Top 5 ways livestock are wrecking the planet

Photo: Sally Kneidel

Helping the environment is just one reason for dumping animal products from your diet. But it's a big one. It may be the most powerful choice you can make to help our ailing planet.

If your family gives you a hard time during the upcoming holidays for rejecting that turkey leg, tell them some of these surprising eco-facts about the havoc wrought by livestock.

1. LIVESTOCK DRIVE CLIMATE CHANGE
The livestock sector is responsible for at least half of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions. That's according to two environmental-assessment specialists employed by the World Bank Group, Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang. Their meticulous analysis is reported in their landmark Worldwatch article "Livestock and Climate Change". Check out this short summary of Goodland's and Anhang's work. See also "Diet for a low-carbon planet" by Alan Miller, for the same conclusion. How can livestock generate such a volume of GHG? Fermentation in the guts of livestock creates 37% of human-induced methane; methane is much more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Deforestation to graze livestock or to grow their feed is another major source of emissions. Goodland and Anhang also assess the carbon in livestock respiration. "Livestock (like automobiles) are a human invention and convenience, not part of pre-human times, and a molecule of CO2 exhaled by livestock is no more natural than one from an auto tailpipe."

2. LIVESTOCK WORSEN WATER SHORTAGES
Nearly half of all the water used in the United States goes to raising animals for the dinner table, according to calculations by author John Robbins. Water usage is a major environmental concern, given that water shortages are cropping up all over the planet these days. Droughts due to climate change, and the booming human population, contribute to the problem. But the livestock sector is responsible too - using vast quantities of water to irrigate feed crops for livestock. One pound of beef requires 2,400 gallons of water to produce, while one pound of wheat requires only 25 to 108 gallons. Notice, that's the water for just one pound of beef. A typical "2 sides of beef" from one steer weigh 700 lbs when arriving at the grocery. You do the math.

3. LIVESTOCK DOMINATE ARABLE LAND
Livestock production accounts for 70% of all agricultural land on the planet, and 30% of the land surface of the planet. Consider this in relation to the fact that the world's human population has expanded from 6 billion to 7 billion in just the last 12 years - more and more people needing to be fed. Expansion of livestock production is a key factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America. 70% of previously forested land in the Amazon is occupied by pastures, and livestock feedcrops cover a large part of the remainder. In addition to deforestation, about 70% of grasslands in dry areas have been degraded by overgrazing, compaction, and erosion by livestock. These facts are all reported in "Livestock's Long Shadow," a 2006 research document from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization.

4. LIVESTOCK POLLUTE
Livestock is the world's largest source of water pollution, according to the United Nations' FAO. Major sources of pollution from livestock production include animal waste, antibiotics and hormones, fertilizers and pesticides used on their feedcrops, and sediments from eroded pastures or trampled streams. In the U.S., livestock are responsible for 55% of erosion and sediment, 37% of pesticide use, and a third of all N and Ph pollution of freshwater.

5. BIODIVERSITY SLAMMED BY LIVESTOCK
A third of all mammal species are in danger of becoming extinct. A full 40% of the planet's mammals are victims of habitat loss and degradation. So reported the 2008 conference of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), a group that includes more than 1,000 government agencies and NGOs, conservation groups, and 11,000 scientists in 160 countries. And it's going to get a lot worse before the century is over. The causes of habitat loss and degradation? Livestock is a big one. Conservation International has identified 35 global hotspots for biodiversity, defined by species richness and high levels of habitat loss. Of those, 23 are affected by livestock production. Of 825 terrestrial eco-regions identified by the Worldwide Fund for Nature, 306 are threatened by livestock.

WANT TO HELP?
Choose plant-based foods, and explain why to everyone you know.
Average Americans eat between 216 and 246 lbs of meat per year, far more than residents of any other country. In the U.S., around 60% of our grain goes to livestock, a very inefficient use of our agricultural lands. Feeding the grain to people directly could feed up to 10 times more people than feeding the meat to people. Or, another way of looking at it - we could stop converting natural lands to agricultural lands if we made more efficient use of the farms we have now. What can you do? Simply eating less meat can help. Even a couple of meatless days a week will reduce your ecological footprint. Going vegetarian or vegan is even better. Check out the recipes and new vegan cookbooks reviewed on this site.

