Sirenian Conservation: Issues and Strategies in Developing Countries

27. The Role of Scientists in Sirenian Conservation in Developing Countries

27 The Role of Scientists in Sirenian Conservation in Developing Countries Ellen M. Hines, Daryl Domning, Lemnuel V. Aragones, Miriam Marmontel, Antonio A. Mignucci-Giannoni, and John E. Reynolds III Based on the increasing impact of humans on a species’ habitat and that species’ small and/or decreasing population , at a certain point in scientific research, a project has to shift its priorities from biological assessment to conservation . While research to establish baseline information about a species is rarely complete, plans for conservation and management of an endangered species and its habitat are too crucial to delay pending further data. As we have seen numerous times in previous chapters, this plan must consider the ecological, social, cultural and economic influences both inside and outside protected areas1. More important than planning and policy is the need to implement action that is embraceable by stakeholders, realistically enforceable, and ultimately sustainable2. Pressures from the rapidly rising human population in coastal, marine, and fluvial regions in developing countries have had a significant impact on resources3. Sirenians are threatened by incidental takes in fishing operations and recreation activities, habitat loss, pollution , direct take (legal and illegal), dams, and coastal development. The cumulative impact of these activities is largely unknown4. To assess these impacts accurately, the complicated and intertwined events, both modern and historic, that cause wildlife extinctions cannot be ignored. Fossil records show extinctions going back millions of years, but many of the extinctions over the last 12,000 years were caused primarily by humans. At present, unprecedented rates of extinction are occurring, and it is projected that they will accelerate over the next 25–30 years5. The collective environmental conscience about species extinctions has grown over the last century6. The demise of Atlantic gray whales in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was noted only long after the fact7. Domning8 found warnings of species depletion in government reports on Steller’s sea cows and Amazonian manatees in the late 1700s, though these kinds of concerns were not considered important enough to change policies or activities until much later. Though endangered species legislation and policy exist today in most countries, they alone will not prevent extinctions. To create conservation-oriented strategies , many researchers maintain that awareness of the social, economic, and political causes needs to become integrated with knowledge of the natural and life history of these animals9. Strategies need to address not only traditional biological and ethological research but also the realities of economic and cultural limitations, inadequate resources, the frustrations and insecurity of politics, agency complexities and conflicts, the sluggishness of social change, and the ambiguities of communication10 . Accounts by scientists, who have become involved with conservation as their subjects have become endangered , show how they have been thrust into the center of these issues11. The survival of sirenians is jeopardized by the depletion and degradation of aquatic resources, economic insecurity, complicated government jurisdictions , uncertain funding for research and the implementation of conservation measures, a rapidly increasing human population, and consequential changes in social and economic roles within coastal communities. Sirenians are perfect examples of species caught in the middle of this anthropogenic maelstrom. Dugongs originally had a huge range throughout the tropics and subtropics of most of the Eastern Hemisphere. But outside of Australia, the country with the largest estimated dugong population today, dugongs now survive only in fragmented populations. Neither the number of dugongs remaining in most of these local populations nor the extent of their remaining habitat is known except for incidental sightings and the reports of fishers12. How many populations of dugongs have grown isolated from 244 Section III: Strategies for Conservation-Oriented Science each other as a result of anthropogenic influences and have already become extirpated? Similar declines of numbers and increasing patchiness of distribution are reasonably well documented for the Antillean subspecies of the West Indian manatee13 and suspected for West African and Amazonian manatees14 . A further role for scientists is to be involved in the conservation, natural resources management, and environmental planning stages. We emphasize the importance of collaborating with scientists from various pertinent fields to encompass an interdisciplinary approach: not just biologists, but sociologists, geographers, economists , and anthropologists, to mention a few. The role of scientists is easily overlooked in developing countries; they are often approached by governments only when environmental problems are already irreversible or populations of threatened or endangered species are already in serious decline. The reality in developing countries is that most mandated government agencies do not have the technical, economic, social, and...