By Will McCarry
August 9, 2024
Why rare species thrive on Indigenous lands
7 min
From the savannas of Africa to remote Pacific islands, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are helping to conserve some of the most remarkable species on Earth.
Starting around A.D. 900, the Xochimilca people engineered a sprawling canal system to grow crops. These human-made wetlands, on the outskirts of what is now Mexico City, became a prime habitat for the axolotl — a friendly-looking salamander with ruffled gills. Today, the canal remnants are the only place on Earth where these salamanders still live in the wild.
But the canals are being drained, polluted and overrun by invasive species. To protect the shrinking habitat of the axolotl, Conservation International is working with local communities to revive an ancient farming culture that has endured since before the time of the Aztecs.
Farmers — many of them descendants of Xochimilco’s original inhabitants — still use the ancient waterways to grow flowers and crops. In an interview with the New York Times, Esther Quintero, a biologist with Conservation International-Mexico, describes how placing local people at the center of conservation is key to saving the species.
“Nature tells you everything — my ancestors read the stars, the moon and the swarming termites to predict the weather,” said Jacobus T. Brandt, a local historian. “But now, nature has changed. The rain no longer comes on time.”
As climate change threatens the shrublands essential for grazing their sheep and goats, the local community is looking to the past to secure their future.
Now, in partnership with Conservation South Africa, the local affiliate of Conservation International, the community is bringing the heritage breeds back to the landscape — preserving their home and their traditions by protecting the nature they need to survive.
“My old sheep would never have climbed a mountain,” said Rosy Fortuin, a local shepherd. “But [the heritage breeds] climb like a mountain goat to reach plants that haven’t been grazed in ages. This makes it healthier; it grows quickly and it gets fat faster.”
Pacific sheath-tailed bats are vanishing across Oceania. But recently, on one of Fiji’s least-visited islands, an expedition led by Conservation International made a remarkable discovery: A cave containing thousands of them.
“This is a really hopeful sign that the Lau islands are still a stronghold for the species. We have the local communities to thank for that,” said Kristofer Helgen, the chief scientist of the Australian Museum Research Institute, who estimated that the caves hold the largest bat roost for any species across the entire South Pacific.
“We don’t see anything like that happening in this cave,” Helgen said. “The local communities have quite clearly made a deliberate choice to not exploit nor disrupt the cave, ensuring the bats can thrive undisturbed.”
For years, two communities in the Curare-Los Ingleses Indigenous Reserve in southeast Colombia have worked to protect the black caiman — the largest predator in the Amazon River basin, which was hunted to near extinction in the area for its highly-prized skin.
The black caiman is sacred to the Indigenous Peoples of Colombia’s lower Caquetá River, who believe it descended from a man and now rules over the waters and fish. In 2008, when the Borikada and Curare communities began to notice the caiman’s dwindling numbers, they banded together to reverse the trend. And now, after years of careful monitoring from a community-watch program, they are seeing black caimans rebound.
In 2022, with help from Conservation International, the communities led the first-ever survey of the species, counting 123 black caimans. “Our goal was to share knowledge, and they could tell us what they know about the caiman,” Jack Hernández, a biologist and Conservation International consultant, told Mongabay. “They know a lot about the species, especially those who live in the reserve, because they have lived alongside them all their lives.”
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