Coming up in 2 later posts:

Top 5 Health Reasons to Bypass Animal Products
Top 5 Humane Reasons to Choose a Plant-based Diet

Keywords: livestock Livestock and Climate Change Jeff Anhang Robert Goodland climate change water shortage water pollution land usage biodiversity impact of livestock impacts of livestock bad effects of livestock livestock and land degradation

Budding Scientists Assess the Tiny Critters of Africa

A Great Student Opportunity
In June of 2009, Ken and I helped out with a biodiversity survey in South Africa. Most of the researchers were undergraduates from universities in the U.S. All of them had already taken a semester-long ecology course in South Africa offered by the Organization for Tropical Studies or OTS, whose home base is at Duke University. (Many of the students were also from Duke.) Dr. Laurence Kruger is the Director of OTS's South African course, and a friend of ours for the last three years or so. He lives in Kruger National Park, South Africa, and takes his ecology students all over Kruger Park and to other important ecological  sites and interesting indigenous villages in South Africa, such as Welverdiend and Hamakuya. Most of what I know about South Africa, I've learned through Laurence or his employees and connections.

 The photo above shows part of the biodiversity crew in the field. L-R is Ken Kneidel, guard Oneeka with rifle, students Allison, Sarah, Caroline, and Seth, OTS instructor Taryn in red shirt, and guard Steven Khosa with rifle over his shoulder. An OTS truck is in the background. The survey was funded by NFS, under their "Research Experience for Undergraduates " program.

Setting Up the Temporary Traps
Everyone involved in the survey was staying at Skukusa Rest Camp in Kruger National Park. The first morning at 7 a.m. we piled into a couple of trucks and drove 2-3 miles to an undisturbed area along the Sabie River. At eight different sites, we set up drift fences and drop traps to catch small animals such as frogs, toads, lizards, snakes, insects, mice, shrews, small rats, insects and other invertebrates. We also set out 16 live-traps for small mammals. The next morning, early, we went to check all the traps at all eight sites. All the little animals were measured, identified and released. By park regulations, we had to have two armed guards with us at all times, in case of encounters with angry hippos, elephants, Cape buffalo, cats, rhinos, wart hogs, baboons, or other big animals. One of the guards was our old friend from 2007, Steven Khosa, a biology student and park employee. Ken and I had hired Steven to be our personal guide in northern Kruger Park in 2007, and he was fabulous. We learned so much from him about his culture, as well as wildlife. The other guard for the biodiversity survey in 2009 was the friendly Oneeka, also a park employee, who was interested in everything we caught.

Graham, director of field operations for the South African OTS course, dug the holes for every drop trap, with this heavy power drill (above). The holes had to be big enough to accommodate big buckets sunk to ground level.

After the central bucket was sunk at each site, REU student Hannah (above) and others pounded in stakes to hold up the three plastic fences that radiated outward from the central bucket. The fences, about 1 foot tall each, are called "drift fences." At least, that's what they're called in the States. I used drift fences for my doctoral research at UNC, studying the breeding migrations of terrestrial salamanders, Ambystoma opacum and maculatum.

REU student Seth (above) made tubular traps of fiberglass windowscreen mesh to lie alongside each drift fence, to catch reptiles moving along the fence. Each end of the tubular traps had an inverted funnel of mesh, to allow entry but deter exit.

When we returned the next morning to check the traps, REU student Caroline (above) and others checked for animals in the buckets. Each of the three fences or "spokes" that radiated out from the central bucket had another bucket at the other end. When little animals encountered the fence, they crawled or hopped alongside the fence, eventually falling into one of the buckets. Caroline was studying insect diversity, so she always had a glass jar to carry insects back to the lab to ID.

A New "Old World" Lizard for Me

I don't think we caught any snakes because it was winter there in the southern hemisphere, but we did catch a few lizards like this ground agama (Agama aculeata) below. Lizards in the family Agamidae are the "old world" counterparts to the lizard family Iguanidae found in the Americas.

