In today’s origin story, Dr. Colin Chapman joined us over Zoom from his home on Vancouver Island to talk about, quote, “A Few Fun Things I have Learned Studying Primates".
Colin Chapman has a whole bunch of titles that are worth a quick once over: he is a Killam Research Fellow, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a fellow at Humboldt Foundation, a Wilson Fellow, holds an Office of an Academician, Northwest University, Xi’an, China and is a Conservation Fellow with the Wildlife Conservation Society. He’s also received a humanitarian award from the Velan Foundation.
Colin recently moved to Vancouver Island University to spend more time on his conservation efforts in and around Kibale National Park Uganda, where he’s spent so many of his years as one of the world’s most prominent primatologists.
In the lecture to follow, Colin unpacks what he’s learned about primate population dynamics over 34 plus years at Kibale. He talks about deforestation, bushmeat hunting and climate change, and importantly how research can allow us to make predictions about how these anthropogenic threats might affect primates in the future.
Colin closes with a series of take home messages like how it’s ok to make mistakes along the way, how scientists in more developed nations should use our privilege to focus on capacity building to support researchers in less fortunate circumstances, and why making sure to have fun is the key to longevity as a researcher.
Other topics that come up include:
- health and conservation and the mobile health clinic he spearheaded to support local communities in Uganda
- how primate foraging might actually make the food landscape worse for themselves over time
- how colobus biomass is tightly linked to plant food quality
- while at the same time global change can lead to declines in food quality (paywall) for those very same primates
- yet their populations may not suffer the dramatic losses we expect
For anyone interested in hearing more from Colin, he was also on the podcast in Episode 39, where I asked him to reflect on then 26 years of research and conservation at Kibale.
We hope you enjoy this take from one of the world's leading primate scientists!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Andrew MacIntosh (00:00):
Welcome to the primate caste origins.
Today's origin story is allabout changes in primate
populations, with primatologist,conservation, biologist and
humanitarian Dr Colin Chapman.
Well hello everyone and onceagain glad to have you back in
(00:40):
the audience for this episode ofthe primate caste origins,
where we hear from experts inthe field of primatology and
beyond about how they gotstarted and became some of the
most influential folks around.
I'm your host, andrew McIntosh,from Kyoto University's
Wildlife Research Center, andthis episode is taken from our
International PrimatologyLecture Series Past, present and
(01:00):
Future Perspectives of thefield.
This is the brainchild of DrMichael Huffman and, like our
normal programming, is broughtto you by PsyCast.
The main goal of the lectureseries is to share the origin
stories of experiencedpractitioners of primatology and
related fields.
To do that, mike Huffman'sinvited a revolving door of
renowned scientists to join uson the program and share their
(01:21):
own stories with us.
The primate caste origins isour way of sharing those stories
right here on the podcast.
Unlike our normal interviewformat, these lectures are being
done as part of our PsyCastseminar in Science Communication
, which is aimed at gradstudents here in the primatology
and wildlife science program atKyoto University.
So what you will hear is alecture that was recorded in
(01:43):
Zoom and generally includesslides, so there may be
references to visual aids thatare not available in audio only
format.
But for anyone wishing to seethe speakers presenting their
talks, we invite you to checkthose out on the PsyCast TV
YouTube channel.
In today's lecture, dr ColinChapman joined us over Zoom from
his home on Vancouver Island,canada, to talk about I quote A
(02:04):
few fun things I have learnedstudying primates.
Colin Chapman has a whole bunchof titles that are worth a
quick once over.
He's a Kilham Research Fellow,a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Canada, a Fellow at HumboldtFoundation, a Wilson Fellow,
holds an office of anacademician at Northwestern
University, xi'an, china, and isa conservation fellow with the
(02:25):
Wildlife Conservation Society.
He's also received ahumanitarian award from the
Vellan Foundation.
Colin recently moved toVancouver Island University to
spend more time on hisconservation efforts in and
around Kibali National Park,uganda, where he spent so many
of his years as one of the mostprominent primatologists in the
world.
(02:45):
In the lecture to follow, colinunpacked what he's learned about
primate population dynamicsover 34-plus years at Kibali.
He talks about deforestation,bushmeat hunting and climate
change and, importantly, howresearch can allow us to make
predictions about how theseanthropogenic threats might
affect primates in the future.
Colin closes with a series oftake-home messages like how it's
(03:08):
OK to make mistakes along theway, how scientists in more
developed nations should use ourprivilege to focus on
capacity-building to supportresearchers in less fortunate
circumstances, and why makingsure to have fun is the key to
longevity as a researcher.
I'll leave the rest of it tohim in a second, but I just want
to mention that we also hadColin on the podcast in episode
(03:28):
39, where I asked him to reflecton then 26 years of research
and conservation at Kibali.
So I think these are nicecompanion pieces, one just about
a decade on from the other.
So, as always, here is MikeHuffman introducing our speaker
to get us started.
Michael Huffman (03:43):
Colin, welcome.
It's always a pleasure to seeyou, to talk with you and to
work with you, as we have manytimes over the years.
The first time I met you, Ithink, was when we were both in
Canada I don't know if it wasEdminton, but it was probably in
Edmonton.
I think you were a master'sstudent of Linda Fetigans and I
(04:08):
was collaborating with her onmany things.
So I would visit often and Istill remember that day.
Linda was very proud tointroduce you to me and I was
very happy to meet you, ofcourse, and that started things
off, which is probably many,many years back now.
But as the introduction in thetext that you were all sent says
(04:36):
all about the differentactivities Colin is involved in
we'll hear a lot about that inhis presentation.
But he has many fellows,different statuses, in many
countries around the world,which really speaks to his
international stance and hisinternational standing.
But on top of all the fellowsand the fellowships he's had,
(05:00):
he's a really great fellow and Ithink that's what's special
about this talk today.
I'm very happy for all of youto have a chance to get to know
Colin Chapman and the work thathe's done.
With that embarrassment to you.
I'll hand it over to you, colin.
The show is yours.
Colin Chapman (05:20):
Okay, mike, that wasn't so embarrassing.
I knew you had a lot moreembarrassing stories you could
say so.
Thank you very much.
So for me it's tonight, it'snot night to a lot of people,
but I'd like to basically tellyou a few fun things I've
learned over the years studyingprivates.
So this is a brief kind ofoutline of what I'm gonna call
(05:44):
my journey.
I'm gonna give you a very briefhistory of kind of the journey
because I'm not really toointerested in myself so I'm not
gonna go into detail.
Then I'm gonna tell you whatmotivated my research and what
continues to motivate myresearch, and that's something I
think is important.
And then I'll tell you aboutsomething like my 34 years of
(06:05):
trying to understand whatdetermines primary abundance,
and obviously that has importantconservation implications.
