[APPLAUSE]
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Liz.
Thank you, Jackie.
Thank you, Jim, for that
wonderful introduction.
And yes, deep down, I am
still a herpetologist.
[CHUCKLING]
And thank you all for
coming this afternoon.
This is such a
beautiful spring day.
When I woke up this morning and
looked around, I thought, "Oh,
my god.
It's going to be my family
members and my 5 or 10 closest
friends coming to this
presentation, and that's it."
So I'm really
grateful to all of you
for showing up for
this presentation.
Now, this is a
university, and I kind of
like to start my presentations
in a university setting
with a little bit of a quiz.
[NOISE OVERHEAD PLAYING]
So I'd like to see if
anybody in the audience
can identify this sound.
[NOISE OVERHEAD PLAYING]
Anyone?
My kids-- you can't
say anything, kids.
[NOISE OVERHEAD PLAYING]
It's interesting.
People say "whale" very often.
No takers?
[CROWD ANSWERING]
Say it again?
[CROWD ANSWERING]
No.
No.
Anyone else?
[CROWD ANSWERING]
You know, indri.
Aw, Richard.
Primatologist.
[INAUDIBLE]
Primatologists don't count.
[CHUCKLING]
Yes, it is an indri.
It's the sound of one
of my favorite animals
on the planet, the
indri, which is
the largest of the lemurs
of Madagascar-- one
of the most spectacular
creatures on the planet.
And it's interesting.
When I play this, people
often say "whale."
If you take this sound
and you slow it down,
it sounds exactly like the
sound of the humpback whale.
So it's a very
interesting creature.
It does not survive
in captivity.
If you want to see it, you
can only see it in Madagascar.
And it really is a
symbol of a country that
is symbolic of the
conservation issues
that we face on
this planet, and I'm
going to talk a lot
about during the course
of this presentation.
Now, it's also great
to be back here.
Oh, I can see.
This is going to
be a good audience.
[LAUGHING]
You like my emperor tamarin.
This is the emperor
tamarin from the Amazon
region of South America.
Appropriately named after
Emperor Franz Joseph
of Austria.
[LAUGHING]
And I was here from 1971 to
1978 doing my graduate degree
with Professor Irven DeVore
in the Peabody Museum
working on non-human
primates-- especially
those from Amazonia
like the uakari monkeys
and other members
of that group--
and then finally doing my thesis
in the country of Suriname
on the eight primate
species that occur there,
and later working on
the Atlantic forest
region of Brazil, which is one
of the other very high-priority
biodiversity hotspots.
But I actually had my office
in the Museum of Comparative
Zoology with Ernest
Williams, the herpetologist--
the Curator of
Herpetology at that time--
and a lot of work on
turtles, especially
some of the river
turtles of South America.
And this is actually
what I started out
doing as a young
boy and continue
to be very interested in.
And working very closely
with another gentleman
here in the audience, Anders
Rhodin-- Dr, Anders Rhodin,
who is the chair of the IUCN's
Species Survival Commission
Freshwater Turtle and Tortoise
Specialist Group and one
of the leaders of conservation
on these critically
important animals.
And it's a tremendous honor
to receive this medal.
I had the great
privilege of knowing
Roger Tory Peterson when
I was at World Wildlife
Fund in the 1980s.
He was a member of
the board of director,
and he has been an
inspiration to me.
And I'm going to say
a little bit more
towards the end of
this presentation
about some of the things that
he, in fact, did inspire in me.
And when I look at the list
of recipients of this medal,
I am truly honored.
Ed Wilson, who really is
the Darwin of the 20th
and the 21st century.
A wonderful scientist
who will go down
in the annals of history
as one of the great
figures in biology and
in science overall.
Jared Diamond, who's a
good friend and a member
of our board of directors.
Jane Goodall, of course, the
world's leading primatologist
and probably the most recognized
scientist in the world.
So I'm very, very honored
to receive this medal today.
Can we turn the lights
down a little bit more?
Now, I have a lot that I want
to cram into this presentation.
I don't often get the chance
to speak here at Harvard,
so I'm going to really give
you a lot of information
on a lot of different things.
Not everything that
Conservation International
is involved in, but a
good cross-section of what
we're trying to do globally.
And I'm going to focus on
several different topics.
First of all, the importance
of setting priorities.
Hotspots, high-biodiversity
wilderness areas,
mega-diversity countries--
some of the priority-setting
mechanisms that we've used.
How hotspots have served
us as a fundraising
tool and a marketing tool
over the past 20 years.
I'm going to say a little
bit about where we're
going and looking at the
future, the role of governments,
the private sector, and
the great importance
of indigenous communities.
I'm going to say a
lot about the climate
issue, particularly the forest
component of climate change.
And lastly, focus
back at our roots,
which are the species
conservation--
the continuing great
importance of conserving
the great diversity of species
that exist on this planet.
Now, to start out
with the basics,
you know all what
"biodiversity" is,
but I always like to
rehash this a bit.
I define "biodiversity"
as that wealth
of gene species, ecosystems,
and ecological processes
that makes our living
planet what it is.
It's the sum total
of all life on earth,
and it's our living legacy
to future generations.
We all know that.
But very often, we
overlook the fact
that it is also the basic
underpinning of sustainable
development.
And I'll say a little bit
more about that shortly.
Another key point
about biodiversity
is that we still are remarkably
ignorant about the life--
the other life forms that
share the planet with us.
We have described by science
somewhere on the order
of 1.7 to 1.8 million species
of everything-- plants, animals,
microorganisms.
And yet, estimates of total
diversity run from 5 million
to 10 million to
30 million or more.
And the most recent data
that's been coming in of late
indicate that the
probable figure
is on the order of 10 million,
but we really don't yet know.
That means that we are
an order of magnitude
off in terms of our
understanding of the diversity
of life forms that
are out there,
which is really
pretty remarkable when
you think about it.
Here we are, in
the 21st century,
with incredibly
sophisticated technology.
We sent a spaceship to different
parts of the solar system
starting 40 years ago.
And yet, we still don't know
to within an order of magnitude
how many other life
forms are on this planet,
and it really needs
to be focused on I
think in the very near future.
Just some personal
examples of this.
It's not that surprising that
we don't know all the canopy
beetles of the Amazon
rainforest or some
of the creatures of the
deep sea ocean trenches,
but our ignorance extends
even to our closest living
relatives-- the
non-human primates.
This is a little species
of marmoset monkey
that I described from the
central Brazilian Amazon back
in 1992.
This is another one-- a
distinct genus of marmoset
called the "dwarf marmoset"
that we described in 1996.
These were just two of more
than 50 primate species--
new species of primates
that have been described
in the very recent past.
More than 50 just since
the turn of the Millennium,
which is really
quite remarkable.
And I'd like to take my hat
off to The Encyclopedia of Life
in which Harvard has a great
role-- really, I think,
one of the most innovative
and amazing projects
in the history of science.
And I'd also like to highlight
the critical role of museums
in all of this.
Without museums, it's
going to be very difficult
for us to really get a
handle on what is out there.