Fantastic Frogs and Toads

We also found a variety of frogs and toads, some of which were really different from any I'd seen in the States. Seth knew what all of them were - he was our student expert on reptiles and amphibians. The burrowing toads we caught, Breviceps, were my favorite (below). They looked like grumpy old men. Most of them were covered with damp sand, from burrowing.

Other favorites were the tiny shovel-nosed frogs, below (Hemisus marmoratus). Like Breviceps, they are burrowers in the sandy soil on the floodplain of the Sabie River.

In one of the buckets, we found two beautiful frogs with luminous eyes (above). This frog's common name is the bubbling kassina, or Senegal running frog. Scientific name: Kasina senegalensis.

I think this is a flat-backed toad, Bufo maculatus, found in one of the buckets.

Tiny Biting Mammals

Allison was studying mammals, and every time we caught a mouse, rat, or shrew in one of the buckets, she picked it up, marked it with a red marker (to identify it if recaptured), and put it briefly in a plastic bag to measure its weight and length. The bag kept it from biting her (usually).

A pygmy mouse (Mus minutoides) in Allison's grasp (above).

Oneeka and Allison inspect another pygmy mouse (above).

Above, Allison weighs a mouse in a bag attached to a hand-held spring scale; Taryn shows me a red veld rat (Aethomys chrysophilus). The red on the rat's chest is from the red marker.

I believe this is a musk shrew (Crocidura mariquensis) inside one of the buckets (above).

What Was the Point?

The overall purpose of the survey, in my understanding, was to assess the effect of differences in the tree canopy on the numbers of animals on the ground below. That is, does a heterogeneous tree canopy support more biodiversity on the ground, or less? I don't know what the answer to that question turned out to be, or if there was an answer. Ken and I left for the north of the park before the project was finished. Of course, the fences and buckets were all removed when the students were through monitoring them, and the holes were filled in. But the data that the students collected will set the stage for future studies by OTS students or REU students. If the process is repeated in future years, the results will show any declines in biodiversity. It's easy to think that, within the park where direct human disturbance is minimal, animal populations should remain stable. 

But the Climate Is Changing in Africa. 

Rain patterns are changing. Rain affects tree diversity, rain affects the flow of rivers and the deposition of sand along river banks. Who knows how these factors will affect animal populations in a riparian, or riverbank, community? That's the point - who knows? Surveys like this will help us understand the effects of climate change. Some scientists predict that 75% of current species will become extinct within this century. The vast majority of scientists agree that we are facing unprecedented mass extinctions, while at the same time destroying the habitats that could foster the evolution of new species. Field exercises like this are barometers of change. They're important, too, in teaching a new generation of ecologists the techniques they'll need to guide us into an unknown and daunting future. On a lighter note, it was fun for Ken and me to see so many new tiny animals, after spending a lot of time looking for and photographing the bigger ones. These little animals are essential to a healthy and stable ecological community. Each one has its unique charms and its own place in the natural world. 

Keywords:: biodiversity climate change South Africa OTS Organization for Tropical Studies REU Research Experience for Undergraduates Skukusa Kruger Park Kruger National Park Laurence Kruger riparian communities undergraduate research Sally Kneidel Ken Kneidel

Devon discovers illegal scam, rushes to protect forest

Devon Graham of Project Amazonas

My family met Devon Graham in June of 2008 - he's a tropical biologist and president of Project Amazonas, a conservation nonprofit in the Peruvian Amazon. See our previous post about our visit to Iquitos and to two Project Amazonas biological stations on tributaries of the Amazon River. We loved Iquitos - part of its charm is being the biggest city in the world inaccessible by road. But Devon told me recently that this distinction is changing - a new road is underway that will link Iquitos with the Napo River port of Mazan. A road through rainforest brings bad news for rainforest wildlife. The road provides, for commercial interests, access to areas that were previously too remote to be profitable. Loggers, slash-and-burn ranchers, and illegal wildlife traders move in. A new road unleashes an avalanche of forest exploitation and development.

Devon points out that the Amazon is in many ways a frontier. The area lacks adequate law enforcement, so illegal exploitation is commonplace. See our post on the market in Iquitos, where threatened wildlife species are sold for the same price as a couple of mangos. The following is a story of Devon's discovery of attempted theft of rainforest trees along the new road-under-construction. It's a systematic exploitation by logging companies that works because local communities lack the infrastructure to stop it. But this time, maybe it won't work, if Devon has his way.