And then what I think is themost important part of the talk,
I'm gonna talk about some funlessons I've learned over the
years.
So if you could think of a cityin the world that's furthest
from primates, you probablywould think of Edmonton, alberta
(06:26):
, canada.
And that's where I come fromand I always liked watching
animals and basically my lifeinvolved me just following that
passion.
So when I was in kind of mythird year of undergrad I got a
summer project to understandwhat determines spruce grass
population size, and that basicquestion has stuck with me for
(06:51):
all my career and that'sbasically what I'll be talking
about throughout kind of thetalk today.
When I finished my undergrad, Igot a grant from the Canadian
government to travel fromEdmonton, alberta, all the way
down into Central America, andthe idea was to look for
possible primary research studysites that I could work on from
(07:13):
my degree.
There is no way in the worldthat the Canadian government
today gave me such a grant, andnor were they any university
allowed me to do that sort oftravel, but it was a great
adventure.
I traveled through Guatemalathrough the height of its civil
war.
I survived a number of ventures, which I will not tell you
(07:33):
about because a lot of them areembarrassing, but I made it and
that was a very formativeepisode when, basically, I was
just finishing an undergrad.
That leads to what motivates myresearch.
So during my trips I saw theplight of many priori
populations and this is whatmotivated my research over the
(07:55):
next decade.
So I saw scenes like thisthroughout Mexico, guatemala, et
cetera.
Well, in 1962, so basicallyjust after I was born a French
researcher said unfortunately,at the very moment when we are
becoming aware of the uniquenessof primates, we are also
realizing how precarious is thefuture of the primates and to
(08:17):
what point competition withindustrial man is threatening
their survival.
We're not to say can we remainunmoved in this annihilation?
And the answer is yes, we wereunmoved.
Nothing much happened for 20 to30 years after that statement
was made.
It was only in the 1980, thejournal Conservation Biology
(08:37):
started and the field onlygained momentum in the 1990s.
For many of you that's gonna behard to believe because there
are now so many differentjournals et cetera, but the
field is very young.
So what is the situation now?
So this is an image of my fieldsite in Kibale National Park in
Uganda, and it's a beautiful,pristine rainforest that's
(09:01):
wonderful to work in.
This is an image that's comingup of another tropical
rainforest and this is whatforest could look like A great
contrast.
In general, about 60 millionhectares of tropical forest was
lost between the year 2000 and2019.
So the millions of hectares isjust too abstract for you to be.
(09:23):
I can think of a hectare.
It's about the size of footballfield.
What this equates to is aboutthe size of the island of
Madagascar, or twice the size ofJapan.
So huge areas are lost.
In less than 20 years, thistropical forest would have
supported something like 15million primates.
This is a nice Japanese macaque, but those we literally meant
(09:47):
the death of 15 million primates.
I think a picture is worth amore than a thousand words, so
I'll give you a couple picturesof deforestation.
This is the Borneo from 1950 to2020.
And, of course, greenrepresents forest, yellow
represents deforestation and youcan see the picture for
yourself.
This is an image coming up ofIvory Coast 1990 and just
(10:13):
basically, 25 years later,there's almost nothing left.
This is Brazil, which is, ofcourse, got the huge Amazon
rainforest still mostly left,but I'd like to point out the
Atlantic forest, so the forestto the lower half of the slide
is basically gone.
So this deforestation of thetropics releases that giant
(10:38):
number of metric tons of carbon,which is six times the amount
of carbon released by all thecars and trucks in Canada in a
year.
So that really shows you howimportant these forests are for
climate change and carbon recorcarbon sequestration.
These estimates do not involvethe loss from bushmeat hunting.
This is an image from the backof a truck in Congo.
(10:59):
You can see primates kind oflined in the back of the truck.
This is an image, basically,that shows a chimpanzee.
We tried to get a picture justof the chimpanzee but the kids
weren't to get in the way andthat chimpanzee was destined for
the stoopod.
This is an image of how youtypically buy bushmeat in Africa
(11:19):
.
It's often smoked, because theyhave to smoke the meat to get
it to the market and this is howyou'd often buy it.
This does not involve notmention the kind of collateral
damage.
This is a chimpanzee that'slost her fingers because they
were caught on a snare, and thisoccurs time and time again.
The animal steps in the snare,pulls their hand away from it
(11:42):
and can lose their fingers.
Let's put this in perspective,though I always like to think
about things in a broaderperspective.
So the bushmeat harvested fromCentral Africa represents about
two million tons of bushmeat, sothis is about five million
cattle, so a huge number of cows, or let's put it in terms of
(12:03):
hamburgers, who are Lordhamburgers, that's 77 billion
hamburgers.
But an interesting kind ofcomparison is the people in the
US eat that many hamburgers injust 50 days.
So, yes, a lot of meat beingharvested, but not a lot of meat
compared to what people aretaking out of basically eating
(12:23):
in the United States.
This estimate does not involvethe what's going to happen with
climate change and you'll get acouple of quick slides in a row.
So the earth climate change isworn by about one degree in the
past 100 years.
Some estimates say it'll climatewill warm by 4.5 in this
century.
This year is the hottest yearever recorded to date, so this
(12:49):
is predicted warming.
So you're going to see fourslides quite in a row.
This is areas that arepredicted to warm.
So the Himalayas, for example,is going to predicted to warm a
lot.
So look at the areas and thenlook at your kind of favorite
private area and you can compareit.
The next slide will be thenumber of species found in an
(13:15):
area.
So you might have noticed thatclimate change in the Congo is
not going to be too bad.
So that's great, and there'slots of species there.
Great Madagascar, not the same.
Climate change is going to behigh and there's lots of species
.
So, again, this is thepredicted climate warming.
These are the number ofendangered species.
(13:36):
So, again, madagascar is goingto be a critical area for
private conservation, as willSouthwest China, places like
Borneo, I'd like to kind ofemphasize that people often talk
about climate change in termsof temperature.
What I predict is probably moreimportant for primates is what's
(13:57):
going to happen in terms ofprecipitation.
So areas such as the EucatainPeninsula, costa Rica, those
sorts of areas which are alreadydry, are predicted to become
even drier.
So this is going to be aparticularly severe problem for
many primate regions and thatleads to a number of scary
predictions.
So this is one scary predictionand there's so many scary
(14:19):
predictions out there, but thisis a prediction that was made by
some tropical ecologists that Ireally respect.
They suggest that 75% of alltropical forests presented in
the year 2001 will experiencetemperatures that are higher
than what presently supportsclose up canopy forests by the
(14:40):
term of the century.
So that's a pretty scaryprediction.
So let's move on to, kind of,my last 30, 34 years trying to
understand what's during primaryabundance and it's hard to put
this in a few slides, but let'sgo for it.
So my research has been kind offocused on change and I don't
(15:03):
want to just document change orunderstand and predict it.
