Saving rainforests: The bats have it, can we wing it?

Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times Straits Times 3 May 08;

THE AMAZON JUNGLE (ECUADOR) - VAMPIRE bats are remarkably well-adapted to the rainforest. They come out at night and use heat sensors to find a goat, child or other mammal, which they feed upon only after determining from its breathing that it is asleep.

If the prey is an animal with fur, vampire bats use special teeth to shave the skin, with their incisors cutting the skin almost painlessly, while the saliva prevents clotting. They then lap up the blood.

So the question is: Can we humans adapt as effectively to the rainforest as vampire bats have?

It doesn't seem so. Instead of living in harmony with the rainforest - or only as parasitically as, say, a vampire bat - we're destroying the jungle in ways that contribute hugely to global warming.

Somewhere in the world, we humans cut down an area of jungle the size of a football field every second of every day, and deforestation now contributes as much to global warming as all the carbon emitted by the United States. By one calculation, four years of deforestation have the same carbon footprint as all flights in the history of aviation up until the year 2025.

That's the challenge that Mr Douglas McMeekin and Mr Juan Kunchikuy are trying to address. As I noted in my last column, they make an unusual pair: Mr McMeekin, 65, is an American businessman who came to Ecuador after going bankrupt at home in Kentucky, while Mr Kunchikuy, 30, is a naturalist and guide from an indigenous tribe who grew up in the rainforest with his blowgun and never wore shoes or knew electricity until he was 17.

They have joined forces to protect the rainforest by working with the locals, trying to create incentives for them to leave trees standing - while raising local living standards. 'Save the Rainforest' bumper stickers don't sustain local families, who earn an average of only US$300 (S$410) per year and see trees as a way to boost their incomes.

'People have to make a living,' Mr McMeekin said. 'But they can chop down 50 acres (20ha) of forest for a pasture, or they can earn the same income by chopping down five acres and planting cacao.'

So his organisation, Yachana Foundation, is distributing high-quality cacao seedlings to encourage farmers to manage small plots that leave most of the jungle intact. Yachana also operates a factory that buys the cacao and turns it into mail-order chocolate.

Yachana encourages family planning - to reduce population pressures that lead to deforestation - and runs a new private high school to train young people from throughout the Ecuadorian Amazon. The 120 students in the school get a superb education with English taught by American volunteers; the first graduation will be in July.

One aim is to build a core of indigenous leaders who can represent local views internationally and serve as agents of change within the region. Mr Kunchikuy - who speaks fluent English and serves on the board of Yachana Foundation - is a prototype. After all, there aren't many board members as comfortable with a microphone as with a blowgun (and who have scars on their noses from vampire bats).

The school focuses on practical skills, such as how to graft cacao or fruit-tree saplings, or how to operate fish ponds. The idea is to earn significant incomes without large clear-cuts.

Many students work part- time in the foundation's neighbouring eco-lodge, Yachana, which has 18 rooms catering to American tourists (and generates part of the cash to pay for the school).

As I walk through the jungle paths here, serenaded by the twittering of birds and monkeys above, or the splashing of turtles in the river, I marvel at this land. The Amazon is grand for putting us humans in our place - until you reach a clear-cut, and the spell breaks and you realise maybe we're not so puny after all.

One way to save the rainforests is to pay poor countries to preserve them. Research suggests that by paying these countries US$27.25 per tonne of carbon not emitted by destroying forests, the world could avoid US$85 in damage per tonne from the carbon.

But these can't just be deals with governments; too often we lose sight of the inhabitants of the forests. In a remote part of Central African Republic, I once found teams of Western volunteers dedicated to preserving gorillas - but there were no volunteers helping local Pygmies who were dying of malaria.

With Yachana, this partnership of a bankrupt American businessman and an Amazonian hunter, we have a model of how to help the forest by helping the people who live in it. Preserving the rainforest should be a priority, if we have a bat's brains.

NEW YORK TIMES