Here is the story, in Devon's words:

"I’m really starting to regret having decided to check out the new road. What was going to be a quick jaunt has turned into aching thighs, sunburned face, tense arms, hand spasms from gripping too tightly, and a lot of déjà vu of the time I put 10,000 km on a 75 HP Suzuki motorcycle in 5 months – most of it off-road.

The drivers in this story, Ricardo and Luis

But that was in the Peace Corps 20+ years ago, and my body isn’t as tolerant of such punishment any more. The new road between Iquitos and Mazan in the Peruvian Amazon might be new, but it is far from finished.

The new road from Iquitos, under construction

Some sections are 50 feet wide and relatively smooth (apart from grader-tracks), but other, longer sections are definitely of “off-road” quality: deeply rutted, muddy, dusty, blocked by heavy machinery, covered with grasses and brush, composed of curving 20-percent grades, and crossed by drainage channels – sometimes seemingly all at once. At one point the road crosses directly across a soccer field in front of a school, and we zoom though the goal posts. “!Gol!” exclaims Luis, my driver; “doble-gol” I respond, and he chuckles as we bounce along. I wonder what happens when a game is actually in progress. Later on we lose Fernando Rios, the in-country Project Amazonas manager, and his driver Ricardo for a while. When they catch up they explain that they were held up by an ornery cow. “¿La vacita negra?” (“The little black cow?”) Luis asks. They nod. We’d both noticed it staring madly at us as we went past where the road crossed a pasture. I guess a suffering gringo on the back of a roaring motorcycle pushed its bovine brain over the edge. It couldn’t take any more, and I’m getting to the same point. The pasture-lands and farms grade into tall forest on both sides as the ribbon of dirt and mud slides by beneath the wheels, and fourteen kilometers down the road I spot a sign on the side of the road – the first sign we’ve seen on this newest of roads. I breathe a sigh of relief, tell Luis to stop, and stiffly and ungracefully get off the back of the motorcycle. We have arrived.

The sign at the eastern extension of Project Amazonas new land purchase

Fernando and I are on a mission to check out the road access to the newest of the Project Amazonas field sites and forest reserves in Peru. This site is different from the other three that Project Amazonas already operates. It has no river access, but instead is located on a new road between the Peruvian Amazon’s largest city (Iquitos), and the Napo River port city of Mazan. Once that new road is a little less new, and presumably in better condition, there is little doubt that the tall primary forest that covers the hilly upland terrain will soon disappear. In January 2008, we purchased the first two lots of land with funding from Margarita Tours. In February and March, two additional purchases and some creative land-swapping enabled us to double the size of the acquired lands to 84 hectares (208 acres). In the subsequent months, all the survey work and title-work for the 4 parcels we’ve acquired of lands was completed though the Ministry of Agriculture which handles such matters. In July, however, an adjacent land-owner offered to sell his parcel of 24 ha to us as well – acquiring this parcel would put us just two narrow parcels away from the Santa Cruz community’s forest reserve lot of 300 hectares – and so I say yes, we’ll buy it, I’ll get the money one way or another! If we can border the community’s forest reserve, it will create a block of protected forest area of over 600 acres, and open up many possibilities for developing collaborative management of the lands for education, conservation, research, and ecotourism purposes. So we’re there to check out the new parcel, as well as to determine where we’d like to put a caretaker’s house and, in the near future, an educational center. To seal the deal with the landowner, Fernando has given him a used motorcycle and a cash sum from his salary. Tomorrow I’ll pay the landowner the remaining amount and we’ll sign the paperwork for the bill of sale. Both Fernando and I will be reimbursed our personal funds out of a conservation donation from the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey which was made for the express purpose of acquiring the new parcel of land. Perhaps we could have waited until those funds arrived in a week or so, but things can change fast when a new road opens in the Amazon, and we aren’t taking any chances.

