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Crane Conservation
| Date: |
24 November 2002 12:00 |
| Producer: |
Victoria Cullinan
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
This is a sight few South Africans will be able to see - the Wattled Crane in its natural habitat. Despite its size and regal appearance, the Wattled Crane has experienced such a catastrophic decline in numbers in the last few decades it is now listed as critically endangered.
Lindy: 'That's the most endangered you can get - you're kind of heading for extinction. We've only got 230 or 240 birds left in the wild in South Africa. So we're really at the end of the line here.'
Zoologist Lindy Rodwell knows a lot about cranes. She has spent the last 11 years trying to preserve them and their habitat.
Lindy: 'The interesting thing about cranes is that they imprint on people when they're hand-reared. And what that means is that if a crane is reared by a chicken, it thinks it's a chicken; if it's reared by a person, it thinks it's a person. And people might think 'so what, it looks like a crane, it's fine'. But when it becomes sexually mature and starts looking for a mate, it looks at what's been rearing it. So it will look at a chicken. Or if it's been reared by a person, it will say 'hey' to its keeper.'
So the way to get around this is to make sure the cranes are imprinted correctly. The crane mom has got to wear a costume so that she looks and sounds like a crane.
This comical-looking scheme is only a small part of a nationwide project to save the crane species in South Africa. Thanks to the efforts of Lindy and a network of crane conservationists, crane numbers have largely stabilised in this country. But the rest of Africa is still in trouble. Lindy believes that what works in South Africa can also work beyond our borders.
Last month Lindy was made a laureate of the prestigious Rolex Awards for Enterprise. Worth about R1-million, the prize was awarded for an ambitious trans-continental project that will eventually include 11 African countries.
The project aims to protect the habitat of the Wattled Crane. If it succeeds, it will impact on thousands of people's lives throughout Africa.
Lindy: 'If you save the Wattled Crane and you save the wetland in which it lives, you're obviously saving that habitat for everything else that lives in it.'
In Africa, the decline in crane numbers means more than the loss of a bird species. It is the alarm signal of the destruction of ecosystems upon which thousands of animals and people depend.
Lindy: 'The flood plains in Africa where the birds live are in a lot of trouble. Thousands and thousands of people who live on those flood plains are really now struggling to survive in what were once abundant systems.'
Lindy knows this because last year she coordinated an aerial survey in four other countries in the Southern African region. The results were shocking. They show that crane numbers have decreased by over 50%.
Lindy: 'We found that there are between 7 000 and 8 000 birds. This is significantly down from the 13 000 to 14 000 birds that were estimated to be the population about 20 years ago.'
The Wattled Crane is the largest and rarest of the African crane species. It is the most wetland dependent and, because it is so sensitive to the least alteration in its habitat, it has been called an indicator species. Which means it shows how healthy or unhealthy the wetlands are.
Wetlands act as a sponge and are an important source of groundwater. Many of the wetland systems of Southern Africa have been degraded, either through pollution or development.
Zaa: 'So what would be the final stages of degradation?'
Lindy: 'I think what we can see here in the lower reaches of this wetland - we're pretty much in the final stages. There is virtually no wetland left. It's been drained and ploughed and planted in. An all you've got is this little canal that is flowing through. If the wetland further up is also degraded, eventually this river will dry up.'
And unless it is rehabilitated, it will ?? probably become eroded. So what is good for cranes is good for people.
The main aim of the African Crane Project is to make crane conservation a people's issue and to motivate local communities to be responsible for their own environment.
Sampson Pakathi is a field worker for the South African Crane Working Group.
Lindy: 'We feel it is really, really important to build a skills and knowledge base amongst local people. You want the people that are living in and around a wetland to understand the value of that wetland. And then really, they can then also become an advocacy group for the protection of that wetland. If you get people that say we want our wetland protected because it is good for us, that is enormously powerful.'
Zaa: 'Now, you're a young guy. A lot of the farm workers are older than you. Do they listen to you?'