And the MCZ is one of
the greatest institutions
of this kind in the
world, and I was
really delighted to be able to
spend seven years working out
of that museum.
OK.
Why are we concerned
about biodiversity?
Well, the obvious reason
is intrinsic value,
the moral imperative,
the aesthetic value
of biodiversity, the
great cultural values,
and of course, the
scientific value.
There's enormous economic
value of biodiversity
as well-- biotechnology, this
emerging science of biomimicry,
the importance of wild crop
relatives for maintaining
our agricultural productivity,
the recreational value,
the growing value of
ecotourism around the world.
And a very, very important
component, ecosystem
services-- the
services of nature
that derive from biodiversity
that we ourselves depend on
for our own survival.
The importance of forests and
in maintaining clean water
supplies, pollination--
which we take for
granted, but it's critically
important-- disaster
prevention, and this
very, very important issue
of the role of forest--
especially tropical forests--
in mitigating climate change.
And I'll be saying
more about that
at the end of the presentation.
And in terms of
research agendas,
one of the real
focal areas that we
need to concentrate on
over the next few years
is demonstrating
why biodiversity
is critical to maintaining
ecosystem services, how
more diverse systems provide
more and better services
of this kind, and then
showing how these ecosystem
services-- which
are so taken for
granted-- how they really are
the fundamental underpinning
of sustainable development,
poverty alleviation,
and ultimate achievement
of human well-being.
And if there are students
in the audience that
want to pick a
thesis topic, this
is something that you
would do well to focus on.
We're also concerned that
a loss of biodiversity
is irreversible.
Once a species of plant
or animal goes extinct,
it's gone forever and
will never be seen again.
And in fact, there
are many, many threats
out there now to the life-- the
other life forms of the planet.
And you're familiar with
these, but it's good
always to run through them.
Destruction of tropical forests
and other natural habitats
is the number one
cause, whether it's
for slash-and-burn agriculture--
as in this western dry forest
of Madagascar-- or
enormous clearance of land
for a monoculture plantation,
such as oil palm in Borneo
and other parts
of Southeast Asia,
or this growing
push for biofuels.
This is sugar cane in the
western part of Madagascar
as well.
Logging.
Unsustainable tropical
forest logging.
I happen to think that
logging of tropical forests
is a 19th century
activity that has
no place in the modern world.
These forests are
worth much, much more
for the other services
that they provide
and the biodiversity
that they conserve,
and they should
really be conserved
to the maximum extent possible.
You have destruction of
natural habitats for firewood
and charcoal production.
You have flooding of vast areas
for hydroelectric projects,
like this dam in Venezuela.
Mining.
Another very important issue.
This is diamond mining
in the eastern part
of the Democratic
Republic of Congo.
This is gold mining at the
edge of the Pantanal region
of Brazil.
And then you have this insidious
threat of bushmeat hunting,
especially in West
and Central Africa.
This is a bushmeat
market in Liberia,
and this impacts even our
closest living relatives--
the great apes.
And this is not a subsistence
trade for the most part.
This very often
is a luxury trade
where people are paying--
in large cities are paying
a premium for chimp or gorilla
or other kinds of bushmeat,
paying more for it than
chicken or beef or fish.
In Southeast Asia,
there's an enormous trade
in turtles and other forms of
wildlife-- especially going
to Chinese markets.
And this is an issue that
has been focused on a lot
by the experts on turtles.
This is a book that Dr. Rhodin
was a lead on the Asian turtle
trade that really highlighted
what is happening,
how we're just literally
sucking tons and tons,
thousands of tons
of these animals out
of the rivers of
Southeast Asia to feed
a large market in China and
in other parts of the region.
But it's not restricted to Asia.
This is the radiated
tortoise of Madagascar,
one of the most beautiful
tortoises in the world
and a real focus
for ecotourists.
It still, in some parts
of the country, is traded.
And sometimes, it's killed
just to get all of its liver
to make pate of
tortoise, which is really
a disgraceful waste of
these wonderful animals.
Also, in parts of
Asia, you have use
of different kinds of wildlife
for medicinal purposes.
This is monkey wine.
These are two
endangered douc langers
that were killed for
medicinal purposes.
And some of the
values that are placed
on these creatures
for their medicinal--
supposed medicinal properties--
this is a little Chinese box
turtle.
Cuora trifasciata.
That is about this big,
and a wild specimen
will bring $4,000 to
$5,000 just because
of its supposed medicinal uses.
The pet trade is also an issue.
One very good example-- again,
coming from Madagascar--
is this wonderful
angonoka tortoise.
It's this huge tortoise that
comes from the northwestern
part of Madagascar.
It's down to about 200
individuals in the wild.
And yet, it's starting
to appear on websites
for the pet trade in China,
and the prices for it
go from $10,000 to
$20,000 per animal.
So you can imagine
the enormous pressure
to pull these animals-- these
remaining individuals-- out
of the wild.
Invasive species.
Also a big issue.
This is a cute
bunny, but it happens
to be an invasive species
in the temperate rainforest
of Argentina.
And this is an invasive plant.
Invasive plants tend
to be overlooked.
And yet, they have an
enormous impact, especially
on island systems.
This is an invasive vine
that's destroying a gallery
forest in southern Madagascar.
And sometimes, species are
killed just for reasons
that we don't really
fully understand.
I'm sure you all heard about
the death of the seven mountain
gorillas in Congo back
about two years ago,
and we really still
don't know who was
responsible for this killing.
But this area-- this eastern
part of the Democratic Republic
of Congo and the
Virunga volcanoes, it's
a real hotbed of
political unrest.
And unfortunately, sometimes,
these wonderful animals
are victims of this unrest.
And of course, we
have climate change,
which poses a major
threat to biodiversity.
And yet, as I'll say later
on in this presentation,
I think this huge focus
we have on climate change
right now-- and especially on
the forest component of it--
presents us with a unique
historic opportunity as well
and something that
we really need
to take advantage of literally
over the next few months
and over the next
couple or three years.
So we're facing an
impending extinction crisis.
We're losing species.
We're losing forests
and other habitats,
and we're seeing the erosion
of critical ecosystem services.
Some of the-- we're doing
many things to combat this.
One of the most important
is to work with the IUCN--
the International Union for
Conservation of Nature--
which is really the umbrella
body for conservation
in the world.
It's kind of a UN
for conservation
but also has
non-governmental members
and has been around since 1949.
And we work very closely
with the IUCN on what
are called "global assessments,"
"red list assessments"
to determine the status
of endangered species
and, in so doing, to
figure out what it is
we need to do to conserve them.
We completed, in 2004, a Red
List Assessment of amphibians
that showed that
about 1 in every 5
of the world's amphibians--
frogs, salamanders caecilians--
were at risk of
going extinct, either
in the critically-endangered
or the endangered category.
And a lot of this is due
to a very strange disease--
the chytrid fungus--
that is killing
these animals all over
the tropical world
and in temperate
regions as well.
This is a very recent
example of this.