If you document change, you cansay, oh, we lost a bunch of
primates.
If you understand change, youcan say, oh, we lost a bunch of
primates because they werehunted or because of climate
change.
If we can predict it, we cansay we will lose a bunch of
primates because of this factorand we can then make
(15:27):
modifications in whatever we'redoing, our conservation and
management strategies, toprevent that.
So I'm always trying to predictchange and I think that's
really important.
So I'm going to talk aboutchange in terms of forest change
, climate change and the impactof primary populations.
So in 1989, as a young postdoc,I went to Uganda.
(15:52):
So that's in East Africa.
I went to Kibola National Park,which is in the West, and
that's where, basically, I fellin love with the place, that
I've been there ever since.
During that first year Ibasically set up a series of
vegetation plots and I've beenmonitoring those vegetation
plots ever since ever, a fewyears until two years ago.
With that data I've been ableto say how the forest has been
(16:16):
changing and I can say thatprimates themselves are
generating change.
So this is an image of a blackand white colobus eating flowers
in a plant.
If you eat all the flowers, theplant can't set fruit.
And so this is the Marquainiadensity over time, basically
(16:36):
1989 to 2021.
And you can see a generaldecline.
Marquainia is one of thebiggest food plants that the
colobus like.
What's happened is basicallythey've eaten all the flowers,
feed the flowers.
The plant doesn't set fruit.
If it doesn't set fruit, youbasically have no seeds and the
(16:57):
plant can slowly decline becauseadults are not replaced.
If you go into the neighboringkind of villages where
Marquainia is found in forestfragments and there's no
primates, you find Marquainiafruiting, flowering and lots of
seedlings, so primates arebasically causing the demise of
(17:18):
their own forest.
In Kibali also.
The forest is changing becauseof elephants.
Elephants are increasing inabundance.
In Africa in general, elephantsare declining, but in Kibali
this is perfect Elephant numbersare increasing.
This is because Kibali's anicely established national park
(17:41):
and we're getting elephantimmigration actually.
So if elephant numbers increase, what happens is they change
the forest.
Elephants will eat the bark offof trees, such as the animals
doing here.
They trample seedlings, theybasically damage the tree
component of the forest quitesignificantly and they can shift
the forest from being forest tomore of a sanitary system.
(18:05):
So elephants and primates arechanging.
What about climate change?
So in 1989, I never set out tostudy climate change, but I
studied climate and I studiedchange, so I can put the two
together.
We're really talking aboutclimate change back in 1989.
(18:29):
So Kibali's climate is changing.
It's receiving 300 millimetersmore rainfall a year than the
start of the century.
This is an image of therainfall change over time.
Kebally is also experiencedless frequent droughts and
earlier on since the rainyseason, and its temperature has
increased by about 1.1 degrees.
It's monthly temperature.
(18:49):
We've been able to show that itinfluences plant chemistry.
So there's really some elegantgreenhouse experiments that
basically look at the effect ofincreasing temperature using
rainfall and increasing carbondioxide on plant chemistry.
So in a greenhouse you canchange the temperature, you can
change the rainfall by addingmore water or you can seal the
(19:11):
whole greenhouse and increasecarbon dioxide and if you do
that in a greenhouse, you findthat plants decrease the amount
of protein they produce, theincrease the amount of fiber
they produce and the increasethe amount of tannins they
produce.
Tannins are a secondarycompound that binds proteins, so
it takes basically proteinsaway from the animals.
(19:33):
So what collaborate is and I,particularly Jessica Rothman and
I demonstrated was that,comparing leaf chemistry from
1994 to 2009, what happened inthe fields and not in the green
house?
Actual trees growing in thefield the monkeys are eating,
the fiber content wereincreasing, the protein content
(19:55):
were decreasing.
This means the quality of thefood was declined.
So what's the impact of this onprimates?
So I studied red colobus andblack and white colobus and we
studied them at a series oflocations throughout Kibali and
I'm just going to point out oneparticular location, the Durr
site, which is in the middle ofthe park.
It's a beautiful, pristine,riverine forest, not much human
(20:19):
intervention.
But notice the first two bars.
Those are the colobinepopulations.
So I was trying to understandwhat determined their abundance.
So I said, okay, well, let'scorrelate colobus biomass to the
cumulative DbH of food trees.
Dbh is diamond and breast type,so cumulative size of the food
trees and there's a really nicerelationship, except for the
(20:42):
Durr river site.
So it seems like, well, there'slots of food, there's not many
monkeys.
So I'll come back to this point.
And at the end of the talkearly on I said oh, maybe it's
predation.
Population got decimated bypredation or a disease came
through and I published that inthe Journal of Primates in 1999.
(21:03):
And then I went yeah, I'm kindof throwing out a data point,
but I don't have very many datapoints.
Well, colobines have differentdigestices than most primates.
They can basically digest fibermatter.
They have a more kind ofsaturated forest of it.
So I went back and I went and Ilooked at the biomass again.
(21:27):
So same data for four of thesites versus the quality of the
food.
But the food that's availableis very low protein and very
high fiber.
So what I suggested was hey,you know, quality is an added
everything and quantity iseverything.
Quality matters.
So I spent the next I can'tremember some like 25 years
(21:50):
collecting a series of otherpoints and if I was a manager,
and I went to them and said Ihave four data points and you
should change your managementplan because of these four data
points hopefully they're laughat me.
So I collected all these datapoints and basically I showed
that I can explain predict callsby us based on the quality of
(22:11):
the food, and I explain it.
87% of the biomass I canexplain.
So also looked at changingfruiting pattern.
So the fruit of, or is it goingto be, what's happening with
climate change?
What we showed is that,remember, average rainfall is
increasing in Heboly.
With average rainfall you getbasically more clouds.
(22:32):
With more clouds you get lessripe fruit.
So the rainfall is getting more, the fruit is getting less.
We've also shown that wetconditions are parasite eggs
resist longer and thus increaseinfections.
So basically it's becoming amore disease written environment
.
In many ways, someoneindependent of climate change.
(22:55):
We've also shown that we knowthat people are increasing
coming into contact withprimates and this leads to
parasite transmission.
We've shown this conclusionwith E Coli and with other guest
or guest parasites.
Okay, so we have some forestchange, climate change.
What's the primary populationdoing?
This is kind of a punch line.
This is the exciting part.
(23:16):
So what's the?
What are the primates doing?
So forest changing in the waythat primates should not like.
The climate's changingincreasing negative quality
foods, more parasiteseverything's getting worse.
What are the primates are doing?
They're doing just fine.
You know this is the differentprimary populations from 1996 to
(23:40):
almost present, just last yearand what you see is basically
the primates are oscillating alittle bit.
That's probably due topartially sampling error, but
the primates are doing just fine, so they are being flexible in
their responses.