Sampson: 'What I do when I go to the farm workers - before starting to talk about cranes I first ask them what do they know, and talk to them and involve them. And in that way they will listen to you and respect you.'
Sampson is passionate about his work. He grew up in Wakkerstroom at the foothills of the Drakensberg Mountains. Wakkerstroom has long been famous for its wetlands and abundance of bird species, especially cranes.
Sampson: 'Most of the people, it is unbelievable to them to hear that the Blue Crane is our national bird. They are proud of having cranes, especially the national bird of South Africa, being around them.'
With such a large expanse of land to cover, it is virtually impossible for one person to monitor and assess the status of the crane population. So the farmers and farm labourers are the eyes and ears of crane conservation.
Ninety nine percent of all the cranes in South Africa occur on private land. In order to protect their habitat it is essential to get the landowners to become part of the conservation programme.
Apart from the destruction of their breeding grounds, their numbers have been decimated by power line collisions and poisoning - either deliberate or accidental. Five years ago Lindy introduced the Crane Custodian Programme.
Lindy: 'You get very involved farmers that make a significant contribution to crane conservation - and it really does just say this person has made a significant contribution to crane conservation and applauds the role of that particular farmer.'
Cranes and wetlands don't observe man-made political boundaries. So Lindy realised, for the Crane Project to work properly, she had to move it beyond the borders of South Africa.
The Wattled Crane's largest wetland habitat lies in South Central Africa in a vast network of riverine systems that spans 10 countries. It runs from west to east across the continent and ends in the Zambezi delta in Mozambique.
At the heart of the Wattled Crane range are the Kafue flats in Zambia. The last estimates show that Wattled Crane numbers in the Kafue have declined by up to 65%.
Ben Kamweneshe: 'If you see these birds in this particular area at this moment and next time you visit that area some years later and you don't find them, you realise something must have happened to this ecosystem.
Biologist Ben Kamweneshe is in charge of the Zambia Crane and Wetland Project. The project is based in the Kafue flood plains, an area that is famous for its abundance of wild life. Thirty years ago the Teschtesch dam was built, upstream from the flats.
Lindy: 'The waters coming down the rivers are the life blood of those flood plains. Over millennia those flood plains have developed to be completely dependent on the annual flood coming down these rivers. And what a dam does is it literally stops the flow.'
Over time, the disruption of the annual flood cycles has had an enormous impact on the flood plains. Water released in the wrong season disrupts breeding patterns of much of the bird and fish life, including the Wattled Crane.
What affects the animal and bird life, affects the people too. One hundred and thirty thousand people are dependent on the resources of the Kafue flats.
Ben: 'We are trying to involve all members of the community that live in those wildlife areas to get involved in conservation. Conservation - number one - is that we would like to encourage more eco-tourism. And that is one way of generating money that goes back into the community for their development.'
A conservation issue is turned into a social issue - and this is where Lindy and the African Crane Project have a vital role to play. With the money from the Rolex Awards and funds she raises from the corporate sector, Lindy aims to link and assist crane and wetland projects in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Mozambique.
Lindy: 'There is such important value in networking - in ensuring that research results coming out of Zambia or Botswana or Mozambique are shared amongst the team. What we are really aiming to do now in collaboration with the International Crane Foundation is to network all the initiatives. And we hope to encourage a really effective skilled network of people working in sub-Saharan Africa on the Wattled Crane.'
Part of the plan is to organise regular workshops involving experts from all four countries. Eventually Lindy and her team hope to expand the project to 11 countries in Africa, all the way up to Ethiopia.
Lindy: 'The Africa programme I think is enormously exciting. I think it's got a tremendous future. We are really only just beginning and eventually what we would like to see is a partnership between all 11 Wattled Crane states in sub-Saharan Africa - working together, making decisions together, deciding where to go in future, what is important and how we are going to look at water wetlands and cranes in Africa.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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