Fernando Rios in forest interior at the Santa Cruz site

The sign we’ve reached was installed by Fernando in July at the eastward extension of our new lands. He has another sign ready to install at the western extension border with the road once the pending land sale is completed. I’m so glad to be off the motorcycle that we walk the entire 2 km extension of road frontage of the property. Approximately mid-way along, there is a bend of the road with a nice flat area lacking large trees. Centrally, it drops off gently to the valley bottom, and more steeply on either side to a pair of small creeks. Fernando and I agree that it would be an ideal location for a caretaker’s house and educational center. Patrolling the road frontage would be easy from such a centrally located site (we’re envisioning a regular dirt-bike for the caretaker to use), and a trail network could be started from the same location without having to navigate any immediate steep slopes. As we walk along the road, we notice numerous shungos, (below) the hard, rot-resistant heartwood of long-dead trees of various species bulldozed to the side.

A "shungo" or long-dead tree good for construction instead of living trees

These will serve as excellent material both for fencing the road frontage, as well as for construction. There won’t be any need to cut large living trees for those purposes. Fernando is enthused by the number of large tornillo trees (right and next page) – these are highly valued for boat building purposes and for certain types of construction that require a very dense wood that can resist the rot that results from frequent wetting and drying. I’m more enthused by the number of birds that I can hear in the forest or that are flying across the road. Unfortunately my binoculars are waiting for me at the Madre Selva Biological Station – several hours downriver from Iquitos by boat, and where I’ll be headed in two days.

Before long we reach the border of the lands that Project Amazonas has title to. A narrow cleared line in the understory marks where one parcel of land begins and the other ends. These border lines are the standard means of marking property boundaries in the Amazon. Curiously, however, this border line appears to be freshly cleared, and at the road edge is a wooden post sporting a trio of blue plastic “A’s”.

The mysterious blue "A's"

We puzzle over why the land owner would bother to put in a post and clear the border right before a sale is finalized. Walking down the road to the other edge of the to-be-acquired-parcel, we spot another wooden post with the enigmatic blue “A’s”. Fernando tries to call the land-owner, but cell-phone reception is spotty in this hilly area, and so we continue to wonder. We decide to take the motorcycles a bit further onward to where the Santa Cruz forest reserve lands end and another community’s lands begin. The delineation couldn’t be much more obvious. On one side of the cleared border strip is tall forest, the other side is covered by bananas and plantains, with the odd remnant tree sticking up as if to emphasize the lack of forest cover. The air itself feels hotter. We hop back on the motorcycles and head back toward Mazan – we could have continued on to Iquitos, but that would mean sitting on the back of the motorcycle for twice the distance that we’ve already come. I’m not ready for that – maybe when the road is in better shape, but not today. The trip back doesn’t seem so long – we stop once to watch a troupe of marmosets cross the road, and again to visit a local farm. Then my driver hits a slick spot and we start to fishtail. The fishtail turns into a wipe-out and there is the sound of breaking plastic. We both hop off, unhurt, and upright the motorcycle. Fortunately damage is minimal – just some plastic housing broken, nothing essential. We head on to Mazan again.

A mature rain forest tree, a prime target for illegal loggers, in the Santa Cruz forestry reserve

Once in Mazan, there is good cell coverage again. Fernando makes a series of calls, and eventually we’re in touch with the landowner. The mystery of the triple blue “A’s” begins to unfold. The landowner is surprised, and is not responsible for them. The community of Santa Cruz isn’t responsible either, but they do have more information. The posts were installed two days previously by unknown persons who were marking a “bosque local” (a local forest slated for logging) belonging to the community of Paraiso (Paradise), some 20 km distant on the Napo River. How one community can designate logging lands inside of the titled lands of another community is a mystery to me, but Paradise has designated about 1000 hectares (nearly 2,500 acres) of Santa Cruz land as having timber belonging to Paradise. Community leaders and land-owners in Santa Cruz are upset, and rightfully so, and on Tuesday (5 August) are presenting a formal denunciation in Iquitos at INRENA (the government agency in charge of forestry and natural resources use). Fernando patiently unravels my confusion. He explains that crooked forestry engineers take money from equally crooked logging barons to fabricate official looking studies and documentation giving the loggers the authority to log on lands that don’t lie within any logging concessions, and which may or may not cross into private lands that are somewhat remote from community centers where everyone would know if something was going on. Inspection and enforcement is expensive and sparse, and loggers may move fast, counting on official inertia to allow them to take out high value lumber from an area and be gone before anything can be done. Some landlords don’t actually live on their plots of titled lands, others may agree to accept a small sum of money from the loggers in exchange for not raising a fuss – while such sums may seem like a fair bit of money to a poor landowner in need of ready cash, these payments are a mere fraction of what the timber on the land is actually worth. Bribing of key community officials sometimes helps as well. It really is still a frontier area. Ironically, community leaders in Paradise may not even be aware of their “claim” to the timber of Santa Cruz. Instead they are probably being set up to take the blame and to shield the identity of the true parties responsible. Fernando refers to such fabricated land claims as “títulos fantásmicos” (phantom land titles) that have no legal basis to them, and which count on local people not having the economic resources to fight a well-financed logging scam. It costs money to send a delegation to Iquitos, and many communities simply don’t have the resources. Besides, everyone “knows” that you can’t fight the government, so when loggers show up waving official-looking papers with all the stamps and signatures and backed with plenty of muscle-power, what is a simple land-owner without connections in high places supposed to do? Most just try to make the best of an unjust situation.