What's happening?
I need another few years tofigure it out, but I'll figure
(24:02):
it out.
So this is the punch line.
The primates population shouldbe declining so that food is
getting scarce, less nutritiousand they have more diseases, but
they're more stable.
This kind of leads to the funpart of the thing.
We're going to have some of thefun lessons I've learned, I
think, in many ways.
It's the most important part ofthe talk.
So my first kind of take homemessage is nature is complex, so
(24:27):
don't just look for simplecorrelations.
Lots of things are happening IfI looked for a simple
correlation with rainfall.
I might get one, but thatwouldn't have explained things.
So keep it open mind.
Look for lots of differentthings.
Lots of different things.
Lots of things are going to bechanging.
Reviewers hate that They'llhave a hard time getting things
(24:49):
published.
You say this changes, thatchanges, but nature is complex.
To understand things, you haveto look for lots of things.
This is kind of one of my funthings.
Mistakes happen, so don't worry.
Science is a process oflearning.
So you're going to makemistakes and you're going to
publish mistakes.
You're going to makepotentially big errors Hopefully
(25:14):
not too big, but you're goingto make errors.
Just don't worry about it, justsay, hey, I made an error, I got
it wrong.
So in 1995, wrote a paper thatstates that these college
monkeys are upper canopyspecialists.
So they only came to the uppercanopy.
They never came to the ground.
They became mid canopy Inreality.
They're just not habituated yetand so we now see them on the
(25:36):
ground all the time.
So I was totally wrong in 1995.
I think one of the mostimportant things I've learned is
the value of collaboration anda value of really honest
collaboration.
So I've looked at things aboutnutrition, disease, hormones,
tree community change, climatechange and I could not have done
(25:57):
this series of greatcollaborators who taught me a
lot.
So collaboration is key and Ican emphasize in much.
Don't think about competition,thinking about collaboration.
If you compete with people, itdoesn't help.
If you collaborate with people,you'll get much further.
(26:17):
One thing I want to kind ofemphasize because I don't think
researchers understand enough.
This is my, that's my biasstatement.
But we need to build researchcapacity.
For example, much of theprofession in Africa have
limited training.
In Ethiopia only 60% of themusic faculty hold PhDs and
(26:42):
South Africa only 39% of theback to hold PhDs.
So we need to build researchcapacity.
Right now, the startingsalaries of professors are
pretty low that's the monthlysalaries for a number of
countries.
So this is something thatmyself in North America, japan,
I think can really help with inthe future.
(27:04):
This image illustrates my pointactually.
So this is the kind of thetears or echelons about the
number of publications onconservation published by
different countries.
You can see the ranking andwhat we found this is a study
done with by pink faith and isthat 12% of 193 countries
(27:29):
accounted for 90% ofpublications and United States
kind of 42% of the conservationpublications.
So if you have a country in inpink or sound, whatever it is so
Canada, the US, great Britain,germany, china or Australia, you
account for 90% of the countrypublication conservation.
(27:49):
You're in Africa.
There's very few publications onconservation and we all know
that we need to have localknowledge contributing to
conservation actions, which Ithink means that the countries
in pink have to try to build acapacity and elsewhere, okay,
(28:14):
this is kind of something that Ijust kind of feel myself just
keep going.
Whenever you kind of startresearch, just keep going, and
if you just keep going you'llhave long term research and long
term research is valuable.
I didn't send out to studyclimate change.
I didn't set out to studyforest change, I just kept going
.
It's a simple statement.
(28:36):
Wasn't brilliant back in 1989and not brilliant now, but I
just kept going.
So that's kind of a good punchline and this is one else been a
little bit more time on.
Many small conservation actsmake a difference, so this is
going to get illustrated some ofthe conservation things that I
do.
I'm going to start off by sayingI do not do law enforcement.
(28:57):
If I did law enforcement peoplewouldn't talk to me, so I do
not study law enforcement.
But law enforcement is needed.
It's a science.
So we demonstrated that if youunderstand the nutritional
quality of environment, you canpredict calls by max.
We use this data to apply it toconservation.
(29:18):
So in Kibale, about 140 squarekilometers south, was degraded,
was cut down for agriculture.
This is a banana field adjacentto the forest, so we had 140
square kilometers of degradedforest.
We worked with a carbon offsetproject and we planted in to
these degraded for us 1.9million seedlings.
(29:38):
That's a huge number ofseedlings, and the local
communities paid to do.
This was a community projectand this is later.
The private populations in therestored force equal that, about
equal that of the old growthforce.
It's 8% lower, just 8%, andthis is an image of the
regenerating force next to theold growth.
(30:00):
For us and I can't emphasizeenough is the importance of
training.
So I've tried to do much to mymy career.
But the individual below isArthur Magicia.
He was one of my students.
He became the executivedirector of the again above
authority and in action.
Just so many wonderfulconservation laws, policies of
(30:26):
the park service and you know, Ithink what you do in training
can have so many cascadingeffects.
And I think he can work withgroups like nationally graphic
and I've worked with that's agraph for nine years and it's
amazing you know kind of howmuch information yet across the
public and I really believethat's important.
(30:51):
So I, as much as I can, I, dealwith news agencies.
Difficult time for ideal newagencies, groups like National
Graphic Public is vital becausethose public are the people who
basically make donations.
That's wonderful.
They also vote.
They vote for conservationactions or not.
(31:11):
You work with communities.
So this is Joseph bear hug.
Joseph is the local kind ofvillage chief and this is the
community that we work with.
This is Joseph second wife andhis will see 123456 children of
the second wife, but as you cansee, joseph is not very wealthy.
Just as actually wearing myjacket for this picture.
(31:34):
These are the people that areimpacting the forest.
They're setting stairs.
This is a few minutes there.
These are the people that aretaking firewood from the forest.
So let's think about how we canwork with this community.
So we've done things like setup eco tourism projects.
So early on, with Richardrandom, we helped set up the
(31:57):
chimpanzee tourism in the in thepark, and this is a very
successful project.
Mike and Mike Hoffman can talkabout it Bye, kind of pondered
on because could we help thehealth and local community?
So 26% of the children underthe age of L nurse children are
also basically suffering frommalaria, which can easily be
(32:21):
treated or prevented, and theaverage distance the nurse has
was 10 kilometers.
This is a woman who's pregnant,getting in the back of a
bicycle.
I have no idea what that wouldbe like.
I've never been pregnant, I'venever gone in the back of a
bicycle in that condition, butit can't be fine.
So could we help the health andlocal community?
So what we did is we hold abunch of benefit dinners, a
bunch of different types offundraisers back in North
(32:43):
America.
We built a clinic, we hiredNurse Dennis who still works
with us today, 15 years laterand we held, we opened the
clinic.
You'll notice a bunch of NorthAmerican students here.