This is the mountain chicken.
It's a large frog from
the island of Montserrat
in the Caribbean, and these
pictures come literally
from the past couple of days.
The chytrid fungus
has hit Montserrat.
And all of a sudden,
these animals-- which
are a popular food source
and were not that uncommon--
are just dying in their tracks.
And this has happened in
many different places.
And there's a huge
research effort going on
and a conservation effort
to try to combat this,
but this is an example of a
very, very difficult issue
that we're facing.
And in many ways, these
frogs are the canary
in the coal mine
showing us that there's
something wrong with the
planet and that we really need
to pay much closer attention.
We also just completed The
Global Mammal Assessment,
which was launched
at the last World
Congress of the IUCN in
Barcelona back in October,
and this assessed the status
of all of the world's mammals.
And just to give you an example
of what came out of this,
about 1 in every 3 of
the world's primates
are either in the
critically-endangered or
endangered category--
some of them
down to a few dozen or a
few hundred individuals
and in urgent need of
conservation attention.
So our organization has
worked on this issue.
Now, the organization
is 22 years old.
And I'm not implying
that our organization
has all the answers.
We're one of a number of
international conservation
organizations.
What I'm going to
talk about today
is principally
our work because I
think it's indicative of
the kind of activities
that some of the major
conservation organizations
are involved in.
And our traditional mission
was to conserve earth's living
heritage, our
global biodiversity,
and to demonstrate that human
societies can live harmoniously
with nature.
But over the past
year, we've gone
through a strategic
planning exercise
in which we're
modifying our mission
statement to some extent.
We don't even have a final
new mission statement yet,
but what is going to
come out of this exercise
is that we're going to
modify our mission a bit
"To demonstrate that
biodiversity conservation is
essential to the maintenance
of critical ecosystem services"
and that these
ecosystem services "are
the underpinning of
sustainable development
and human well-being."
So we're going to take more of
a focus on the human well-being
angle so that we
really are able to make
biodiversity conservation,
not just a marginal issue,
but a central issue to other
global-- major global concerns.
Now, in terms of
our basic premises--
the work that we've
been carrying out
over the past few years-- we
recognize that all biodiversity
is important and
all nations should
do everything possible
to conserve their living
resources, but biodiversity is
by no means evenly distributed
over the face of the planet.
And rather, it's heavily
concentrated in a relatively
small total area, and a
large portion of that area
has been heavily impacted
by human activities.
So our approach has always
been to be strategic
and to set priorities based
on the best available science.
We've used a number of different
priority-setting mechanisms--
mostly, hotspots,
high-biodiversity wilderness
areas, and this concept of
mega-diversity countries, which
has kind of been a
background concept.
I'll just mention
that very briefly.
It's a concept that I
first came up with in 1988
and elaborated on in this
book that we did in 1997.
And it recognizes that, of
all the 200 or so countries
in the world, there
are 18 that have
a critically important
role in ensuring
the survival of the full
range of life on Earth
and that these countries--
these 18 countries--
have within them
more than 2/3 of all
known species-- terrestrial,
freshwater, and marine.
Here's the list of
those countries.
I'm not going to go through
them now, but just note
that Brazil and Indonesia
are, by far and away,
the two top countries.
The US is also on that
list, and there are a number
of other surprises on there.
For instance, the
country of France
is the only European
country on there,
but it's not there because
of the importance of France
in Europe but because they
have many overseas territories
and departments in
the tropics that
provide a big piece
of their biodiversity.
And this has set
a lot of influence
in a number of
different sectors.
It even led to the independent
creation of what's called
a "Like-Minded Group of
Megadiverse Countries"
in the Convention
on Biodiversity,
which is the principal treaty
dealing with this issue.
You'll note that I'm
drinking Starbucks
because Starbucks is a big
supporter of conservation
as well.
[LAUGHING]
Also, because I like it.
[LAUGHING]
But the main priority-setting
mechanism for us
has been biodiversity
hotspots, and hotspots are all
about prioritizing areas of high
irreplaceability as measured
by endemic species and
a high level of threat.
This is a concept that Norman
Myers-- the British ecologist--
first came up with in 1988.
And when I saw it,
I thought, "God.
This is a great idea.
Let's adopt it."
So when I went to Conservation
International in 1989,
I took this concept with me.
Very conveniently, the
MacArthur Foundation in Chicago
adopted it at the same time.
And they were, during the '90s,
the single largest supporter--
largest private support of
biodiversity conservation
activities in the world.
And we revised the
concept a number
of times-- first in
the end of the 1990s
and then again in the
early part of this decade.
In the first
reanalysis that we did,
we came up with 25 hotspots.
And in the latest
analysis, we went up to 34.
And I have, in parentheses, 35.
Because the eastern
rainforests of Australia,
we're in the process
of putting those
in as a biodiversity
hotspot as well.
Here's where they're
located-- the original extent
of these hotspots.
Heavily tropical forests,
but not exclusively
tropical forests systems.
All of the five
Mediterranean-type systems
in the world are also
on the hotspot list,
including Southern California,
the Mediterranean itself,
the Cape region of South Africa.
So it's not just
tropical forests.
The original extent of
these hotspots was about 16%
of the land surface
of the planet.
This is an area roughly
equivalent to Russia
and Australia put together.
Almost 90% of that has already
been lost, and what remains
is an area of about 2.3%
of Earth's land surface--
a little over 3 million
square kilometers.
This is roughly
equivalent to the size
of the country of India
or the five largest
American states put together.
Not a very large
area in global terms.
And yet, within this
very small area,
you have compressed
50%-- at least 50%
of all of the world's plants
as endemic species found
nowhere else and more than 40%
of all of your vertebrates.
Again, as endemics
found nowhere else.
And if you want to look at
the most endangered species
out there-- really,
the tip of the iceberg
in terms of extinction
risk-- using the IUCN's
Red List of Threatened
Species, you
see that anywhere from
70% to more than 90%
of the most endangered
species-- those
in the critically-endangered
and endangered categories--
are concentrated in these
biodiversity hotspots.
Now, a few key points
about hotspots.
As I said earlier, it's not
just tropical rainforests.
It's also not just species
richness or endemism.
It's also concentration
of endemism
at higher taxonomic
levels-- endemic genera,
endemic families.
And this reflects the extent
to which these areas also
help to conserve deep lineages
and evolutionary history,
and I'll say a bit more
about that in relation
to Madagascar in a few minutes.
Now, Madagascar is perhaps
the classic example
of a biodiversity spot in
every sense of the word.
It's an island about-- a
little smaller than Texas,
a little larger than California.
It's located about 40 kilometers
off the east coast of Africa.
It was separated from
the African mainland
about 160 million years ago
and broke off from India
to which it was also
connected about 80 to 90
million years ago, and evolution
has proceeded their largely
in isolation since that time.
You have a great
diversity of habitat types
there-- from rainforests to
these wonderful giant baobob
dry forests of
southwestern Madagascar
to the southern spiny desert to
unique transitional formations
like this area in the south.
