Conservation Impact

CONSERVATION IMPACT

ENGAGING PEOPLE TO HELP SAVE SPECIES AND RESTORE HABITATS

BY DR. JAMES DANOFF-BURG, DIRECTOR OF CONSERVATION

As I've said many times, species are quickly declining and their habitats are rapidly worsening, but not because they have forgotten how to eat, breed, and thrive! Species are in decline because of our activities as humans, which include altering or clearing the habitats in which nature lives, introducing non-native species that change ecosystems, overhunting, pollution, climate change, and altering how our planet functions. Our impact is massive and global, and we are all contributing. And yet, we can all do better to engage people to help us save species and restore habitats.

The precipitous decline of species we are currently experiencing is over 1,000 times normal and is nearly equal to the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs and over 75% of all other species that were on Earth when that asteroid struck off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago. So, our impact now is akin to an asteroid 9 miles in diameter smashing into our planet—producing a nuclear-winter situation that lasted for potentially thousands of years!

People are the root cause of conservation problems. However, people can also be the solution. At The Living Desert, our conservation work has many facets. On grounds, we work to educate our guests about the challenges facing the world’s desert wildlife and wild places and inspire them to act.

The Conservation team does in-the-field work, as we seek to address the root causes of species decline and not just the symptoms. We work with communities around the world so that we can all live sustainably alongside nature and repair human-caused damages to habitats in Southern California.

Our more traditional conservation work strives to restore habitats across Southern California for the benefit of many endangered animal species using a wide array of approaches to repair these human-caused damages. By enriching and restoring habitats, it is more likely that all the native species will survive.

Assessing plant biodiversity in the Orocopia Mountains for the desert tortoise.

RESTORING ECOSYSTEMS

Many of these projects are focused on growing the plants that need to be outplanted into the habitats in need of restoration. For example, one project involves removing water-hungry invasive plants which collectively dry out the rare creeks in which the desert pupfish lives and by planting native plants. Secondly, we replant native species that have vanished due to off-road vehicle use and climate change for the benefit of the desert tortoise. A third approach is where we are assessing the viability of habitats in terms of having the forage plants and water sources that would enable us to bring back the Desert Ghost —the Sonoran pronghorn—which has been missing for over 80 years! The last of these project types is when we create naturalistic habitats in highly disturbed human-dominated urban areas, which involves planting native pollinator gardens and native street trees that benefit all the birds, lizards, mammals, and insects that rely upon them for resources.

One project involves removing water-hungry invasive plants that humans brought here which collectively dry out the rare creeks in which the desert pupfish lives.

MAKING A LASTING IMPACT

Our second approach is focused exclusively on sharing the many ways that we can all change our behavior to benefit nature and the huge impacts we can all have by doing so. Across Southern California, The Living Desert’s Time to Talk Trash campaign encourages people to properly dispose of and contain their organic waste for the benefit of the desert tortoise. Ravens eat our trash and thanks to it, their populations in some areas are over 1,800% more than what they were only a few decades ago. These ravens then eat everything living that they can: birds, lizards, and young desert tortoises. We launched our Gold Star Restaurant Program in the Hi-Desert cities on the north side of Joshua Tree to encourage people to support those restaurants that actively close their dumpsters and deny extra food to ravens. This program is helping to allow raven populations to return to lower, more natural levels, thereby reducing raven predation on desert tortoises and other wildlife.

We replant species that have vanished due to off-road vehicle use and climate change for the benefit of the desert tortoise.

You cannot improve what you cannot measure. By sharing our social science expertise, our international collaborators and partners have been taught how to evaluate the success of their community engagement projects. Many of our partners, including Grevy’s Zebra Trust in Kenya, Wild Nature Institute in Tanzania, Painted Dog Research Trust in Zimbabwe, and the Black Mambas Anti-Poaching Unit in South Africa, have all employed our social science evaluation skills to gauge the behavior change outcomes of their programs and initiatives.

Furthermore, The Living Desert’s Building Community Conservation Success (BCCS) social science training workshops have significantly changed the way conservation engagement happens. I am very proud of the success of these workshops; they are one that I consider to be one of my greatest professional accomplishments.

The BCCS workshops are for field conservationists who understand the need to work with communities in order to address the root causes of the issues facing wildlife. Most conservationists are biologists who are passionate about animals. Biologists expect to work with animals, however, in the field it is clear that people need to be the main focus of effective field conservation. The week-long workshops teach the conservationists the essential bases of how to learn from their communities as to how to best encourage pro-environmental behavioral change. Despite the challenges of COVID, The Living Desert’s Building Community Conservation Success program has trained 356 people from 29 countries!

Conservation is full of challenging problems, almost all of which are rooted in human behavior and require us to alter our actions to have less of an impact on the world. Saving species requires all of us to collaborate and we all have a role to play. We are fortunate to have been able to collaborate with so many incredible organizations from around the world to help engage people to save species and restore habitats!

We provide services to our international collaborators, such as the Black Mambas Anti-Poaching Unit, to share our social science skills to assess how successfully their community engagement projects have changed behavior.

Building Community Conservation Success social science training workshops are for field conservationists who work with communities to address the root causes of species decline.