Those North American studentshelped fund the project for 10
years until COVID.
They basically ran fundraisersfor 10 years to help pay for the
(33:05):
clinic After COVID.
It's all kind of in myshoulders to get grants to do it
.
We raised a grant to build, toget a mobile clinic.
So send an ambulance fromCanada over to Uganda that
basically, instead of being inone location, the clinic, the
mobile clinic goes all the wayaround the park giving a
(33:27):
healthcare conservation messagesto the whole park.
Okay, so I think this is my mostimportant slide is in your
career.
If I'm going to make one thingof advice which I guess part of
the idea of this whole thing isto get a say what you've learned
.
I have to say the biggest thingI've learned is to have fun.
(33:49):
If you don't have fun and I'veseen a lot of academics not have
fun you're not going tocontinue.
So make sure in your career youhave fun, you enjoy it, you
make others have fun.
That's the biggest lesson I'velearned.
Welcome to the primate caste origins.
Today's origin story is allabout changes in primate
populations, with primatologist,conservation, biologist and
humanitarian Dr Colin Chapman.
Well hello everyone and onceagain glad to have you back in
(00:40):
the audience for this episode ofthe primate caste origins,
where we hear from experts inthe field of primatology and
beyond about how they gotstarted and became some of the
most influential folks around.
I'm your host, andrew McIntosh,from Kyoto University's
Wildlife Research Center, andthis episode is taken from our
International PrimatologyLecture Series Past, present and
(01:00):
Future Perspectives of thefield.
This is the brainchild of DrMichael Huffman and, like our
normal programming, is broughtto you by PsyCast.
The main goal of the lectureseries is to share the origin
stories of experiencedpractitioners of primatology and
related fields.
To do that, mike Huffman'sinvited a revolving door of
renowned scientists to join uson the program and share their
(01:21):
own stories with us.
The primate caste origins isour way of sharing those stories
right here on the podcast.
Unlike our normal interviewformat, these lectures are being
done as part of our PsyCastseminar in Science Communication
, which is aimed at gradstudents here in the primatology
and wildlife science program atKyoto University.
So what you will hear is alecture that was recorded in
(01:43):
Zoom and generally includesslides, so there may be
references to visual aids thatare not available in audio only
format.
But for anyone wishing to seethe speakers presenting their
talks, we invite you to checkthose out on the PsyCast TV
YouTube channel.
In today's lecture, dr ColinChapman joined us over Zoom from
his home on Vancouver Island,canada, to talk about I quote A
(02:04):
few fun things I have learnedstudying primates.
Colin Chapman has a whole bunchof titles that are worth a
quick once over.
He's a Kilham Research Fellow,a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Canada, a Fellow at HumboldtFoundation, a Wilson Fellow,
holds an office of anacademician at Northwestern
University, xi'an, china, and isa conservation fellow with the
(02:25):
Wildlife Conservation Society.
He's also received ahumanitarian award from the
Vellan Foundation.
Colin recently moved toVancouver Island University to
spend more time on hisconservation efforts in and
around Kibali National Park,uganda, where he spent so many
of his years as one of the mostprominent primatologists in the
world.
(02:45):
In the lecture to follow, colinunpacked what he's learned about
primate population dynamicsover 34-plus years at Kibali.
He talks about deforestation,bushmeat hunting and climate
change and, importantly, howresearch can allow us to make
predictions about how theseanthropogenic threats might
affect primates in the future.
Colin closes with a series oftake-home messages like how it's
(03:08):
OK to make mistakes along theway, how scientists in more
developed nations should use ourprivilege to focus on
capacity-building to supportresearchers in less fortunate
circumstances, and why makingsure to have fun is the key to
longevity as a researcher.
I'll leave the rest of it tohim in a second, but I just want
to mention that we also hadColin on the podcast in episode
(03:28):
39, where I asked him to reflecton then 26 years of research
and conservation at Kibali.
So I think these are nicecompanion pieces, one just about
a decade on from the other.
So, as always, here is MikeHuffman introducing our speaker
to get us started.
Michael Huffman (03:43):
Colin, welcome.
It's always a pleasure to seeyou, to talk with you and to
work with you, as we have manytimes over the years.
The first time I met you, Ithink, was when we were both in
Canada I don't know if it wasEdminton, but it was probably in
Edmonton.
I think you were a master'sstudent of Linda Fetigans and I
(04:08):
was collaborating with her onmany things.
So I would visit often and Istill remember that day.
Linda was very proud tointroduce you to me and I was
very happy to meet you, ofcourse, and that started things
off, which is probably many,many years back now.
But as the introduction in thetext that you were all sent says
(04:36):
all about the differentactivities Colin is involved in
we'll hear a lot about that inhis presentation.
But he has many fellows,different statuses, in many
countries around the world,which really speaks to his
international stance and hisinternational standing.
But on top of all the fellowsand the fellowships he's had,
(05:00):
he's a really great fellow and Ithink that's what's special
about this talk today.
I'm very happy for all of youto have a chance to get to know
Colin Chapman and the work thathe's done.
With that embarrassment to you.
I'll hand it over to you, colin.
The show is yours.
Colin Chapman (05:20):
Okay, mike, that wasn't so embarrassing.
I knew you had a lot moreembarrassing stories you could
say so.
Thank you very much.
So for me it's tonight, it'snot night to a lot of people,
but I'd like to basically tellyou a few fun things I've
learned over the years studyingprivates.
So this is a brief kind ofoutline of what I'm gonna call
(05:44):
my journey.
I'm gonna give you a very briefhistory of kind of the journey
because I'm not really toointerested in myself so I'm not
gonna go into detail.
Then I'm gonna tell you whatmotivated my research and what
continues to motivate myresearch, and that's something I
think is important.
And then I'll tell you aboutsomething like my 34 years of
(06:05):
trying to understand whatdetermines primary abundance,
and obviously that has importantconservation implications.
And then what I think is themost important part of the talk,
I'm gonna talk about some funlessons I've learned over the
years.
So if you could think of a cityin the world that's furthest
from primates, you probablywould think of Edmonton, alberta
(06:26):
, canada.
And that's where I come fromand I always liked watching
animals and basically my lifeinvolved me just following that
passion.
So when I was in kind of mythird year of undergrad I got a
summer project to understandwhat determines spruce grass
population size, and that basicquestion has stuck with me for
(06:51):
all my career and that'sbasically what I'll be talking
about throughout kind of thetalk today.
When I finished my undergrad, Igot a grant from the Canadian
government to travel fromEdmonton, alberta, all the way
down into Central America, andthe idea was to look for
possible primary research studysites that I could work on from
(07:13):
my degree.
There is no way in the worldthat the Canadian government
today gave me such a grant, andnor were they any university
allowed me to do that sort oftravel, but it was a great
adventure.