It's a transition between the
dry forest and the rainforest.
Tiny areas, and yet, rich
in endemic species as well.
Plant diversity here
is off the charts.
14,000 to 15,000 species.
80% or more endemic.
This is almost as
many plant species
as you have in all
of North America
north of Mexico, which is an
area about 32 times larger.
Reptiles.
Enormous diversity.
More than 400 species.
Again, more than in all of
North America north of Mexico,
including the chameleons-- the
largest radiation of chameleons
on the planet-- and some
pretty bizarre snakes
and other reptile species.
And amphibians.
Amphibians have
gone crazy there.
We know of about 230 species,
but we're finding new ones just
about every month.
And the experts on
amphibians think
the total could wind up
being 400, 500, 600 times
more than you get in all of
North America north of Mexico.
And no chytrid fungus yet.
Not yet.
But the animals that are really
the most famous in Madagascar--
and what attracted me
there in the first place--
are the lemurs and radiation
of non-human primates
found only on Madagascar and
nowhere else in the world
and including some very
unusual little creatures.
This is Madame
Berthe's mouse lemur,
which is only about
30 grams-- even
smaller than my little friend.
This is the smallest
of all living primates.
Up to the indri, which is the
largest of living species,
and grows to be
about a meter tall
and weighs about 20 pounds.
Looks like a cross between a
teddy bear and a giant panda
and jumps from tree to tree
like an arboreal kangaroo.
And the aye-aye.
The mysterious aye-aye,
which is the most
aberrant-- the most unusual--
of all of the primates.
And if you think the
adults are strange-looking,
take a look at this baby.
[LAUGHING]
That one was born in the Duke
University Primate Center,
and they named him "ET."
[LAUGHING]
In all, there are 5
families and 15 genera
of lemurs in Madagascar.
They're 100%
endemic, and this is
indicative of this very,
very high level of endemism
that you get in this country.
If you look at endemism at
the family level for plants
and vertebrates, you find
that-- among the hotspots--
Madagascar has 25
families that are found
only there and nowhere else.
This is an enormous
concentration
of higher level endemism.
If you look at genera,
again, Madagascar
is at the top of the list.
478 genera of plants
and vertebrates
found only there and
nowhere else in the world.
This means that so much
of global diversity--
important global
diversity is concentrated
in this one island.
Unfortunately, Madagascar
is also a world champion
in forest destruction.
Our own species arrived there
are only about 2,000 years ago,
but it has had a large
impact since then.
This is the Central Plateau
region of Madagascar.
Much of it looks like this.
It's the worst erosion you'll
see anywhere on the planet.
Every year, the rivers
run red with eroded soil.
And in one part of the
country, up in the Northwest,
the Betsiboka River--
which you see here--
runs out into the ocean a
red plume of eroded soil.
That is so distinctive
that the astronauts first
noticed it from outer space
and actually photographed it.
More than 90% of Madagascar's
original natural vegetation
is lost, and what remains
is about 50,000 to 60,000
square kilometers, which
is an area that's about 2
and 1/2 to 3 New Jerseys.
I don't know how many
Massachusetts that would be.
Probably about four or five.
But really, a tiny
area globally in which
you have all of
these amazing life
forms concentrated-- and many of
them at risk of going extinct.
Hunting is a problem as well.
In some parts of the
country, you still
have hunting of lemurs and
other species for food.
And Madagascar is-- along
with Australia, New Zealand,
the Hawaiian Islands,
a few other places--
one of the most extreme
examples of recent extinctions.
Here, you see the indri
in the silhouette in scale
along with some of the
recently-extinct giant lemurs,
which included animals like
archaeoindris, which got to be
larger than an adult gorilla.
You had two species--
palaeopropithecus and
babacoote-- which were
basically sloth lemurs.
They had a niche similar to
the sloths of South America,
but they weighed up
to 80, to 100 pounds.
And my favorite is megaladapis,
which was a koala-like lemur.
It got to be about this big,
also weighed about 100 pounds,
and unfortunately,
is no longer with us.
We've started now to
do reconstructions
of these animals to get the
Malagazi excited about what
they had in the past.
This is a life-size
biologically-accurate
reconstruction of megaladapis
that we sent over there,
and we're about to give to
the president of the country.
But unfortunately, he's
not in office anymore.
I'll say a little bit
more about that shortly.
You also had the elephant
birds, which were the largest
birds that ever lived.
This is what the elephant
bird eggs looked like,
and this is what
remains of them.
Enormous creatures that
disappeared probably
400 to 500 years ago.
So all of this brings
us to the conclusion.
Many of us believe
that Madagascar
is the single highest priority
hotspot on the planet,
and we really have major
challenges ahead of us
to make sure that the
incredible things that are there
are not lost.
But what's happening
there is also
happening in most of your
other hotspots as well.
So it's really an
indicator of the priority
and the urgency and the
opportunities and challenges
that we have in ensuring
the survival of these areas.
What's amazing is that, in
spite of all that's been lost,
we're still finding new
species there-- hand over fist.
This is a new
species of lemur that
was found by some of our
German colleagues back
about six or seven
years ago-- mirza zaza.
And just to give
you an indication
of the growth of-- in the
number of lemur species
just in the past
15 years, in 1994,
we did the first Field
Guide to the Lemurs.
There were 50 different kinds.
We re-did it in 2006.
There were 71.
And we're redoing it
again now, and there
are over 100 new species.
So that's a doubling of a
primate fauna just in 15 years.
This is a-- the one in the
middle is one of my favorites.
[LAUGHING]
Mittermeier's mouse lemur.
And there is
another species that
was named after me that
does have more gray hair.
[LAUGHING]
And this brings up the point
of naming opportunities.
We have so many new
species out there.
[LAUGHING]
Now, we can either name
and after every family
member and every friend
that we've ever had,
or we can look at creative
ways of coming up with names
and using some of
these new species
as ways of raising funds.
This is a bit controversial,
but it's something
that I think is worth
exploring because we have
so many-- we have
thousands and thousands
and thousands of new species
that are going to be described
over the next few decades.
This is an example of
a beautiful little frog
from Columbia that I named
after one of my favorite donors
who has contributed several
million dollars to species
conservation over
the past few years.
And this magnificent creature,
another species from Columbia--
the previous one
was from Colombia--
that hasn't been named yet.
So--
[LAUGHING]
--if anyone's interested.
[LAUGHING]
Now, hot--
Do you take checks?
[LAUGHING]
If they're large enough.
[LAUGHING]
Now, we've both had
a dual focus that--
megadiversity being something
of a sideshow for us,
we always had this dual focus
on both hotspots and what we
called "high-biodiversity
wilderness areas."
These are elaborated
on in a book
that we did in 2003
called Wilderness.
And what they are
basically is areas
that also have very high
levels of biodiversity, also
high levels of endemism.
But in contrast to the hotspots,
they're still largely intact.
There are only a few
of these around-- they
occupy a total of about 6% of
the land surface of the planet.
