Nature Conservancy Magazine: Autumn 2007

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Pacific Marine Area Protected

Melanesia — Despite years of tension between three culturally distinct villages in the northwestern Solomon Islands, community leaders convened in 1995 to tackle a mutual problem: Overfishing of the area’s species-rich waters was driving marine resources to the brink of depletion. With the help of Nature Conservancy scientists, villagers established the Arnavon Community Marine Conservation Area and formed a management committee comprising two representatives from each village.

The restoration project involved closing the conservation area to harvesting, establishing protection for one of the world’s largest populations of nesting hawksbill turtles, training conservation officers, and promoting sustainable fishing by persuading local fishermen to target the abundant deep-water fin fish as an alternative to scarcer species.

In the 12 years since the conservation area was established, populations of sea cucumbers, clams and oysters have recovered dramatically. Corals and fish are flourishing, especially bumphead parrotfish and humphead wrasse, once rare species in the Solomons. But although this living laboratory is a popular destination for community leaders, schoolchildren and government officials, without permanent funding, its future remained in jeopardy.

Until now. A generous gift from an anonymous donor will make the Arnavon Islands the first sustainably financed community marine protected area in the Pacific, and possibly the world. In just three years, the interest generated by the endowment will be enough to fund both the annual management costs for the protected area, such as long-term monitoring of its hawksbill population, and the expansion of similar conservation strategies to local island groups.

—Maggie Terry

Tieton River Canyon
A River Wild
The Tieton River carves its way out of the forested eastern slopes of the Cascades.

Ten-Thousand Acre Canyon to Remain Intact

Washington — In the 19th century, the U.S. government gave millions of acres of Western lands to Northern Pacific Railway as incentive to lay track from Lake Superior to Puget Sound. It granted the land in a checkerboard pattern — one square mile went to the railroad, while the next square mile remained in the hands of the government.

In the 21st century, this patchwork ownership threatened 20,000 acres of one of south-central Washington’s most diverse habitats — the Tieton River Canyon. For-sale signs started popping up at trail heads and along creeks, and it became clear that Plum Creek Timber, the corporate successor of Northern Pacific, was itching to sell off its square-mile sections. A vast landscape of basalt cliffs freckled with Garry oak and Ponderosa pines stood to be carved up, its dryland forest and shrub steppe chopped into purchasable pieces.

With the help of $8 million in private donations and public grants, The Nature Conservancy has stepped in to stitch up the Tieton. The Conservancy purchased 10,000 acres from Plum Creek Timber and transferred the land to the state to be folded into the Oak Creek Wildlife Area. The alternating 10,000 acres in the checkerboard belong to the Forest Service — with the exception of a single square mile of land that will remain with the Conservancy.

With the welfare of the Tieton secure, the Conservancy will work to restore the health of a larger landscape, some 200,000 acres of the Tieton and its surrounding forest on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains.

—Robin Stanton

The Andes of Colombia
At Home on the Hillside
Living fences of productive trees provide protein for Encino livestock.

Farmers Pledge to Protect Cloud Forest

Colombia — For years, the ranchers of Encino, Colombia, have been chipping away at tropical cloud forests to graze their cattle, the primary — sometimes the only — source of income for the tiny town 125 miles north of Bogotá. But this unsustainable agriculture is threatening a crucial ecological corridor of cloud forests, high grasslands and dry forests in the Colombian Andes — ecosystems every bit as rich in biodiversity as the Amazon, but 14 times smaller.

The Nature Conservancy and Colombian conservation organization Fundación Natura are equipping these small-time ranchers with the tools to make their farms more productive on less land. Planting high-protein grass will fatten cattle faster and require less land for grazing, and cultivating fast-growing trees for firewood will rid ranchers of the need to harvest virgin forests. Since it could take years for these changes to become economically viable, the Conservancy, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and Fundación Natura have agreed to fund the ranchers during the first three years they put these plans into practice. The agreement will conserve the remaining forests that form part of a 2.5-million-acre corridor that includes the majestic but endangered Humboldt oak, 243 species of birds and 50 species of mammals.

“We needed to provide these ranchers with economic incentives, opportunities and practical tools so they could earn a good living but also conserve the natural habitat,” says Daniel Arcila, private lands coordinator for the Conservancy’s Tropical Andes program. “It’s a win-win relationship.”

—Diego Ochoa

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photos © Chris Newbert/Minden Pictures (Coral reef); © Lee Trivette (Tieton River Canyon); © Diego Ochoa/TNC (Colombia)