I traveled through Guatemalathrough the height of its civil
war.
I survived a number of ventures, which I will not tell you
(07:33):
about because a lot of them areembarrassing, but I made it and
that was a very formativeepisode when, basically, I was
just finishing an undergrad.
That leads to what motivates myresearch.
So during my trips I saw theplight of many priori
populations and this is whatmotivated my research over the
(07:55):
next decade.
So I saw scenes like thisthroughout Mexico, guatemala, et
cetera.
Well, in 1962, so basicallyjust after I was born a French
researcher said unfortunately,at the very moment when we are
becoming aware of the uniquenessof primates, we are also
realizing how precarious is thefuture of the primates and to
(08:17):
what point competition withindustrial man is threatening
their survival.
We're not to say can we remainunmoved in this annihilation?
And the answer is yes, we wereunmoved.
Nothing much happened for 20 to30 years after that statement
was made.
It was only in the 1980, thejournal Conservation Biology
(08:37):
started and the field onlygained momentum in the 1990s.
For many of you that's gonna behard to believe because there
are now so many differentjournals et cetera, but the
field is very young.
So what is the situation now?
So this is an image of my fieldsite in Kibale National Park in
Uganda, and it's a beautiful,pristine rainforest that's
(09:01):
wonderful to work in.
This is an image that's comingup of another tropical
rainforest and this is whatforest could look like A great
contrast.
In general, about 60 millionhectares of tropical forest was
lost between the year 2000 and2019.
So the millions of hectares isjust too abstract for you to be.
(09:23):
I can think of a hectare.
It's about the size of footballfield.
What this equates to is aboutthe size of the island of
Madagascar, or twice the size ofJapan.
So huge areas are lost.
In less than 20 years, thistropical forest would have
supported something like 15million primates.
This is a nice Japanese macaque, but those we literally meant
(09:47):
the death of 15 million primates.
I think a picture is worth amore than a thousand words, so
I'll give you a couple picturesof deforestation.
This is the Borneo from 1950 to2020.
And, of course, greenrepresents forest, yellow
represents deforestation and youcan see the picture for
yourself.
This is an image coming up ofIvory Coast 1990 and just
(10:13):
basically, 25 years later,there's almost nothing left.
This is Brazil, which is, ofcourse, got the huge Amazon
rainforest still mostly left,but I'd like to point out the
Atlantic forest, so the forestto the lower half of the slide
is basically gone.
So this deforestation of thetropics releases that giant
(10:38):
number of metric tons of carbon,which is six times the amount
of carbon released by all thecars and trucks in Canada in a
year.
So that really shows you howimportant these forests are for
climate change and carbon recorcarbon sequestration.
These estimates do not involvethe loss from bushmeat hunting.
This is an image from the backof a truck in Congo.
(10:59):
You can see primates kind oflined in the back of the truck.
This is an image, basically,that shows a chimpanzee.
We tried to get a picture justof the chimpanzee but the kids
weren't to get in the way andthat chimpanzee was destined for
the stoopod.
This is an image of how youtypically buy bushmeat in Africa
(11:19):
.
It's often smoked, because theyhave to smoke the meat to get
it to the market and this is howyou'd often buy it.
This does not involve notmention the kind of collateral
damage.
This is a chimpanzee that'slost her fingers because they
were caught on a snare, and thisoccurs time and time again.
The animal steps in the snare,pulls their hand away from it
(11:42):
and can lose their fingers.
Let's put this in perspective,though I always like to think
about things in a broaderperspective.
So the bushmeat harvested fromCentral Africa represents about
two million tons of bushmeat, sothis is about five million
cattle, so a huge number of cows, or let's put it in terms of
(12:03):
hamburgers, who are Lordhamburgers, that's 77 billion
hamburgers.
But an interesting kind ofcomparison is the people in the
US eat that many hamburgers injust 50 days.
So, yes, a lot of meat beingharvested, but not a lot of meat
compared to what people aretaking out of basically eating
(12:23):
in the United States.
This estimate does not involvethe what's going to happen with
climate change and you'll get acouple of quick slides in a row.
So the earth climate change isworn by about one degree in the
past 100 years.
Some estimates say it'll climatewill warm by 4.5 in this
century.
This year is the hottest yearever recorded to date, so this
(12:49):
is predicted warming.
So you're going to see fourslides quite in a row.
This is areas that arepredicted to warm.
So the Himalayas, for example,is going to predicted to warm a
lot.
So look at the areas and thenlook at your kind of favorite
private area and you can compareit.
The next slide will be thenumber of species found in an
(13:15):
area.
So you might have noticed thatclimate change in the Congo is
not going to be too bad.
So that's great, and there'slots of species there.
Great Madagascar, not the same.
Climate change is going to behigh and there's lots of species
.
So, again, this is thepredicted climate warming.
These are the number ofendangered species.
(13:36):
So, again, madagascar is goingto be a critical area for
private conservation, as willSouthwest China, places like
Borneo, I'd like to kind ofemphasize that people often talk
about climate change in termsof temperature.
What I predict is probably moreimportant for primates is what's
(13:57):
going to happen in terms ofprecipitation.
So areas such as the EucatainPeninsula, costa Rica, those
sorts of areas which are alreadydry, are predicted to become
even drier.
So this is going to be aparticularly severe problem for
many primate regions and thatleads to a number of scary
predictions.
So this is one scary predictionand there's so many scary
(14:19):
predictions out there, but thisis a prediction that was made by
some tropical ecologists that Ireally respect.
They suggest that 75% of alltropical forests presented in
the year 2001 will experiencetemperatures that are higher
than what presently supportsclose up canopy forests by the
(14:40):
term of the century.
So that's a pretty scaryprediction.
So let's move on to, kind of,my last 30, 34 years trying to
understand what's during primaryabundance and it's hard to put
this in a few slides, but let'sgo for it.
So my research has been kind offocused on change and I don't
(15:03):
want to just document change orunderstand and predict it.
If you document change, you cansay, oh, we lost a bunch of
primates.
If you understand change, youcan say, oh, we lost a bunch of
primates because they werehunted or because of climate
change.
If we can predict it, we cansay we will lose a bunch of
primates because of this factorand we can then make
(15:27):
modifications in whatever we'redoing, our conservation and
management strategies, toprevent that.
So I'm always trying to predictchange and I think that's
really important.
So I'm going to talk aboutchange in terms of forest change
, climate change and the impactof primary populations.
So in 1989, as a young postdoc,I went to Uganda.
(15:52):
So that's in East Africa.
I went to Kibola National Park,which is in the West, and
that's where, basically, I fellin love with the place, that
I've been there ever since.
During that first year Ibasically set up a series of
vegetation plots and I've beenmonitoring those vegetation
plots ever since ever, a fewyears until two years ago.