This is about three times
what you have in the hotspots,
and there are only about five
of those-- the most obvious
being the Amazon region of South
America, the Congo forests,
and the island of New Guinea.
Now, focus in on one
part of Amazonia,
which I think is
particularly important
and which Jim also mentioned
already in his introduction,
and that is the Guayana Shield
region of northeastern South
America, the northeastern
part of the Amazon region,
which is the world's
largest and most pristine
tropical rainforest region.
We began our efforts to really
conserve this area in Suriname
back in the late 1990s
in trying to create
a large protected area in the
central part of the country.
You see that area--
if I can figure out
how to work this-- right here.
It's called the "Central
Suriname Nature Reserve."
It's an area about the size
of the State of New Jersey.
Completely pristine forest.
And that got us going on trying
to develop more protected areas
in this region as a whole
because so much of it
is still completely intact.
2002.
The Brazilians
added a major area
on the French
Guiana/Brazil/Suriname border.
That continued with the number
of state-protected areas
in some of the Amazonian states.
More in 2006.
And as we look at this past
year and our projections
for some areas in the future,
we have this enormous block
in green of state- and
federal-protected areas
and, in pink,
indigenous lands-- which
are areas that are occupied
by small populations
of indigenous people
and are comparably
intact to the areas that are
set aside as parks or reserves.
This is an enormous block
probably on the order of-- we
haven't done the
calculation recently--
but somewhere between two
and three times the size
of the State of California
with maybe 100,000 people
living in it, and most
of those are-- almost
all of those are
indigenous people.
The island of New Guinea
is another spectacular area
that is still reasonably
intact, although it
suffered a bit from logging
and mining activities
in recent years.
And this area is
unusual in terms of,
not just its biodiversity, but
its human cultural diversity.
It's kind of the epicenter
of human cultural diversity
on the planet.
The island has about
1,000 languages
and distinct cultures,
and this is about 1/6
of all the languages that are
still spoken on the planet.
And we've done a number
of projects there as well.
The most recent is a
very interesting one
in the northeastern part of the
country on the Huon Peninsula,
which is being done with
the Woodland Park Zoo
in Seatlle-- the YUS
Conservation Area--
and it's focused
on tree-kangaroos.
[CHUCKLING]
Tree-kangaroos.
And at the same time,
protection of critical ecosystem
services for local
villagers and looking
at how we can benefit from the
carbon value of the forests
as we move into this
climate change issue.
And I should also
point out that we
have one of the world's
experts on the island of New
Guinea with us here, Tim
Laman, who has been working
on the birds-of-paradise.
He started out as
a primatologist,
and now he's kind
of focused heavily
on the birds-of-paradise.
And he has the most
unbelievable images
of these creatures, which have
to be the most beautiful birds
on the planet.
The bottom line is
that the hotspots
and the high-biodiversity
wilderness areas
are the top priority in
terrestrial biodiversity
conservation.
They're also very
important for freshwater.
And if we fail in these
areas-- and especially
in the hotspots-- we
lose a major portion
of the world's biodiversity,
regardless of how successful we
are everywhere else.
We could have great successes
everywhere else in the world.
If we lose these
areas, we're going
to lose at least half the
plants and more than 40%
of the vertebrates that are
found only there and nowhere
else.
Now, interestingly, these
areas are important,
not just for biodiversity,
but for other reasons as well.
As it turns out,
they also happen
to be the places where many of
our most important commodities
are grown.
You can see the overlap here
with the coffee-growing regions
and hotspots.
And as I started to mention
with the island of New Guinea,
they are real focal areas
for human cultural diversity
as well.
We're in the
process of finishing
an analysis of the distribution
of human languages--
a total of about 6,900
languages that are still spoken.
Half of those are in the
biodiversity hotspots--
the original extent of these
areas-- and about 1,600
of those are in the
high-biodiversity wilderness
areas.
You add those up,
and you're looking
at 74% of all languages
and the associated cultures
being concentrated
in these areas--
and including also some of the
most endangered human cultures,
groups with a few or a few
thousand individuals remaining.
So there's a very strong
overlap between priorities
for maintaining human cultural
diversity and biodiversity.
We also just published in The
Conservation Biology Journal
a paper looking at hotspots and
centers of violent conflict.
And we looked at areas that,
since 1950, had undergone
conflicts in which more than
1,000 people lost their lives.
80% of those were in
the hotspot areas.
Now, I'm not going to
go into cause and effect
because, obviously, the
cause of such unrest
is very, very complex and
not easy to understand.
But there is something
going on here
that we need to
analyze in more detail,
and we're in the process of
carrying out some research
to get a better handle on
why so much of this activity
takes place in these
areas that are also
priorities for conservation.
Now, if you look
at the total land
area of the hotspots and the
high-biodiversity wilderness
areas, together it's about 8% of
the land surface of the planet.
It's a small percentage, but
it's still a very large area.
So where do we focus
within these hotspots
and high-biodiversity
wilderness areas?
What are the priority sites?
How do we get a handle
on those areas that
need protection, either those
that are as yet unprotected
or those that need better
protection in the years
to come?
And to get a handle
on this, we've
come up with this concept of
key biodiversity areas, which
really looks at using a variety
of criteria, identification
of the key sites.
This builds on the experience
of the bird people--
starting off with important
bird areas-- IBAs.
And we've elaborated on
this is quite a bit now.
We've done these
analyses in about a dozen
different hotspots.
This is what it looks
like for the Philippines.
Now, we're in the
process of doing this
for many other regions as well.
And we work with a group
called the "Alliance
for Zero Extinctions."
This is a group that we helped
to create several years ago,
and this group looks at the
tip of the tip of the iceberg
in terms of extinction risks.
It looks at those
single sites that
are critical for the
survival of species that
are about to go extinct--
species that only
occur in a single site
and, if you lose that site,
they're gone.
That's the terrestrial side.
We also have a growing
program on freshwater systems
in recognition of
the fact that, if you
look at freshwater systems
in a global context,
they're probably the single
most endangered hotspot--
if you want to use that term
for them-- in the world.
And they're critically
important for our own survival.
And we also have the
huge marine program
about which I'm going to say
nothing today because, if I
got into our marine program,
it would take me another hour.
And I think I would
lose most of you.
Suffice it to say that
we have a huge effort
underway in marine systems.
It's an effort
that's been spending,
over the past few years, on
the order of $40 to $50 million
looking at marine
management area science,
looking at some of
the-- assessing some
of the endangered marine species
through a global marine species
assessment process with IUCN,
and particularly focusing
on a series of
seascapes, which are
the ocean-based equivalent
of landscapes or corridors
in the terrestrial realm.
And we've had good success in
some of the highest priority
areas of the world for
marine conservation.
And if you're
interested in that,
Les Kaufman is here with us, and
he is one of our key partners
in developing our marine
conservation activities
and has been now
for several years.
Now, a little bit about how
we find the resources to do
all of this work
and how hotspots
have been a very effective
fundraising and marketing tool
and how it's made it possible
for us to find the dollars
needed to do conservation.
