re much more used to
seeing different shades of green in a
forest so wherever possible we try to
use new technology so that we can have
independent verification of the datasets
well let’s assume you want to count fish
on a reef so you want to know how many
fish on a particular reef you’re going
to use a technique called an underwater
visual sensors survey so you’re going to
dive down with your tape measure are you
going to put it along say the 10 meter
contour and you’re going to stop for
five minutes because you’ve scared the
fish away and now we’re going to swim
back a metre and a half above the tape
and you’re going to count everything
below you and a meat and a half either
side in a cube going forward so I’ll
play a little bit of video I hope I’d
like you to do it please I’d like you to
count every fish that you see I need a
name for every fish don’t miss any they
have to come in that box and you have to
get the length of every species and
that’s just a short bit of film from
Mozambique some of the reefs are much
more complex than that
using stereo video swimming along he’s
recording the fish and all the analysis
is then done back in the lab the
students put the names of the fish below
the the pictures and if they get it
wrong we know because we have an image
and the software calculates the distance
from the cameras to the fish so if it
doesn’t come in your magic box you don’t
count it if it does click on the front
and back on one screen and do the same
on its mirror image and it gives you the
lengths to plus or minus 5% now that’s
important because the best you can do
underwater is plus or minus 50% and what
you do is you take each of the lengths
and cube them in order to get the weight
of fish so this is a much more accurate
technique another one on the reefs is a
standard measure is how much coral core
is on a reef so you dive down now with
your tape measure again and this time
you’re going to swim back along the tape
and every time it changes from a hard
coral to a soft call to a sponge etc
then you’re going to note down the
distance and you’ll do that 20 30 times
in your come back to me and say ok the
answer is 30%
plus or minus 10% but next year it’s
declined to 25% and you can’t detect it
because your sampling is not powerful
enough so what this technique does is
you swim backwards and forwards with a
GoPro and it produces a 3d image on your
computer this is some dive gear we put
on some sandy bottom and then measure
the accuracy in all three dimensions and
it’s fantastically accurate so that
means you can take the reef out of the
water and put it on your computer and
then instead of estimating coral cover
you can directly measure it now if
you’re in the tropical rainforest if
you’ve got the Guyanese forests for
example you’ve got a thousand bird
species there you have to know the calls
of every bird species and the contact
calls and the flight calls until you
need a very high level of expertise so
better way is to put out microphones in
the forest and record the calls and once
you’ve done that we can then look the
screaming see how very common bird in
the Neotropics you can then or you can
train the software to identify the key
species so what are we doing all of this
for well firstly to find new species to
science and we found many dozens of new
species to science including that new
tarsier species which was found in one
of the Indonesian forests and
I’m eight undiscovered primate and this
last summer we photographed this
swallowtail butterfly and in a remote
province in northern Fiji and none of
the experts can identify it it appears
to be a species new to science and if it
is it’s the first new species of
Swallowtail in the last 50 years
that’s the Linnaean shortfall a lack of
information on species but we also need
information on where existing species
are around the world and there’s a lot
of lack of information that as well this
is called a Wallace E and shortfall and
it’s important because when you classify
the conservation value of species you do
that based through a large extent on
their ranges and in many cases that’s
based on the guesswork now in some cases
we can go in and find species and a much
wider range than they thought to be in
other cases we find them in much less
range than they used to be so the
question was can students really help in
science in the field like this and I
think the answer that is yes there are
some things they can directly measure
and we use those data there are many
things they can help scientists with
speed up that whole process and of
course they can also get involved in the
new technology stuff but sending
students out there doesn’t just get data
it changes people if you put someone in
a hammock in the middle of the Guyanese
rain forest surrounded by Jaguars and
Pumas for two months or get them diving
on a remote reef they come back change
people and they come back infused for
protecting wildlife and their wildlife
ambassadors and that’s to a large extent
what we’re trying to create the next
generation of wildlife ambassadors thank
you
[Applause] [Music]
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