With that data I've been ableto say how the forest has been
(16:16):
changing and I can say thatprimates themselves are
generating change.
So this is an image of a blackand white colobus eating flowers
in a plant.
If you eat all the flowers, theplant can't set fruit.
And so this is the Marquainiadensity over time, basically
(16:36):
1989 to 2021.
And you can see a generaldecline.
Marquainia is one of thebiggest food plants that the
colobus like.
What's happened is basicallythey've eaten all the flowers,
feed the flowers.
The plant doesn't set fruit.
If it doesn't set fruit, youbasically have no seeds and the
(16:57):
plant can slowly decline becauseadults are not replaced.
If you go into the neighboringkind of villages where
Marquainia is found in forestfragments and there's no
primates, you find Marquainiafruiting, flowering and lots of
seedlings, so primates arebasically causing the demise of
(17:18):
their own forest.
In Kibali also.
The forest is changing becauseof elephants.
Elephants are increasing inabundance.
In Africa in general, elephantsare declining, but in Kibali
this is perfect Elephant numbersare increasing.
This is because Kibali's anicely established national park
(17:41):
and we're getting elephantimmigration actually.
So if elephant numbers increase, what happens is they change
the forest.
Elephants will eat the bark offof trees, such as the animals
doing here.
They trample seedlings, theybasically damage the tree
component of the forest quitesignificantly and they can shift
the forest from being forest tomore of a sanitary system.
(18:05):
So elephants and primates arechanging.
What about climate change?
So in 1989, I never set out tostudy climate change, but I
studied climate and I studiedchange, so I can put the two
together.
We're really talking aboutclimate change back in 1989.
(18:29):
So Kibali's climate is changing.
It's receiving 300 millimetersmore rainfall a year than the
start of the century.
This is an image of therainfall change over time.
Kebally is also experiencedless frequent droughts and
earlier on since the rainyseason, and its temperature has
increased by about 1.1 degrees.
It's monthly temperature.
(18:49):
We've been able to show that itinfluences plant chemistry.
So there's really some elegantgreenhouse experiments that
basically look at the effect ofincreasing temperature using
rainfall and increasing carbondioxide on plant chemistry.
So in a greenhouse you canchange the temperature, you can
change the rainfall by addingmore water or you can seal the
(19:11):
whole greenhouse and increasecarbon dioxide and if you do
that in a greenhouse, you findthat plants decrease the amount
of protein they produce, theincrease the amount of fiber
they produce and the increasethe amount of tannins they
produce.
Tannins are a secondarycompound that binds proteins, so
it takes basically proteinsaway from the animals.
(19:33):
So what collaborate is and I,particularly Jessica Rothman and
I demonstrated was that,comparing leaf chemistry from
1994 to 2009, what happened inthe fields and not in the green
house?
Actual trees growing in thefield the monkeys are eating,
the fiber content wereincreasing, the protein content
(19:55):
were decreasing.
This means the quality of thefood was declined.
So what's the impact of this onprimates?
So I studied red colobus andblack and white colobus and we
studied them at a series oflocations throughout Kibali and
I'm just going to point out oneparticular location, the Durr
site, which is in the middle ofthe park.
It's a beautiful, pristine,riverine forest, not much human
(20:19):
intervention.
But notice the first two bars.
Those are the colobinepopulations.
So I was trying to understandwhat determined their abundance.
So I said, okay, well, let'scorrelate colobus biomass to the
cumulative DbH of food trees.
Dbh is diamond and breast type,so cumulative size of the food
trees and there's a really nicerelationship, except for the
(20:42):
Durr river site.
So it seems like, well, there'slots of food, there's not many
monkeys.
So I'll come back to this point.
And at the end of the talkearly on I said oh, maybe it's
predation.
Population got decimated bypredation or a disease came
through and I published that inthe Journal of Primates in 1999.
(21:03):
And then I went yeah, I'm kindof throwing out a data point,
but I don't have very many datapoints.
Well, colobines have differentdigestices than most primates.
They can basically digest fibermatter.
They have a more kind ofsaturated forest of it.
So I went back and I went and Ilooked at the biomass again.
(21:27):
So same data for four of thesites versus the quality of the
food.
But the food that's availableis very low protein and very
high fiber.
So what I suggested was hey,you know, quality is an added
everything and quantity iseverything.
Quality matters.
So I spent the next I can'tremember some like 25 years
(21:50):
collecting a series of otherpoints and if I was a manager,
and I went to them and said Ihave four data points and you
should change your managementplan because of these four data
points hopefully they're laughat me.
So I collected all these datapoints and basically I showed
that I can explain predict callsby us based on the quality of
(22:11):
the food, and I explain it.
87% of the biomass I canexplain.
So also looked at changingfruiting pattern.
So the fruit of, or is it goingto be, what's happening with
climate change?
What we showed is that,remember, average rainfall is
increasing in Heboly.
With average rainfall you getbasically more clouds.
(22:32):
With more clouds you get lessripe fruit.
So the rainfall is getting more, the fruit is getting less.
We've also shown that wetconditions are parasite eggs
resist longer and thus increaseinfections.
So basically it's becoming amore disease written environment
.
In many ways, someoneindependent of climate change.
(22:55):
We've also shown that we knowthat people are increasing
coming into contact withprimates and this leads to
parasite transmission.
We've shown this conclusionwith E Coli and with other guest
or guest parasites.
Okay, so we have some forestchange, climate change.
What's the primary populationdoing?
This is kind of a punch line.
This is the exciting part.
(23:16):
So what's the?
What are the primates doing?
So forest changing in the waythat primates should not like.
The climate's changingincreasing negative quality
foods, more parasiteseverything's getting worse.
What are the primates are doing?
They're doing just fine.
You know this is the differentprimary populations from 1996 to
(23:40):
almost present, just last yearand what you see is basically
the primates are oscillating alittle bit.
That's probably due topartially sampling error, but
the primates are doing just fine, so they are being flexible in
their responses.
What's happening?
I need another few years tofigure it out, but I'll figure
(24:02):
it out.
So this is the punch line.
The primates population shouldbe declining so that food is
getting scarce, less nutritiousand they have more diseases, but
they're more stable.
This kind of leads to the funpart of the thing.
We're going to have some of thefun lessons I've learned, I
think, in many ways.
It's the most important part ofthe talk.
So my first kind of take homemessage is nature is complex, so
(24:27):
don't just look for simplecorrelations.
Lots of things are happening IfI looked for a simple
correlation with rainfall.
I might get one, but thatwouldn't have explained things.
So keep it open mind.
Look for lots of differentthings.
Lots of different things.
Lots of things are going to bechanging.
Reviewers hate that They'llhave a hard time getting things
(24:49):
published.
You say this changes, thatchanges, but nature is complex.
To understand things, you haveto look for lots of things.
This is kind of one of my funthings.