One example of a hotspot
space fundraising success
is what's called the "Critical
Ecosystem Partnership Fund."
This was a mechanism
that actually grew out
of the launch of the
first hotspots book
that we did back
in the year 2000.
We launched that
at the World Bank,
and that stimulated the
interests of the then president
of the World Bank--
Jim Wolfensohn--
to the point that we
were able to create
a fund with a lead from
CI and from the World
Bank of $125 million
over 5 years-- focused
on working in the hotspots
and working with civil society
organizations.
Not governments, civil
society organizations.
And we brought in, as partners,
the Global Environment
Facility, again, the MacArthur
Foundation in Chicago,
and interestingly, the
Government of Japan,
which became a major partner.
We finished the first
five-year cycle, supported
many different
projects, and we've now
entered into a second cycle.
And in addition to
the original partners,
we've added the
Government of France
as a full partner in this.
And we're looking at several
other European governments--
notably Germany and Monaco--
as potential partners
in this effort as well.
This has been
enormously effective
and has resulted in
support for well over 1,000
different conservation efforts
in 16 or 17 of these hotspots.
With support from the Gordon
and Betty Moore Foundation,
we also created something called
"The Global Conservation Fund."
This was $100 million
over five years
focused on creating new
parks and reserves-- again,
in the hotspots and the
high-biodiversity wilderness
areas-- and also on developing
trust fund mechanisms.
So you didn't just pump
all the money in at once,
but you created
mechanisms that ensured
that there would be
long-term sustained funding
for recurrent costs
in these areas.
With that, we were able to
create 40 new protected areas
and cover an area of
about 73 million hectares
in either ongoing
or completed deals.
And this is an area
about almost twice
the size of the
State of California.
So as we look to the future,
many challenges out there,
for sure.
But I think there's great
cause for optimism as well,
and I'm glad that-- as
mentioned in the beginning
of the introduction--
that I'm an optimist.
I'm very much an optimist, and
I don't think I will be in this
business if I wasn't.
Sometimes, it gets frustrating
and we have a lot of setbacks,
but you've got to continue
to believe that you can do it
and to be optimistic about the
possibilities for the future.
And in fact, we're
seeing changing attitudes
and new visions.
We're seeing exciting
new leadership.
We're seeing particularly
exciting new leadership
in this country, which
I think it's really
going to turn the tide
and reestablish the United
States as a global
leader in these issues,
and we see a real
opportunity to change
the scale of our efforts.
And I'll just give a very
brief example, one each
from these different
components-- governments,
the private sector, and this
critically-important piece--
working with
indigenous communities.
At a global level,
working with governments,
we see some interesting
new policy initiatives
on biodiversity.
Two of them in particular.
One is called "TEEB"-- "The
Economics of Ecosystems
and Biodiversity"-- which is
looking at biodiversity-based
ecosystem service markets.
And using the language
of the financial world,
it's actually being developed
by a gentleman named
Pavan Sukhdev.
And he spoke here, I
think, a few weeks ago.
And he works for the--
he's being seconded
to this from the Deutsche Bank.
And another one that's just
in the process of being
developed-- mainly coming out
of Europe-- is called "IPBES"--
"The International Platform
on Biodiversity and Ecosystem
Services."
The intent is to have
this be something
like some-- a biodiversity
equivalent of the IPCC
for climate, but it's
still in very early stages.
But the fact that
the world is starting
to look at these issues
in a serious way, I think,
is very positive.
We also have some
interesting new commitments
by national governments.
Again, I'll give you the
example of Madagascar.
This is-- until about
two or three weeks ago,
was the president
of Madagascar-- Marc
Ravalomanana-- who came in, in
2002, as a breath of fresh air
and made major commitments
to conservation very quickly.
At the World Parks
Congress, in 2003,
he made the commitment to
triple protected area coverage
in his country over
the next five years--
recognizing the great
importance that Madagascar has.
We had worked with the
previous government
to try to get them to do this.
They did nothing.
When he came in,
we talked to him.
And he immediately bought into
this and made this commitment.
He also asked us to help him
cover the costs of doing this
and to come up with a
$50 million trust fund.
We put in the first
million dollars.
And as of March of last
year-- just about a year ago--
we passed the $50 million
mark on this trust fund.
We've also brought
high-level people
from different
parts of the world.
This is a congressional
delegation
that I took there a few
years ago to meet with him
and to encourage
him to do even more.
On the-- a gentleman
on the left there
is John Tanner from Tennessee.
And on the right, Tom Udall,
who was then a congressman but
is now a senator
from New Mexico--
one of the most committed
people to the conservation
issue in the entire US Senate.
We brought big donors.
This is Gordon Moore,
the co-founder of Intel
and the most generous
private supporter
of biodiversity
conservation ever.
And media groups.
This is Jeff Corwin doing
a program there with us
for Anderson Cooper 360, which
came out about a year ago.
So we've tried everything
possible to reinforce
the president's interest.
We also had a little bit
of help from Hollywood.
[LAUGHING]
They did two films now
called "Madagascar."
Unfortunately, the biological
content is a little weak.
[LAUGHING]
They've got penguins and
lions and giraffes and hippos
and zebras and things like
that that don't really
occur in Madagascar except when
DreamWorks sends them there.
But nonetheless, this
was a great boost
in name recognition.
You can criticize it for
many different reasons,
but it put the name
"Madagascar" on the map--
certainly, in this country and
in other parts of the world.
And I took the CEO of
DreamWorks there shortly
before the film came
out-- Jeffrey Katzenberg.
He gave $500,000 for ecotourism
development in Madagascar.
He was ready to give more
as part of the new film--
the Madagascar 2--
that came out recently.
Then we hit a little political
roadblock about which
I'll say something shortly.
And the president was
true to his commitment.
He created a whole bunch of new
protected areas-- 1.75 million
hectares, which is not a
huge area in Amazonian terms,
but it doubled the size
of the protected area
network in Madagascar.
And unfortunately, as most
of you probably know, as of
January of this year, we
hit a major roadblock there.
The president, who
had-- although he
was very good in
his first term--
did some foolish things
in his second term,
and the mayor of
the capital city
decided he would be
better as president.
So there were demonstrations.
Mark Ravalomanana, as
of a few weeks ago,
was-- at least, for
now-- booted out.
And this young fellow,
34-year-old former disc
jockey--
[CHUCKLING]
--is now the president.
But it appears that he's not
quite sure what to do either.
So they just, in the
past week, put together
a 20-person committee
to figure out
where to go with Madagascar.
So we're just sitting and
waiting to see what happens.
As soon as it's clear that
there's someone in power
again there, I'm going
to be on the next plane
over there talking to
them to see-- to make sure
that they keep to
this commitment
of the previous president.
And there's a chance that
he'll come back again.
So this is just
indicative of the fact
that there are no final
victories in conservation.
We were so happy that Madagascar
was becoming a real success
story.
And bang.
You hit a wall.
And you just can't
get frustrated.
You just have to back off,
regroup, and figure out
what to do, and try to
move forward with it.