Forest creek at the Santa Cruz site – although there was only a couple of inches of water with intermittent deeper pools, at least a half-dozen fish species were present

This time, however, the plot has been caught early before any damage has been done. I instruct Fernando to let the Santa Cruz community leaders know that we’ll help out with transportation expenses for their delegation if needed. The incident also drives home the need to quickly fence the lands that we’ve acquired and to build a caretakers house* so that there is someone on site to keep track of things on a daily basis, and, more importantly, so that everyone else knows that the land is valued, cared for, and not to be messed with! As they say, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Fortunately, I already have a financial commitment from Nature’s Images, Inc., natural history writing and photo company in Texas to fund the fencing of the property, Building a sturdy caretakers house with associated kitchen and bathroom and a water collection system will be around $1,800; monthly salary and benefits for a rotating caretakership (where all community members who wish to participate can do so for three months at a stretch) will be about $175 monthly. This is the fourth time that Project Amazonas has had to face the threat of illegal logging, and so far we’ve “won” three times, thanks to the intervention of local communities and the fast action of our on-the-ground people in Peru. We won’t loose the fourth time, either, and with strong local community support as well as international assistance, we’ll be going 'four for four'.

My butt may be sore, my arms and face burned, but I’m burning hottest inside! There’s forest to be saved and work to do."

Photos and text by Devon Graham, PhD

*If you would like to help protect the new Santa Cruz forest reserve from illegal logging and poaching, here's how:
Project Amazonas needs to raise $175/month to fund a caretaker position at the new forest reserve. The caretaker will assist students and researchers, maintain trails and buildings, and prevent logging and other activities that might damage the mature rainforest at this site. To make a tax-deductible donation (in the USA), please contact Project Amazonas president Devon Graham (mionectes@aol.com) or mail a check to:

Treasurer, Project Amazonas, Inc.

701 E. Commercial Blvd, #200

Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33334, USA

Postscripts by Devon:

On 6 August 2008, thanks to a lot of footwork by Fernando Rios, we finalized the purchase of the adjacent 24 ha (60 acres) from the adjacent landowner, and now have the official title to Lot 77, along with the transfer of title and all other legal papers. We need about $750 to finalize the transfer of title, official survey papers, and notarization fees for Lots 73, 74, 75 and 76 which, when done will give us the single contiguous block of land of 104 ha (260 acres).

5 August 2008: The authorities of Santa Cruz presented the formal denunciation of the logging claim within their community. Project Amazonas helped to cover their transportation costs, and we have a copy of the denunciation. This will now be worked through in the courts, and the forestry engineer and/or logging company responsible will be sanctioned accordingly. There is virtually no chance that the community will lose its case.

1 September 2008: An additional plot of land has become available which would connect our existing 260 acres directly with the Mazan River, giving us a long corridor of protected lands. The asking price is s/10,000 (about US $4,000 including administrative and titling fees). If you would like to fully fund the acquisition of this parcel of land, we would be willing to name the annex as you wished (assuming of course, that you wouldn’t choose an offensive or derogatory name for it!).

