· Field courses in rain forest and marine ecology
· Hunting for tonight's dinner
· Pro-poor tourism
· ThinkShrimp! - social and ecological impacts of industrial shrimp aquaculture along tropical coasts

Field courses in rain forest and marine ecology

Rainforest and Reef is a non-profit organization specializing in field courses in rain forest and marine ecology which are currently offered in nine countries. All programmes are operated by partner organizations that have shown a strong commitment to conservation and education. The organization is committed to the fair return of the benefits from the courses to the local partners to assist in conservation and education projects.

Local guides and biologists are featured in the study of natural history, rain forest and coral reef ecology, medicinal uses of native plants, conservation, land management, local cultures, archaeology, geology and much more. Past participants have come from across the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Australia and the Far East.

Customized programmes are available upon request.

For more information, please contact:
Mike Nolan, Director, Rainforest and Reef, 9 Prospect NE Suite No. 8, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503, USA.
Tel./Fax: +1 616 776 5928;
e-mail: [email protected]  or [email protected];
www.rainforestandreef.org

Hunting for tonight's dinner

In more than 61 countries worldwide, rural families obtain at least 20 percent of their animal protein from wild game and fish. In West Africa, fully one quarter of the population's protein comes from bushmeat. Each year, local people in Sarawak, Malaysia eat US$75 million worth of such meat. In the Amazon Basin as a whole, consumption exceeds US$175 million. The total catch from hunting in the Congo Basin is more than one million tonnes of wild meat annually. People also catch live animals to sell, and hunt them to protect their crops from pests, as part of cultural rituals, and for other reasons.

Hunting of wildlife in tropical forests: implications for biodiversity and forest peoples, by Elizabeth Bennett and John Robinson from the Wildlife Conservation Society, provides ample evidence that much of this hunting is unsustainable. Moderately or heavily hunted forests have a much lower mammal density. Vulnerable species often disappear entirely from these areas. This means fewer cute and cuddly animals, less protein and income for rural families, and greater hunger. Furthermore, changes in animal populations can alter other components of the ecosystem by affecting seed survival and dispersal, as well as the predator to prey ratios.

Hunters go after a wide range of mammals, birds, and reptiles, although typically a major proportion of bushmeat comes from large hoofed animals and monkeys. Animals that travel in packs, move slowly, make loud noises, or do not reproduce frequently are especially vulnerable. Old-growth tropical rain forests generally produce less bushmeat per hectare than savannahs, grasslands and secondary forest, so hunting there often takes a much heavier toll.

The hunting problem has worsened as populations in forested areas have increased and become more sedentary. Migrants who lack traditional norms for regulating hunting have moved in. Widespread encroachment of logging crews into the forest has proved to be especially problematic. Better access to the forest and improved hunting technologies, such as the introduction of firearms, wire snares, flashlights, dogs, motorbikes and outboard motors, have helped deplete game species. In many African and Asian countries, people actually consume more wild meat as their incomes rise, since they prefer it to other foods. In contrast, when given the option, Latin Americans generally prefer to purchase beef or chicken.

The authors recognize that few attempts to regulate hunting have proved effective in the tropics. They suggest greater efforts to promote community wildlife management, increased monitoring of logging companies and continued support for protected areas.

Hunting of wildlife in tropical forests: implications for biodiversity and forest peoples by E.L. Bennett and J.G. Robinson (2000) is published as Biodiversity Series-Impact Studies No. 76 by the World Bank, Washington, DC.

The paper can be downloaded in pdf format (www.worldbank.org/biodiversity). An electronic Word file with the document in English, French or Spanish is available from Sharon Esumei ([email protected] ).

Comments can be sent to: Elizabeth Bennett (e-mail: [email protected]).
(Source: POLEX mailing list, 2 February 2001.)

Pro-poor tourism

A recent paper, Pro-poor tourism: putting poverty at the heart of the tourism agenda , by Caroline Ashley, Charlotte Boyd and Harold Goodwin, examines how tourism affects the livelihoods of the poor and how positive impacts can be enhanced. In doing so, it assesses the relevance of tourism to the poverty agenda, and the factors that encourage or constrain economic participation of the poor in the industry. In conclusion, it outlines strategies for promoting pro-poor tourism (PPT).

Policy conclusions

· Tourism development has not, to date, incorporated poverty elimination objectives. It remains driven by economic, environmental and/or cultural perspectives at the national and international levels.
· Given the massive impact that tourism has on many of the world's poor, how and how far PPT can be promoted needs to become a central issue.
· The poverty impacts of tourism include a wide range of impacts on the livelihoods of the poor - not just jobs or incomes - with differential costs and benefits.
· Participation of the poor in tourism, and the benefits they gain, depends on a range of critical factors, including the type of tourism, planning regulations, land tenure,
market context, and access to capital and training. Many of these can be influenced by changes in policy or external support.
· There is considerable unexploited scope for adapting tourism interventions to enhance livelihood benefits to the poor from tourism.
· PPT strategies must be commercially realistic. Although the private sector cannot be expected to prioritize poverty objectives, it must be included in the process of developing PPT.

(Source: ODI. Natural Resource Perspectives, No. 51, March 2000.)

For more information, please contact:
Overseas Development Institute, Portland House, Stag Place, London SW1E 5DP, UK.
Fax: +44 20 7393 1699;
e-mail: [email protected]

ThinkShrimp! - social and ecological impacts of industrial shrimp aquaculture along tropical coasts

Local people in India and Ecuador are losing their land and their mangrove forests because they are cut down for huge artificial shrimp ponds - shrimp aquaculture. With these forests the main resource of income for the local population is disappearing: the amount of wild fish, shrimp, crab and shells, which depend on intact mangrove forests, has been decreasing over the past few years. Not only is the food security for the people living on these coasts in danger but also the drinking-water supply, as a result of the salinization of the groundwater, as well as of the fertile agricultural land. A further threat is the contamination of the sea, rivers, channels and land areas in the neighbourhood of shrimp farms, because of the input of chemicals, pesticides and antibiotics.

In order to provide the general public (as well as shrimp importers in Germany and Austria) with information on these problems, the German non-governmental organizations (NGOs) EarthLink, Food First information and action network (FIAN) and Community of action fair world (ASW) invited the activists Dr Jacob Raj, from the Indian NGO PREPARE, and Lider Góngora Farias, from the Ecuadorian NGO FUNDECOL, to the information tour "ThinkShrimp!" to ten German and Austrian towns from 11 to 26 September 2000.

For more information, please contact:
EarthLink, Frohschammerstr. 14, 80 807 Munich, Germany.
Fax: +49(0)89/35 65 21 06;
e-mail: [email protected];
www.thinkshrimp.de