If you pull out and
give up, then you've
lost all the investment
and then you've
lost one of the most
important areas on the planet.
So again, you've got to
keep that optimistic mindset
and do whatever you need to
do to keep the ball rolling.
And sometimes, you have to
go into a temporary holding
pattern and wait and
see what happens,
but I think you can make things
work just about anywhere.
The private sector.
Another very
interesting example.
I'll touch on that just very
briefly, but a lot of people
have a hard time seeing
the private sector being
engaged in conservation.
But if they don't
engage, again, we're
probably not going to be
successful over the long-term.
So we've bitten the
bullet and worked
with some of the major
corporations on our planet.
And interestingly, one
of the most effective
has been Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart has been criticized
for many different things,
but it really has
adopted some very good
environmental policies.
And they're so huge
and so influential
that, if they do something,
all of the distributors, all
of the people who buy
from them or sell to them
have to follow the
same standards.
So this is just one example
of a way in which we
can try to get the
business community to adopt
new and better practices in
relation to the natural world.
Indigenous people.
Major partners in many
parts of the world.
We have an initiative called
"The Indigenous and Traditional
Peoples Initiative"
that focuses on working
with these people
who are usually
at the bottom of the
political and economic ladder
in the countries in which
they live and very much put
to the side or overlooked.
And yet, they're very important
in every sense of the word.
Just to give you
some examples, this
is an old map of the Amazon
region showing in dark green.
Protected areas in light
green, indigenous reserves.
About 2/3 of what's
eventually going
to be protected in
the Amazon region
is going to be in
indigenous territories.
And we focused on a number
of different groups--
perhaps the most
exciting of which
has been a group
called the "Kayapo."
These are really
amazing people who
live in the southeastern
region of the Brazilian Amazon.
This is a picture that
my wife, Christina, took,
and we were there a
couple of years ago.
We put together a huge group
of these people-- the leaders
of the different communities--
to talk about what
their issues.
There are about 6,000 of them.
They live in an area of
11.5 million hectares.
It's about 25, 26 million
acres-- an enormous area.
It's an area about the size
of the State of Virginia
with only 6,000
people living in it.
They live in these
beautiful little villages
scattered over this pristine
tropical rainforest.
And of course, when
you work with them,
sometimes, you have to adopt--
at least, temporarily--
some of their practices.
Fortunately, this is
not a permanent tattoo.
[LAUGHING]
And we succeeded with the
leadership of this gentleman
in particular.
This man is [INAUDIBLE].
He's the modern
leader of the Kayapo.
With his help, we've
created a trust fund.
We've provide support for them
for over the past 15 years
to protect their own territory.
Now, we have a target of a $20
million trust fund for them
which will continue to give
them the resources needed
to protect the lands from
encroachment of various kinds.
And we're so impressed
with this man
that we wound up putting him
on our international board
of directors-- alongside
people like Harrison Ford,
in the lower left-hand corner,
Gordon Moore from Intel
in the upper left, Rob
Walton from Walmart,
and a number of other very
influential business leaders.
And he's really quite
a character and one
of the great leaders I've
ever been in touch with.
Now, climate change.
You've heard a lot about
climate change lately.
And clearly, it's a big threat.
But I think that, from the
perspective of the conservation
community, it's also
a unique opportunity.
And much of the attention
on climate change
in the past few
years has focused
on energy, vehicle
emissions, industry,
and that's very appropriate.
We've also paid a
lot of attention
to the pros and cons-- mostly,
the cons-- of biofuels.
But until fairly
recently, we had not
paid very much attention to the
forest component of the climate
change issue.
And now, this is
finally starting
to take place in recognition
of the fact that at least 20%
of all emissions are
coming from the burning
of tropical forests.
And I think this is
an underestimate.
I think it's actually
going to come out
to be substantially
more than this
when we start understanding
more of what's
happening with emissions
in tropical regions.
And that's puts countries
like Indonesia and Brazil
in third and fourth place after
the United States and China
as the principal emitters
of greenhouse gases.
So it stands to reason
that, if burning
of these tropical
forests is emitting
so much in the way
of greenhouse gases,
we should stop
burning these forests.
And this led to the concept of
"avoided deforestation," which,
over the past few years,
has morphed into "REDD."
Kind of a horrible
acronym, but "Reduction
in Emissions from
Deforestation and Degradation."
This is a new concept.
It's not part of
the Kyoto Protocol.
It will likely have to wait
until 2012 for full acceptance.
But happily, we
made major progress
on recognizing the importance of
this at the last major meeting
of the conference of parties of
the climate convention in Bali
in December of 2007.
And we now have
the opportunity--
eight months from now, in the
next big meeting of the climate
convention in Copenhagen--
to move this forward
in a major way and ensure that
it's included in the follow-up,
in the successor to the
Kyoto Protocol, which
takes effect in 2012.
Just, again, some
examples of things
that we've done using
Madagascar once-- one more time.
In this southeast-- northeastern
region of Madagascar,
we focused on some
demonstration projects
to show that forest
carbon can actually
be an economic benefit
to these countries.
And we've looked at two things.
We've looked at both
natural forest protection
and reforestation--
natural forests
being not part of the Kyoto
Protocol, reforestation
being recognized under
the Kyoto Protocol.
We got the World Bank to
buy up some tons of carbon
from a natural forest area.
And in terms of
reforestation, the World Bank
also participated in this.
And we got Dell-- a
computer company--
to buy about 2.75 million
of voluntary forest credits
as well.
Now, there are many
projects like this underway
in different parts
of the world trying
to show that avoided
deforestation,
protection of natural
forests can, in fact,
be an economic benefit
to these countries.
But a significant portion of
the most important countries
for tropical forests are not
on the table in terms of even
of this mechanism.
So I'm going into a fair amount
of detail on this climate issue
here with you because I think
it's critically important.
It's something that we all
need to pay attention to
and, to the extent
possible, get our government
to take a major
leadership role in this
over the next few months.
And I'm referring here in
particular to the High Forest
Cover Low Deforestation
Rate Countries,
countries like Suriname
Guyana, Columbia, Gabon,
several of the
African countries,
and a handful of
countries in Asia
and the Pacific that
have historical very
low deforestation rates
and are not on the table
for this REDD concept,
which looks only
at those countries that
have had high deforestation
rates in the past.
And these countries account
for at least a third
of all the remaining
tropical forests,
and they must be
included in efforts
to really come to grips with
this forest carbon issue.
And we're trying, again, to
develop some models on this--
particularly in this region
of northeastern South America
that I showed you earlier
in the countries of Guyana
and Suriname.
These have the highest
percent remaining forest
cover of any countries
on the planet-- Guyana
with 85% intact forests,
Suriname with more than 90%.
Really amazing how
little deforestation
has taken place there.
In the country of Guyana, we've
worked with the president.
Bharrat Jagdea on
the right talking
to Harrison Ford, who's
taken a personal interest
in this climate change issue.
And the president of
Guyana has made an offer
to the world of the forest
estate state of his country--
to keep that intact,
prevent further emissions,
if he is compensated at a
level that is significant.