Mistakes happen, so don't worry.
Science is a process oflearning.
So you're going to makemistakes and you're going to
publish mistakes.
You're going to makepotentially big errors Hopefully
(25:14):
not too big, but you're goingto make errors.
Just don't worry about it, justsay, hey, I made an error, I got
it wrong.
So in 1995, wrote a paper thatstates that these college
monkeys are upper canopyspecialists.
So they only came to the uppercanopy.
They never came to the ground.
They became mid canopy Inreality.
They're just not habituated yetand so we now see them on the
(25:36):
ground all the time.
So I was totally wrong in 1995.
I think one of the mostimportant things I've learned is
the value of collaboration anda value of really honest
collaboration.
So I've looked at things aboutnutrition, disease, hormones,
tree community change, climatechange and I could not have done
(25:57):
this series of greatcollaborators who taught me a
lot.
So collaboration is key and Ican emphasize in much.
Don't think about competition,thinking about collaboration.
If you compete with people, itdoesn't help.
If you collaborate with people,you'll get much further.
(26:17):
One thing I want to kind ofemphasize because I don't think
researchers understand enough.
This is my, that's my biasstatement.
But we need to build researchcapacity.
For example, much of theprofession in Africa have
limited training.
In Ethiopia only 60% of themusic faculty hold PhDs and
(26:42):
South Africa only 39% of theback to hold PhDs.
So we need to build researchcapacity.
Right now, the startingsalaries of professors are
pretty low that's the monthlysalaries for a number of
countries.
So this is something thatmyself in North America, japan,
I think can really help with inthe future.
(27:04):
This image illustrates my pointactually.
So this is the kind of thetears or echelons about the
number of publications onconservation published by
different countries.
You can see the ranking andwhat we found this is a study
done with by pink faith and isthat 12% of 193 countries
(27:29):
accounted for 90% ofpublications and United States
kind of 42% of the conservationpublications.
So if you have a country in inpink or sound, whatever it is so
Canada, the US, great Britain,germany, china or Australia, you
account for 90% of the countrypublication conservation.
(27:49):
You're in Africa.
There's very few publications onconservation and we all know
that we need to have localknowledge contributing to
conservation actions, which Ithink means that the countries
in pink have to try to build acapacity and elsewhere, okay,
(28:14):
this is kind of something that Ijust kind of feel myself just
keep going.
Whenever you kind of startresearch, just keep going, and
if you just keep going you'llhave long term research and long
term research is valuable.
I didn't send out to studyclimate change.
I didn't set out to studyforest change, I just kept going
.
It's a simple statement.
(28:36):
Wasn't brilliant back in 1989and not brilliant now, but I
just kept going.
So that's kind of a good punchline and this is one else been a
little bit more time on.
Many small conservation actsmake a difference, so this is
going to get illustrated some ofthe conservation things that I
do.
I'm going to start off by sayingI do not do law enforcement.
(28:57):
If I did law enforcement peoplewouldn't talk to me, so I do
not study law enforcement.
But law enforcement is needed.
It's a science.
So we demonstrated that if youunderstand the nutritional
quality of environment, you canpredict calls by max.
We use this data to apply it toconservation.
(29:18):
So in Kibale, about 140 squarekilometers south, was degraded,
was cut down for agriculture.
This is a banana field adjacentto the forest, so we had 140
square kilometers of degradedforest.
We worked with a carbon offsetproject and we planted in to
these degraded for us 1.9million seedlings.
(29:38):
That's a huge number ofseedlings, and the local
communities paid to do.
This was a community projectand this is later.
The private populations in therestored force equal that, about
equal that of the old growthforce.
It's 8% lower, just 8%, andthis is an image of the
regenerating force next to theold growth.
(30:00):
For us and I can't emphasizeenough is the importance of
training.
So I've tried to do much to mymy career.
But the individual below isArthur Magicia.
He was one of my students.
He became the executivedirector of the again above
authority and in action.
Just so many wonderfulconservation laws, policies of
(30:26):
the park service and you know, Ithink what you do in training
can have so many cascadingeffects.
And I think he can work withgroups like nationally graphic
and I've worked with that's agraph for nine years and it's
amazing you know kind of howmuch information yet across the
public and I really believethat's important.
(30:51):
So I, as much as I can, I, dealwith news agencies.
Difficult time for ideal newagencies, groups like National
Graphic Public is vital becausethose public are the people who
basically make donations.
That's wonderful.
They also vote.
They vote for conservationactions or not.
(31:11):
You work with communities.
So this is Joseph bear hug.
Joseph is the local kind ofvillage chief and this is the
community that we work with.
This is Joseph second wife andhis will see 123456 children of
the second wife, but as you cansee, joseph is not very wealthy.
Just as actually wearing myjacket for this picture.
(31:34):
These are the people that areimpacting the forest.
They're setting stairs.
This is a few minutes there.
These are the people that aretaking firewood from the forest.
So let's think about how we canwork with this community.
So we've done things like setup eco tourism projects.
So early on, with Richardrandom, we helped set up the
(31:57):
chimpanzee tourism in the in thepark, and this is a very
successful project.
Mike and Mike Hoffman can talkabout it Bye, kind of pondered
on because could we help thehealth and local community?
So 26% of the children underthe age of L nurse children are
also basically suffering frommalaria, which can easily be
(32:21):
treated or prevented, and theaverage distance the nurse has
was 10 kilometers.
This is a woman who's pregnant,getting in the back of a
bicycle.
I have no idea what that wouldbe like.
I've never been pregnant, I'venever gone in the back of a
bicycle in that condition, butit can't be fine.
So could we help the health andlocal community?
So what we did is we hold abunch of benefit dinners, a
bunch of different types offundraisers back in North
(32:43):
America.
We built a clinic, we hiredNurse Dennis who still works
with us today, 15 years laterand we held, we opened the
clinic.
You'll notice a bunch of NorthAmerican students here.
Those North American studentshelped fund the project for 10
years until COVID.
They basically ran fundraisersfor 10 years to help pay for the
(33:05):
clinic After COVID.
It's all kind of in myshoulders to get grants to do it
.
We raised a grant to build, toget a mobile clinic.
So send an ambulance fromCanada over to Uganda that
basically, instead of being inone location, the clinic, the
mobile clinic goes all the wayaround the park giving a
(33:27):
healthcare conservation messagesto the whole park.
Okay, so I think this is my mostimportant slide is in your
career.
If I'm going to make one thingof advice which I guess part of
the idea of this whole thing isto get a say what you've learned
.
I have to say the biggest thingI've learned is to have fun.
(33:49):
If you don't have fun and I'veseen a lot of academics not have
fun you're not going tocontinue.
So make sure in your career youhave fun, you enjoy it, you
make others have fun.
That's the biggest lesson I'velearned.
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