World Wildlife Fund Science Driven

What would Halloween be like without bats? Maybe a little less scary. Probably a little less fun.

A really scary thought is to imagine what the world would be like if we didn't have any bats at all.

There are about 1200 species of bats in the world—one in every five mammal species. The largest bat is the flying fox, with a wingspan of six feet! The smallest species is the bumblebee bat that weighs less than a penny. Among all of those species, only three are vampires, so you don't really have to worry much about bats sucking your blood.

Two-thirds of bat species feed on insects and other small prey. They are our nighttime pest patrol. One Mexican free-tailed bat can eat about 1000 mosquitoes per hour. The large colony of 30 million bats in Bracken Cave in Texas consumes about 250 tons of insects every night. Just 150 big brown bats can eat 33 million root worm pests.

Without bats, we'd have more pests and our crops would suffer from more pest damage.

Other bat species feed on flowers and fruits, acting act as pollinators and seed dispersers, especially in deserts and rain forests. Bats pollinate wild bananas, the famous saguaro cactus, and durian, the world's most expensive fruit. Without bats, rain forests would recover more slowly from disturbances. We would also not have tequila—the agave plant from which tequila is made depends on the Mexican long-tongued bat to pollinate it.

Bats are threatened by loss of habitat, especially their roosting sites. You can help bats by protecting their roost sites and maybe building a bat house for your yard.

Bats are also vulnerable to being killed by wind turbines. That risk can be reduced through careful siting of wind power developments away from important bat roosts and migration routes, and by raising the cutout speed for turbines so that they aren't spinning in low wind (read low power) conditions when bats are most active. Another nefarious threat is white-nose syndrome, a disease that is wiping out many bat populations in North America.

Adopt a vampire bat.

Brendan Fisher, a research scientist for WWF and pictured above, is guest blogging for Science Driven. Below he discusses results from a WWF-CARE Alliance conservation program in Mozambique.

My friend Matt has raised an amazing vegetable garden every year since I met him 12 years ago. He knows what he is doing. And yet despite continued success and the basic facts that given good soil, sunlight and water, a good seed will sprout, he is still in awe every spring when his seedlings first pop up in his planters.

I know what he means. There are basic scientific principles to know and simple rules to follow and voila—production. Still, it is its own small miracle.

I was thinking about Matt while on my way to one of WWF’s priority regions in Coastal East Africa—the Primeiras e Segundas in northern Mozambique. I was on my way to a project, in collaboration with the Ministry of Fisheries, collecting first results from our work on farms and in fisheries in the region.

Primeiras e Segundas is a complex land and seascape consisting of sand islands, coastal mangroves, estuaries, dry forests and farmland. It is where humpback whales mate on their southern migration down the coast; a critical nesting area for hawksbills, olive ridley and green turtles; and a seascape with relatively unexplored reefs.

It is also one of the poorest regions in one of the world’s poorest countries. Food insecurity plagues 1/3 of households and 2/3 for female-headed households. People are equally reliant on the condition of their farmland and fisheries. And while only about 30% of households actively fish, 2/3 of households rely on fish protein for nutrition on a daily basis.

Over 80% of those fishing households also farm. And there is the shocking statistic that almost 50% of coastal rural Mozambican children are stunted.

It was into this complex context that CARE and WWF stepped to undertake joint work in 2008 under the CARE-WWF Alliance. The goal was to jointly work on conservation and livelihood issues. Two of the joint interventions with communities there involved training in conservation agriculture techniques and establishing fish sanctuaries, or ‘no-take’ fishing zones.

The science sitting underneath these interventions is pretty solid. Conservation agriculture, as a suite of techniques including no-tillage, cover crops, and intercropping, has been shown to improve soil health and moisture retention, which combine to increase yields.

No-take zones in fisheries (when placed in the right spots at the right time) have shown both biodiversity and abundance rebounds for over-fished regions—or as my marine biologist friend says “fish breed like rabbits.” Our no-take zones are co-managed by the local communities, an increasingly popular and effective solution in such contexts and one of the key current approaches highlighted in the Rockefeller Foundation’s Oceans and Fisheries strategy.

Linking these marine and land-based livelihood interventions is critical in a place experiencing so much pressure on its resource assets.

So why was I nervous about this trip?

Well, for the same reasons my friend is always in awe of his seedlings—so much can go wrong. Drought, pests, a lack of compliance. The list is endless.

But here’s the news… it’s working.

After two years, the farmer field schools for conservation agriculture—jointly run by community members—deliver, on average, 50% higher soil stability scores than traditional treatments. We are waiting on lab results for soil organics, but stability is a strong indicator of soil health, and hence potential productivity.

Even more exciting is the impact of conservation agriculture on dietary diversity in regional households. Why is this a big deal? Well because dietary diversity is a strong indicator of many health outcomes including micronutrient deficiency, the key driver behind childhood stunting.

In our no-take fishing zones in Moma Estuary, we carried out fish surveys with local fishermen. In three years of community-led enforcement, species diversity inside the no-take zones was 45%-93% higher than outside.