And in Suriname, we're trying
to float a huge bond offering so
that we get international
investors to invest
on the order of $200 million in
this country to compensate them
for keeping their forests intact
and develop a green economy.
And this is something that's
really in very early stages.
My wife and I are leaving
for Suriname tomorrow
to discuss this with
the government there
and to see whether or
not we can develop this
as a model over
the next few months
as we move up to this
all-important Copenhagen
meeting of the
climate convention.
So finally, we
have an opportunity
to develop-- to demonstrate
value of these tropical forests
at a level that is competitive
with the other major extractive
industries-- like
mining and forestry
and so on-- that
have really resulted
in the destruction of so much
of the world's tropical forest
systems.
And we also amazingly
have an opportunity
to redress-- at least
and in some small way--
some of the economic imbalances
that exist in today's world
because some of the
countries with the most
important remaining
rainforest areas
also happen to be
among the poorest.
We've touched on these issues
in some detail in another book
that we've done-- the
most recent book called
"A Climate For Life."
And I believe that's
available in the bookstore.
And as we look over
the next eight months,
if there's one single thing
we do, as a conservation
community, that takes
precedence over everything else,
it's to make sure that we get
the right messages with US
leadership, with leadership from
Brazil, from China, from all
of these really key countries in
the world that natural forests
have to be in the
successor to Kyoto.
And our one opportunity
to make sure that happens
is going to be this conference
of the parties in Copenhagen
coming up in the second week
of December of this year.
It is the-- going to be one
of the historical landmarks
if we can get it
right, and so we're
putting a lot of our
attention into that now.
Lastly, to finish up-- I
think I still have some of you
with me-- the fundamental
importance of species
conservation.
We're talking about
all these big issues--
ecosystem services, human
well-being, climate change--
but we don't want to
lose track of the fact
that we still want
to keep this planet
an amazing,
highly-diverse planet that
is so unique in the entire solar
system, in the entire universe.
And we cannot lose track of the
importance of saving endangered
species-- critically-endangered
and endangered species.
It's a moral obligation.
These species are also
very useful in selling
the importance of
entire ecosystems
as so-called "flagship
species," and it also
attracts a lot of
attention with the media.
The new species discovery
is something exciting.
It's basic to the
biological sciences,
and I think it helps us in
getting our message across.
A good part of my
career has been
dedicated to using
primates as flagship
species in many different ways.
We've developed action plans
for primate conservation
over the past 20-plus years.
These have been pretty
effective in bringing
in the resources needed
for primate conservation
activities.
And I should mention, we have
one of the world's leaders
of primatology here
with us in the audience,
Richard Wrangham, who is one
of the world's authorities
on great apes and has
very much involved
in great ape conservation
over the past-- probably 30
years now?
Huh, Richard?
It's frightening.
[CHUCKLING]
We also have used
primates as a way
to get attention in the media.
Every two years, the IUCN,
Primate Specialist Group, CI,
and the International
Primatological Society
joined forces to come up with
the Top 25 Most Endangered
Primates List.
This attracts a lot
of media attention
and helps us get the word out.
And also, I've come
up with this idea
of stimulating the development
of primate ecotourism.
And this is based,
in large part,
on the inspiration that I
got from Roger Tory Peterson
and what he was able to do with
the first ever field guides
that he launched in the 1930s.
These field guides spawned
generations of field guides
on birds all around the world.
There are now field
guides coming out
on reptiles, amphibians,
insects, specific guides
to primates.
Many, many, many
field guides, and this
has resulted in multi-billion
dollar industries
of people who want
to go out and look
at these animals in the wild.
And this also was inspired
by my oldest son, John--
who's here in the
audience with us, who,
starting at about age 10,
became a hardcore bird watcher.
And what really made
this click in my mind
was when he started as an
undergrad-- as a freshman
at Exeter.
And he went out
in the first week,
and he found this fairly boring
bird from the southeastern US.
What was the name of it, John?
It was a--
Purple gallinule.
Purple gallinule.
It's a common bird in the
South, but it was only
the fourth record ever from
the State of New Hampshire.
And he put that out
on this website.
And within a few days, he had
hundreds of people coming in
to see this one bird.
I thought, "My, god.
This is really power."
[CHUCKLING]
Now, why can't we do the
same thing with primates
and other groups of organisms?
So I came up with this concept
of primate-watching and primate
life-listing.
[LAUGHING]
And people love to list, and
people are very competitive.
And so what I'm going
to do is, fairly soon,
create a website that will
enable people to put together
their own primate lists.
And the idea with
this, of course,
is to stimulate people to go to
remote places where you can see
these primates--
and in so doing,
contribute to the
economic well-being
of the human communities
that live in these areas
and show them that
these animals are
important for many
different reasons.
We've tried to simulate
this through a series
of tropical field guides--
the majority of which
so far have focused on primates.
And also, even more
recently, we've
come up with a series of
pocket guides for primates
and for some other groups
that are very easy to produce,
very easy to use.
And they have little
checklists in the back,
so you can start your own
personal primate life-list.
And I really think this
can have an impact,
and it's all been inspired
by something that Roger Tory
Peterson was the true
pioneer in-- going
back more than 80 years now.
We've also been successful
in raising funds
for primates and for
species issues in general.
We have a foundation called
the "Margot Marsh Biodiversity
Foundation" that's put about
$7 million in primate projects
over the past decade.
And just recently, we've
seen a resurgence of interest
in supporting species
conservation issues
from unexpected places--
one of them being
the Government of Abu Dhabi,
which has just created
a $25 million euro Species
Conservation Fund focused
specifically on small- to
medium-sized project on species
conservation.
And the Global Environment
Facility at the World Bank
has also come up with
the idea of a Save
your Logo Species Fund, which
is starting off with $10 million
in going to corporations
who have animals
as logos to try to get
them to contribute as well.
[LAUGHING]
So interesting idea.
Let's see if it works.
The first one already
has its capital.
The World Bank one is still
kind of working on it.
But I think it's good that many
key people involved in this
are not losing track of
the importance of species
conservation as well.
And the last thing
that we're planning
on doing-- inspired by the
great success of the World Parks
Congresses, which take place
once every 10 years-- is we've
now gotten a resolution passed
through the IUCN Conservation
Congress to have a World Species
Congress that we would like
to put together sometime in
the next three or four years
to focus attention on the
full range of important values
that species of
many different kinds
provide to global society.
So with that, I'm
going to end-- again,
with an emphasis on the need
to be optimistic and really
look at all this with
a can-do attitude
and not get frustrated by the
challenges and the threats
and the setbacks.
They're always
going to be there,
but we just need to forge ahead.
Use the experience that we
have to do something of truly
lasting value for this planet.
But as always, we have only a
brief window in which to act.
The next 5 to 10 years are going
to be critically important,
and all of you can
play a major role
in helping to make
this possible.
So again, thank you for
coming, and thank you
again for the wonderful award
that I've received today.
[APPLAUSE]
[APPLAUSE]
