Part A. Background of Biological Diversity and Cultural Heritage of Study Area

Part B. Forest Research to Save Tree Diversity

Part C. Applying the Research in an Economic Sense: To Sustain Biodversity

Part D. Management of Tropical Tree Resources and Communities Cooperation

Part E. Conclusion

Reference

Part A. Background of Biological Diversity and Cultural Heritage of Lanyu

Lanyu Island is a small island situated in the Western Pacific off the south-east coast of Taiwan. The geographic location of Lanyu is at longitude 121^o30'~36', and latitude 22^o00'~05'. It is located between Taiwan Island and Philippine Archipelago. The distance to Taitung Harbor in Taiwan is about 56 miles (90 km), and to Yami island in the Philippines is 40 miles (64 km). The only general traffic way is by ship, and airlines are expensive and infrequent due to the severe wind storms. (From the weather statistics, the number of wind-storms, where windspeed is over 10 meter per second, is high with 275 days annually.)

Lanyu Island is the second largest island around Taiwan, with approximately 46 square kilometers in area size (29,940 acres , 460 hectares, or 18 square miles) and abundant rainfall (344 cm precipitation per year). The oceanic weather also brings the relatively high moisture (90% for annual mean RH) in Lanyu. The tropical wet climate is very hot with an average of 26 o Celsius for mean annual temperature. According to the high mean annual precipitation and temperature, this undeveloped and unstudied forest is full of tropical rain forest species and have a huge biodiversity.

In a human viewpoint, the earliest historic record was in 1618 during the Chinese Ming Dynasty. It was also named by early explorers with "Botel Tobago", "Botol Tobago" or "Red-head" island by the Dutch navigators in the 18th century. In 1947, the Taiwanese government named this island with "Lanyu", due to the famous endemic 5-leave orchids, which are elegant and beautiful flowers that grow in lush rain forests with great varieties on the island's steep hills. There are about one hundred rare plant and animal species living in its unexploited tropical forest without any protection management, because the distant location and inconvenience of communication retard the modernization and limit the economic development.

The island not only has rich natural resources, but is also the area in which the Yami tribe lives. The Yami, Taiwan's smallest and most primitive aboriginal tribe, call it home. The Yami population numbers about 3,100 people living scattered over the island's low land. The evolution of Yami's cultural richness is dependent on the abundant natural resource and biodiversity.

First, in their social life within the Yami society, there are no clearly defined class distinctions. They are a gentle people who cling to centuries-old customs without tribe chiefs. The tribe's fate and general affairs are decided by mutual consultation. As most disputes are usually settled by negotiation, they respect for elders greatly because of their experience and wisdom to handle the conflicts. The social life in the tribe is the result of joint discussion.

Second, in the natural aspect, the Yami's life activities is based on the observation of natural principles and the optimal use of forestry and fishery. They do some farming but live mainly by fishing. Flying fish are a vital part of their diet, and they follow ancient rules and taboos in catching and preparing the fish. The fishing and farming system relies on working together for the mutual benefits. This spirit, which works together for all families and relatives, is of great advantage to people. The other example is when a Yami person builds his own house, the whole tribe will co-operate in order to assist him. In summary, the Yami culture is extremely rich and complex, and their distinctive culture is a valuable example of the most well preserved oceanic cultures. page head

Part B. Forest Research to Save Tree Diversity

However, Lanyu is struggling with the dilemma between the traditional life style and economic development. For the last several decades, the tropical rain forest is viewed as preventing the development of modern Lanyu communities. Both the lowland and the slow hills face the heavy human population housing and developmental pressure. Now, the great green and diverse forest is not longer a daily dependent resource at all. Otherwise, the young in local communities and outside developers see the jungles scattering with useless "weeds", without timber logging and great attraction, e.g. some beautiful orchid flowers.

People have a need to earn cash to pay the electric bills, hospital costs, and the imported food and goods from Taiwan. They tried to cut down the jungle and clear more land to farm. That is what happens when they hunt the wildlife, collect the rare tree species, burn the forest to make the poor soil farmland, and then desert it (Rowe et. al. 1992). The short-term income by selling the wood and agricultural by-products seems not satisfy their demand, and the overexploited harvesting damages the ecosystem function and biodiversity. Due to the small area size in Lanyu, the silviculture and farming are not the best way to make a living. Another strategy needs to be developed to sustain the natural resources, especially in a tropical rain forest. . That is why this research wants to make a different change with those conditions. The research goal is to make biodiversity "valuable" for the modern communities in Lanyu again. There should be a very urgent and significant need to re-evaluate their tropical trees in the conservation and economic senses.