At the same time, the Iquitos-Mazan road has undergone further improvements, and is now accessible to 4-wheeled vehicles. At the Iquitos end of the road, extensive land-clearing activity is already underway. This activity will march steadily toward Mazan, so the window of opportunity for acquiring additional tall forest is very limited.

22 September 2008: In October, Peruvian herpetology student Jhon Jairo Lopez began the very first scientific work at the Santa Cruz property - herpetological survey of the area. In December, ornithological, fish and botanical surveys will also begin with the work of Dr. Haven Wiley (UNC) and myself (FIU). Volunteer Nicholas Arms will be assisting with the herpetological work as well. We will be spending the Christmas holidays at the site starting around the 15^th of December. If you would like to participate in survey and other work at the new field site, please contact us as soon as possible.

Project Amazonas, Inc., is a USA-Peruvian non-profit organization which maintains and operates four biological reserves in the Peruvian Amazon. These are open for use by students, researchers, courses and ecotourists. Project Amazonas manages the sites in collaboration with local communities, and also engages in medical, education, and community development activities with isolated communities in the north-eastern Peruvian Amazon. Project Amazonas is registered as a 501(c)3 organization in the state of Florida, and as the Asociación Civil Proyecto Amazonas (as it is formally called) is registered at the national level in the Republic of Peru. For more information, visit www.projectamazonas.com.

Dr. Devon Graham is a tropical biologist who has been involved with Project Amazonas since the fall of 1994, and who became president of the organization in 2000. When not working in the Peruvian Amazon with Project Amazonas, Dr. Graham hosts a variety of ecotours in the Amazon and elsewhere with Margarita Tours, Inc., and also teaches in The Honors College at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He can be contacted at mionectes@aol.com.

If you’d like to have Devon's previous article "Ancient trees look for love in the Amazon" (Aug 08), contact him at mionectes@aol.com and he will be happy to send it to you.

Devon with a Smoky Jungle Frog

Keywords:: birding Peru Amazon Devon Graham Project Amazonas deforestation logging Iquitos road ecotourism biodiversity

We're Not So Unique: Research Shows Birds Have Human Qualities

Crows using tools to probe for food

Birds make tools - they even show handedness in making and using tools.

In the Oct 6 issue of Science News, there's an article about crows fitted with tiny "crittercams" that record the crows' use of plant stems to probe for food. These crows, from a South Pacific island, make several types of hooks and saw-edged probes from twigs and leaves.

I saw a film long ago that showed crows sitting on power lines and dropping nuts (or something with a hard shell, I forgot what) into traffic to be crushed by cars - then retrieving the contents when the stoplight stopped the traffic.

Last night, I went to the web site of one of the primary researchers of tool-use in crows, Gavin Hunt of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. I found it by googling "Gavin Hunt crow tools". He has an interesting site: http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/crows/our-research.htm.

Dr. Hunt says that crows show cumulative change in tool manufacture, which is very rare or even unique among the few animal species known to make tools. Chimpanzee and orangutan tool manufacture, for example, is often haphazard, and their tools show no evidence of incremental improvements over time. Just for perspective - current human technology is the result of a long series of cumulative changes, says Dr. Hunt. The ‘ratchet-like’ nature of humans' technological evolution means that design changes are retained by populations until new, improved designs arise. Animals other than humans have been generally presumed to lack the necessary cognitive sophistication for cumulative technological evolution.

The crows of New Caledonia (the South Pacific island) that Dr. Hunt studies manufacture two types of tool to capture invertebrates: one from twigs and the other from the long barbed edges of Pandanus leaves. The work of Dr. Hunt has revealed that these tools have four features previously thought to be unique to humans and our ancestors: a high degree of standardization, the use of hooks, “handedness”, and as mentioned above, cumulative changes in tool design. The cumulative changes involve three distinct tool designs using Pandanus leaves: wide tools, narrow tools, and stepped tools. w

What does it mean? To me, it means we're not nearly as unique as we think. I wonder about all the other behaviors we've yet to observe in the creatures that share the planet with us. I want to do what I can to preserve habitat and biodiversity.

Keywords:: tool use in birds, biodiversity, New Caladonia crows, Gavin Hunt