- Sir David Attenborough
HI!!!
So I've never written a blog or anything like this that I actually wanted other people to read...so I may take a while to get good at it, but hopefully you'll bear with me!
I've decided to write this blog because of a combination of things, so today's post is just to explain my reason for writing it in the first place, and then more interesting posts will follow!
Firstly, a lot of you will know that at the moment I'm completing the thesis write-up of my MSc by research at the University of Bristol. This is in Conservation & Ecology - a very broad term. My specific work was based in northwest Madagascar, on the remote Sahamalaza peninsula, studying these guys:
These are blue eyed black lemurs (or Eulemur flavifrons for the scientists), and they are a Critically Endangered primate species, found only in populations on the the Sahamalaza peninsula. Travelling to Madagascar and seeing what it was really like (I swear if someone asks me if there were any talking lions, zebras, hippos, giraffes or lemurs, one more time, I will throttle them), was an experience, and I thought sharing that and how much it has further inspired me to pursue a career in conservation, would be pretty cool. So in a later post, I'll talk more about my time in Madagascar and maybe post a couple of my better wildlife photos (there weren't that many - I'm not one of these would-be photographer types), but for now I want to concentrate on the reasons for starting this blog.
In order to collect my data I stayed at a Research Camp in the Ankarafa Forest, with a number of other MRes students (Helen Drew, Jana van den Abbeele and Sam Penny), our very own Dr Melanie Seiller (Phd) and her wonderful field assistants Gabby Bell and Lisa Knudson. Whilst we were in Sahamalaza we had a lot of evenings to fill, and sometimes the kindle and bananagrams just wasn't enough. There were a number of occasions we ended up talking about what we could actually do to help in Sahamalaza - research is all very well and good, but even if it gets published, what are the actual practical consequence? Sadly, too often, not very much. So we talked about getting our various associated zoos and universities and so on involved, and then we came back to the UK and got part-time jobs, or full time jobs, had thesis' to write, some of us went swanning off to south east Asia, whilst others decided to give themselves a wedding to plan by getting proposed to (nice one Gabster). So basically, and I'm just as much to blame here as anyone else, we haven't done that much (except maybe Melanie who managed to finish her Phd, travel back to Madagascar for an IUCN conference, and then to Mexico for an IPS conference), and this leads me into the main point behind this blog:
AWARENESS!!!
A lot people think they are aware of 'conservation' issues, but when it really comes down to it, most people may be able to name a couple of conservation NGOs or an endangered species or two, or have the tendency to be a bit self-righteous about the whole thing, but they don't really have a clue about the environmental programs being run, the realities and severity of the situation, and the ways in which they can potentially help.
I went to the 5th Gashaka Field Day today, a day of free lectures in UCL's Anthropology Department, focused on the primate conservation work being undertaken in Nigeria's Gashaka Gumti National Park, as well as touching on some other conservation issues in West Africa. Again, I'm going to talk about this in more detail in a later post, but the main thing I got from the talks today was this. That often, even among academics who undertake 'conservation research', the focus is much more on publishing papers, presenting workshops and perhaps developing some sort of mitigation plan on paper. In other words TALKING about the problem, but not DOING anything about it. This is something I've sort of known for a while, but it really hit home today, and I was sitting in that lecture theater thinking; What can I do about it? Right now, today, how can I help? Ideally, I'd fly off to Africa tomorrow and go all Dianne Fossey (Gorillas in the Mist)...but you need money for that, and an ability to drop everything and just pick up and go, and these are both things I unfortunately lack. The work I'm doing in my MRes will provide useful information, that I'm confident will actually put positive consequences into actions, and one day I'd like to do a Phd, which I would be able to ensure produces information that can actually be used to help...but I want to do something right now...I don't want to just sit at my desk and get increasingly angry about the stupidity of the human race...
In almost every talk today, there seemed to be a focus on getting people involved and creating awareness. This was often in terms of local populations; communities in developing regions where many of these conservation programs are underway. However, I think getting people here involved, in the UK and the Western 'civilized' world, is just as important (if not more so - we do have all the money, and we do consume the most after all). I also think its important for people to know about the environmental, wildlife and conservation issues occurring on their front door step here in the UK.
So I've decided to create this blog, so that I can spread awareness of the many many conservation issues, projects and organizations around. I'm just going to post up interesting websites, articles, pictures, etc., as and when I find them, to keep you all informed. There's a lot of cool information about the natural world out there, and there should be more being done to make it accessible to everybody...
People should care about nature and the environment and the 7,999,999 other species that have every right to share this planet with us...but they need to be told what it is they are supposed to be caring about first; So that's what I can do, right here, right now.
Ellie x
No comments:
Post a Comment