All of these are preliminary results, and the long-term the biological and social outcomes will be an ongoing story. But for now, the science-driven work with farming and fishing communities in one of the poorest regions in the world is showing positive biological and social impacts.

It is a tribute to the hard work of the communities and the field team. It is also, like those seedlings, a small miracle.

Robin Naidoo, a Senior Conservation Scientist for WWF, is guest blogging for Science Driven. Below he discusses a recent study he co-authored citing the link between Namibia's communal conservancies and a reduction in behaviors that spread HIV.

Namibia’s Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) program has long demonstrated success in balancing the needs of people and wildlife. WWF has partnered with local communities to help them manage their natural resources, ensuring a future that includes healthy wildlife populations and vibrant rural economies. As a result, we know there is a direct relationship between the health of wildlife populations and the prosperity of local communities—poaching declines, populations of species are restored and economic opportunities such as eco-tourism arise.

But there is now evidence that CBNRM has had additional positive effects on local communities: HIV/AIDS outreach and policies associated with Namibia's communal conservancies appear to have significantly reduced behaviors that spur the disease's spread in Africa, according to a new study

Two-thirds of all people living with HIV (22.5 million) reside in sub-Saharan Africa. Although the epidemic appears to have stabilized, the rate of new infections remains high and HIV continues to devastate families and communities.

To fight its spread, a community-based HIV/AIDS outreach and education program in 31 conservancies raised awareness of the disease from 2003-2007. They used radio broadcasts, written material, and traditional song and dance; trained peer educators; drafted HIV policies and plans; and disseminated condoms. The program clearly explained the links between HIV prevention and the maintenance of conservancy-based livelihoods. It also utilized existing the governance and management structures in conservancies to engage in culturally appropriate prevention activities and behavior-change messaging.

To evaluate the impact of the program, we used Demographic and Health Surveys data from 2000 and 2006/2007 to evaluate whether changes in numbers of sexual partners were related to exposure of rural Namibians to the community-based HIV/AIDS program.

Results showed that there was a significant drop in the number of conservancy men having two or more sexual partners, relative to non-conservancy men. As multiple sexual partners is the dominant driver of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, this has dramatic implications for reducing infections in communal areas of Namibia.

Given the high prevalence of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa and its devastating effects on the social and economic fabric of communities, there is hope that lessons from Namibia's program and its associated HIV/AIDS mainstreaming effort may help slow the disease in other communal areas of Africa as well.

August 20, 2013 marks Earth Overshoot Day—the estimated date when we've used up the Earth's annual supply of renewable natural resources and carbon absorbing capacity. After that, we're using more than the planet can sustain. It's a  one-day reminder of a year-round problem—we are living too large on a finite planet.

You probably have a general sense of why. Our human population continues to grow. We are consuming more and more resources. And we still have only one planet. To appreciate just how large we are living in relation to our finite planet, let's look more closely at some numbers.

Conservation is in the midst of a fundamental shift that I call "The Pivot." Conservation is pivoting from being backward-looking to forward-looking. This reorientation promises to expand what conservation can achieve by setting the stage for Conservation 3.0.

Despite frequent reference to the interests of future generations, conservation has mostly been a backward-looking endeavor. Hearkening back to "good old days" before extensive human impact on nature, conservation resisted change. It used verbs like "protect," "preserve," and "restore." It benchmarked success in terms of similarity to historical baselines. In short, conservation sought to make the future look as much as possible like the past.

Rising demands for food, water, energy and other natural resources are straining the ability of natural ecosystems to produce what people need, not to mention putting the plants and animals with which we share the planet at risk.

How can nature be saved at this time when we need it most?

It's time to start developing Conservation 3.0. Like software, Conservation 1.0 and Conservation 2.0 are serving us well, but the challenges of the 21st century require some critical updates. Nature in the future will look different than it did in the past. So too must conservation.

The Arctic is an extraordinary and iconic place where wildlife is still abundant and ecosystems are still intact. Caribou herds migrate across vast tundra. Millions of seabirds nest on remote rocky islands. Walrus, narwhal and other marine mammals swim the seas. And polar bears hunt seals on the ice.

"Science-based." The phrase is like conservation's version of the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. But what does it mean for conservation?

Science is the most powerful tool for making conservation happen bigger, better and faster.

And it happens through two complementary approaches that I call Big Science and Timely Tech.

When the Earth Systems Research Laboratory announced that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations reached more than 400 ppm, it made the news. As well it should! That's the highest levels of CO2 recorded in all of human history.

But why is it that the 400 ppm mark gets our attention? Why wasn't it newsworthy when we hit record levels of 399 ppm? Or 398 ppm? Or every other record level as CO2 concentrations rose rapidly over the last half-century of monitoring?

I love science. Ever since I was a kid, I have been fascinated by the natural world. Science has been a way for me to learn about nature, and to do my part to conserve it.

Here are some more reasons that I am Science-Driven: