From Animal Protection toward Sociology in Wildlife Management
Green Sea Turtle in Lanyu, Taiwan
By reviewing the wildlife management history in US and according to the classified
five stages in its evolution: there are protection phase, regulation phase, biological
phase, ecological phase, and sociological phase. In my experience, I would identify
a wildlife management project with these five aspects. I try to reflect a case study
about sea turtle I involved before, and analyze the different facets in difficulties
and complexities on wildlife management, especially human dimension perspective.
The case I knew happened in a small island, Lanyu,
which is off the eastern Taiwan shore in Asia. There is an endangered population
of green sea turtles there, which feed and migrate between the Pacific ocean nearby
and lay eggs on the unspoiled seashore in Lanyu island. During that period, I was
a research assistant studying the sea turtle in the local scale.
|
|
|
In protection and regulation aspects, we encouraged the participation of local friends to assist the scientific survey about the population dynamics of sea turtle. We looked forward to changing the traditional consumptive attitude upon sea turtle through education and communication. After the survey by understanding the importance of reproductive seashore of sea turtle, they limited the unproper recreational activities, and closed off either recreational or general vehicle access to reduce the external threats.
But in the biological and ecological aspects, although this project focused on species conservation (only sea turtle is involved), they should realize having an increasing numbers of sea turtle was not enough. The local people had to consider a healthy turtle population and a functioning ecosystem. They had to response to the entire marine environmental issue, for example toxic pollution, habitats destruction, and slaughter in fisheries and the like. Because all of these damaged the entire ecosystem, and influenced the turtle’s fitness very much. So a complete management project should consider to maintain the ecological function and evolution process in the whole ecosystem scale, not merely care about certain specific population. Even though, some charismatic species, like sea turtle in this case, are highly visible by the public, government officials, and international society. In this meaning, we can treat turtle as an index or key species to measure the healthy degree in the long natural history temporally and in the entire biodiversity spatially. For example, the active population of turtle needs high-qualitied environment, including sensitive seashore ecotone, good coral reef in the vicinity and the integrity of traveling routes which would connect the different types of habitats. They need to seek the expanding supports in further levels, and we are glad to see their wildlife management as a starting milestone of ecosystem conservation. Based on this point, we need more skillful strategies in sociology and human dimension to support further progressive planning.
In sociological aspect, the Lanyu people emphasized on the community-based attitude for their conservation action, and this also reflected that the green movement originating from the grass-rooted environmental groups was a significant global tendency. Their case implies strongly to the wildlife managers that unless we are capable to win over the resident communities, then the ideal designs and policies could probably work longer; otherwise, if we merely believe too much about the general command-and-control regulation, wildlife management will not root deeply in the public and civic society at all. Furthermore, to actually reward the local communities from the management benefits, it maybe useful to cooperate with government or other opinion-leading groups. Even a straight forward money-charge or deposit-refund system would transfer the advantage to their group, either interest or geographical communities. That kind of closed-loop economic system may accelerate progress toward their management goal.
Being a human is not always an original sin to deteriorate the earth. Modern society can, and should act a positive role toward our natural resource, like caretaker or stakeholder. It is a long way to go, and human society is on the middle of the road. Only the case-by-case analysis about wildlife management could help us adopt better practices in our changing society.
 |
A Biodiversity Conservation Project in Tropical Rain Forest in Lanyu |
Go to see other cases in Sea Turtle Conservation
| Sea Turtles in the U.S. - six species of sea turtles under the Endangered Species Act. |
| Sea Turtle Conservation Program - Florida, USA |
| Sea Turtle Research Program - Texas A&M University at Galveston |
| Sea Turtle Satellite Tracking - the movements of the turtles in the Gulf of Mexico. |
| Marine Turtles in Australia - information from Environment Australia Office of Protected Species |
| EuroTurtle - extensive sea turtle biology and conservation information. |
| Cayman Islands Turtle Farm - Story on Grand Cayman Island in the British West Indies. |
| Discovery Channel- the witness Costa Rica's Leatherback babies' fight for life. |