In the beginning, this conservation research is funded by the Governments and Enviornmental Organizations (GEO) to identify the dangerous trees, which would have potentially horticultural and medical utilities. The working team realizes that much general knowledge of tropical rain forest and tree management exists (Clark 1990). But many relative questions remain open because the different site conditions vary case by case. The primary objective in this research is to clarify what method works in our economic project without hurting biodiversity. We will determine which strategy of rain forest management is sustainable. Our management should be oriented toward sustaining biodiversity and the economic demand of the communities in the future.

First, this study will identify what is unknown for the tree ecology and planting knowledge in the tropical rain forest. We will ask the people who have worked on the basic survey, such as government staff, other NGOs, and some professional colleagues. Next, we will decide the importance of those gaps in biodiversity information. This project will hire the elder and young walking through the usual trails, ecological gaps and ecotones to survey the most common and successful tree species. The project especially focus more on abundance and distribution of potentially horticultural and medical trees, rather than obtaining a tree list from early to late succession. According to the different topography, disturbance history, and the distance to the crown gaps, the working team will also classify the main vegetation types by its characteristics of habitat patches (Bulloc & Solis-Magallenus 1990). The group will learn the general plantation knowledge by addressing the key habitat classification, which experience will benefit the further economic reproduction project section.

In addition, by studying why those shade or sun plants exist in a specific narrow range of ecological niches, the team will obtain the primary abilities and skills to regulate the successful planting, such as seed dormancy and germination, seedling survivorship, growth rate and mortality of young trees, and its phenology and nutritional status (Augsburger 1984a,b). The team also seeks the optimal and productive methods to plant the different trees under the little disturbed forest shades, or to cultivate them in an artificial environment under the different required growth criteria (Borchert 1980), even though there is still a big shortage for the clear and complete identification and taxonomy research in Lanyu's forest area. Sometimes, even though we lack some information and certainty, we still can operate our approach without major difficulties. Finally, in thinking through necessary knowledge, we will focus on a suspected problem area, and develop a comprehensible and practical method to cover the difficulties, such as promoting seedling survivorship, conducting reproductive seeds, and avoiding inbreeding. Lastly, we will develop a reliable and compatible set of indicators for monitoring and evaluating the biodiversity in the tropics. page head

Part C. Applying the Research in an Economic Sense: To Sustain Biodversity

Biodiversity is a characteristic of its biological resource, and is a measure of the genetic variance contained within that natural resource (Ewel et. al. 1991). It is an asset, or an unknown treasure in the future. The asset may be sold to obtain the income in account right now, but actually, that just simply liquefies the natural resources and makes it unrenewable (Hubbell 1979). This research and economic project shows that the widely-used human economics could avoid the failure of market and play a central role to generate the incentives for preserving biodiversity. Through this project, we try to identify biodiversity as an economic commodity, and capture the social values with an economically efficient method.

Biodiversity is valuable. In abstract, biodiversity of plants and animals may have an intrinsic value to exist, which is independent of their anthropocentric values. In Lanyu, biodiversity also has cultural and aesthetic values. For example, flying fish and the specific trees become great symbols because they are part of the cultural identity and heritage. Biodiversity also supports the function and structure of the ecosystem, which maintains their life system everyday. Although not much is known about the details, but biodiversity gives the option to make better decisions (use it or continue to preserve it) as soon as better information is available. In practice, biodiversity is a valuable source of knowledge in biology. This project will apply our recent knowledge about tree ecology to enhance the plant plantation for the multiple utilities in the future, such as gardening, medicine, scientific research and education.

There is one main difficulty in achieving conservation of biodiversity: that is our society still lacks the market mechanism to reflect the true value of biodiversity. Biodiversity is a public good. That means the property right of biodiversity belongs to the whole society, and not to the landowners or the forest owners. Biological resources are not owned in the sense like private property. Most of time, even if landowners own the biological resources, they still cannot appropriate its market value which gives them the correct and significant price. A market system needs to be created so that the beneficial outcome will be feedback to the local communities. This is the reason for this project to strengthen the local capacity increasing the Yami people's knowledge, attitude and practice , and to care for the biodiversity in Lanyu. Our actions will include establishing appropriate training programs, maximizing the production of some horticultural and medical plants, getting benefits toward the involved communities, and developing a self-sustainable long-term project funding.

A socio-economic survey or market research is necessary to make sure the Yami's social and environmental issues are well understood, before we invest the resource, such as what we consume and the activities we undertake, labor, personnel, supplies, transport, etc. We should have a good sense of the needs of local villagers to ensure the project's feasibility, because this is a basic mean of determining a community's baseline situation and needs. Then we expect to generate the accountable result for producing horticultural and medical plants to supply the specific markets. We hope through this we can bring the economic incentives to the communities to conserve the biodiversity in tropical rain forest. page head

Part D. Management of Tropical Tree Resources and Communities Cooperation

We will analyze the different facets of difficulties and complexities on tropical rain forest management with 10-20 years scale for the expected project period. According to the case studies in the human dimension perspective, local participatory projects have a political and social empowerment motive to place the responsibility on the people of the community. In truly participatory projects, local people do not only do the cash-for-work labor, or attend the project activity. They also must be involved in the assessment, planning, and decision-making process, and have a close consultation with outside experts, researchers, and local authorities. They only succeed if they take the full responsibility for the project themselves.

In protection and regulation aspects, the native managers will encourage the participation of local collectors and villagers to assist the distribution survey for the valuable horticultural plant species. To avoid interrupting the vested groups' interests, the administrative agency should develop sorts of softened strategies. They might gradually limit the old-fashioned harvesting , and on the other hand, they looked forward to changing the consumptive attitude upon marketable trees and herbs through education and communication.

In the biological and ecological aspects, this project focused on the species level for biodiversity conservation (no more in-depth detailed study about population and genetics), the local people should realize that having a steady numbers of tree species is not enough. The community will have to consider a healthy tropical rain forest and a functioning ecosystem. They must response to the entire environmental issue, for example herbicides pollution within watershed, habitats destruction, soil sliding and erosion, disturbance by unappropriate collecting of forest by-product and the like (Lal 1991). All of those factors damage the entire ecosystem, and influence the biodiversity. Therefore a complete management project should consider maintaining the ecological function and evolution process in the whole ecosystem scale. The management system should look beyond certain charismatic species, like beautiful orchids and horticultural trees in this case, which are highly visible by the communities. In this manner, we can treat the certain environmentally sensitive plants as an index to measure the healthy degree in the long natural history temporally and in the entire biodiversity spatially. The island needs to expand supports to further levels, beginning with the rain forest management as a milestone of biodiversity conservation. Based on this point, we need more skillful strategies in the sociology and human dimension to fix the imperfection of economic issues.

In the sociological aspect, the Lanyu people emphasize on the community-based attitude for their conservation action, and this is also reflected in that the green movement originating from the grass-rooted environmental groups is a significant global tendency. This is a strong case to show forest managers that if we are capable of winning over the resident communities, then the ideal planning designs and environmental policies would work longer and better. Otherwise, if we merely believe too much about the general command-and-control regulation, rain forest management will not root deeply in the public and civic society. Furthermore, to actually reward the local communities from the management benefits, it is useful to cooperate with government or other opinion-leading groups for self-supported association. In this economically efficient project, the closed-loop economic system may accelerate progress toward the conservation goal. page head

Part E. Conclusion
Economics and academic research should have a positive role toward biodiversity conservation in tropical rain forest. Local people are responsible for their biological prospecting, as caretakers or stakeholders, if we can find a way to provide the economic incentives to influence the decisions of an operating market. More studies are needed, and human society is in the middle of the road. Only the public-involved project and flexible working strategy aimed at sustaining biodiversity could help us adopt better practices in our changing society.

To achieve the conservation of biodiversity in Lanyu, the economic section in this project (tree production and marketing) will connect the previous research and self-funded budget in a long-term viewpoint. Conservation (both biological and cultural diversity) and sustainable development are the highest level objectives, which are shared by other organization and community members. Under this highlight, a well-designed economic project is needed, even though there is still the uncertainty due to the lack of knowledge about the local tropical rain forest in Lanyu. This approach will combine economics with fundamental research to make a win-win result. It would be a better way to conserve the biodiversity in Lanyu. page head

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