CAMBODIA: Rare birds to benefit from global conservation bid
Updated
The global bird conservation agency Birdlife International has begun what it's called the biggest ever scheme to save the world's most endangered bird species from extinction. Birdlife is in the process of setting up Species Guardians and Species Champions for each of these threatened birds. The guardians coordinate conservation efforts, and the champions raise the necessary funds. The species that'll be first to benefit from the program is a member of the bustard family from Cambodia - the Bengal Florican.
Presenter: Corinne Podger
Speakers: Jonathan Eames, Birdlife International's representative in Vietnam
EAMES: The Bengal florican is the most threatened of all the world's species of bustard, the Bengal florican is confined to the riverine grasslands of northeastern India and Nepal and additionally the population that we're currently working on is the population that occurs in the inundation zone around the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia. Previously the bird has been subject to quite a lot of hunting pressure but the major threat to its survival at the moment is the introduction of new intensive agricultural techniques in the inundation zone of the Great Lake. The Tonle Sap is an enormous flood plain lake, it's the world's biggest floodplain lake, and during the rainy season the lake increases in size three-fold, and during that time the local people plant a very special form of rice that has a straw that's about four metres long, and this rice grows as the water level rises in the lake and then they harvest it, and then when the water level drops they plant another short straw rice that grows very quickly, they call this session rice. And it's during this fallow period when the lake shrinks and it reveals a huge area that then becomes grassland for six months of the year, and this is the area that the floricans use and which local people use for their traditional agriculture for which now is being threatened by conversion to an intensive irrigated rice agriculture. It's this loss, this shift out of the traditional agricultural ecology into this modern new intensive agricultural ecology that is causing the destruction of the habitat.
PODGER: You have a new approach to saving critically endangered birds like the florican, and it involves something called Species Champions. How will that work?
EAMES: Well the full scheme is called the Species Champions and the Species Guardians, and the Champions are individuals, organisations, companies who take on a responsibility to fundraise for projects and programs that conserve the critical endangered species, and then it's the job of the Species Guardians to ensure that those projects are implemented and the recovery plans are successful.
PODGER: This is part of a broader program aimed at raising 90-million pounds over the next five years to save all 189 of the world's most endangered species. So how will that broader program come together?
EAMES: We've got our work cut out now to identify both the Guardians and the Champions, the process is now underway and we've got Guardians in place for the Bengal florican for example, Species Guardian for that is a colleague of mine from the forestry administration at the Ministry of Agricultural in Phnom Penh. He's the nominated Guardian of the birds there, in 2007 is the Species Champion who will raise funding for that work on the florican. So that's the approach that will be used for the other suite of globally critically endangered species.
PODGER: In Cambodia Jonathan is there support from the government and from local conservation groups in this initiative?
EAMES: Broadly yes, in this particular initiative to conserve the Bengal florican is a collaboration between two ministries; the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the Ministry of Environment, together with two NGO's - Birdlife International and the Wildlife Conservation Society, and together the four bodies we've promoted an idea called IFBAs, Integrated Farming and Biodiversity Areas, which are areas of grassland that we hope can be managed in the traditional way to help perpetuate traditional agricultural lifestyles but at the same time conserve the Bengal florican.
