Computer to the rescue of rare species

By Pamela Lorentz

PUNCAK, West Java (JP): Every animal in our world today has an extinction time clock ticking away. It is only in our lifetime that this sad but true realization has been accepted by much of the world community.

Indonesia has taken another historic step to try and slow down the clock by holding its fifth Population and Habitat Viability Analysis Workshop (PHVA) in Puncak, West Java, from May 3 to May 6.

The Javan Gibbon and Langur conference/workshop was hosted by the Ministry of Forestry, the Indonesian Primatological Association, and Taman Safari Indonesia. It brought together scientists, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) concerned with primates to learn a process for the recovery of information and how to use new computer software.

This program is emerging as a breakthrough in the seemingly impossible task of predicting the future of an animal species on our planet. Through the use of simulated models, it gives concerned governments a realistic picture of what must be done to save the species existence and most importantly when to do it before it is too late.

This was a computer workshop with an important twist. The software program, named VORTEX, was brought into Indonesia by the Captive Breeding Specialists Group of the Species Survival Program, a division of the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

VORTEX is useless without the wealth of knowledge and expertise that only Indonesians can provide about their country and their animals. This is not a case of foreigners coming to Indonesia to tell Indonesians what to do with their country. That has rarely been successful, or beneficial in the past.

Simulation

Two primates, the Javan Gibbon and Javan Langur, were chosen in advance of the workshop for case study simulation models and utilize the VORTEX program. Research data from Indonesian primatology students was used to estimate the number of Javan Gibbons and Langurs remaining and the current state of their habitat.

This data is never easy to gather as counting the number of any species over a large area is scientific guess work at best and primates such as the Gibbon are extremely difficult subjects due to their natural avoidance of humans and their mobility in dense vegetation.

Indonesian scientists, representing many different fields such as population biologists, primatologists, conservation management specialists, forestry ecologists, reproduction biologists, geneticists, human demographers, zoo biologists, veterinarians, park managers, and species field researchers, all came together to learn and work with this new conservation computer system. Government agencies were also well represented by high level individuals.

Everyone at the workshop worked at a fever pace once they saw how PHVA and VORTEX worked. This workshop with its information sharing process and the program, VORTEX, takes everyone's research data, their personal knowledge of Indonesia and the current environmental picture and in a mater of seconds, the computer can analyze the wealth of information from their lifelong hard work. The result is a fairly definite estimate of the time count-down to extinction of the chosen example.

The frustration and helplessness commonly felt by scientists, knowledgeable government and NGO employees in conservation and wildlife, is severe. They spend their professional life watching and researching what is happening to the world, but suffer the inability to change it all.

'Do something'

The public wants someone to save the plants and animals, but they also want to live well and have freedom to prosper as they see fit for themselves. Because the public doesn't have any idea of how to have both -- the freedom to exploit the environment and at the same time to save it -- they look to these same scientists, the government and NGOs and say "Do something".

The scientists know that human prosperity through exploitation equals environmental disaster as is now being realized. PHVA and VORTEX gives them a small tool to forecast the results of this collision between humans and their environment.

It gives the government a small tool to use in the form of scientific extinction calendar, to try and not only make the (possibly unpopular) necessary decisions but it is also a useful tool to justify the need for these decisions and to educate the public as to why.

Everyone wants to see that human prosperity can be achieved with as minimal an amount of destruction as is feasible and without total species extinction. It also gives the concerned NGOs a clearer picture of the difficulty the scientists, government agencies and they themselves face. The best part about all of this is the fact that it is Indonesians coming together in a workshop to try and help Indonesian animals.

The three parts of the PHVA program are:

1. Gathering the most current and correct species environmental and population data.

This is a slow and difficult part as every imaginable thing that happens in the environment to the species effects its survival. It does not matter whether it's a natural disaster such as fires, floods, storms, diseases, or a human-made impact such as habitat destruction for man's use, poaching, hunting, pet trade, use of the animal for food or human induced diseases. They all speed up the ticking of the extinction time clock.

Each Indonesian researcher, in the concerned field, has a wealth of knowledge which must be written down from their heads or data research into a format to answer specific questions for the computer program.

Valuable knowledge

To underestimate the value of their observations and knowledge (even to the lowest position worker) is to lose valuable knowledge that could help save the wild species.

The government and NGO personnel do the same. They are inputting into another program all the recorded human demographics. They also input the current and future industrial, agricultural or private business plans for the environmental habitat of the species, and the number of privately-owned registered pets of the species.

Their knowledge and cooperation is also invaluable as they are the record keepers, planners and regulators. Without their information the results form the computer program will be incomplete.

Next comes the captive species specialists who input all the known data on the number of that species in captivity such as zoos, private institutions and captive breeding programs. They add their knowledge about the life cycle, reproduction, genes and health requirements of the species when in captivity.

They too are an imperative source of knowledge and data which must be written down so it is not lost. All of these questions must be answered for the computer program to be as close to an accurate picture as possible.

2. The second part of the PHVA is the inputting of all this data as collected by each group and making sure that some "unique questions" that must be included and answered because of the uniqueness of the species are not left out of the program.

VORTEX and the workshops themselves are constantly changing and improving with each workshop given. As Indonesians learn the program, so does the program improve through use. The program will never be a perfect system and must constantly improve and change to meet the ever-changing situation and parameters.

Next the computer does the fast part. Before your eyes in a matter of seconds, VORTEX analyses everything and a time table year by year is printed out starting today until extinction.

Anticipation

In the Gibbon and Langur workshop at Taman Safari Indonesia, the anticipation of the results of all of this was so intense that you could feel each representative holding their breath. As the computers first started to extrapolate and print out the extinction "clock calendar", the magnitude of the answer to be realized was well known, the results were not.

Waiting even the seconds to find out how long the Javan Gibbon and Langurs would grace this island (or the world) was like waiting for a human doctor to figure out your own estimated time of death from some dreaded disease.

A full dataset has yet to be collected on the Javan Langur. Until all the information is complete, no results can be obtained. Unfortunately the completed results for the Javan Gibbon are not good.

Through all the discussion and data gathering, a consensus was reached and it read: Approximately 300 Javan Gibbons were observed in the wild which leads the scientists to believe approximately 2,000 or 2,500 may be left as you cannot possibly see them all. Hence the scientists guess work. This is a critically low number and puts this Gibbon at very high risk of extinction.

Whatever actions to save the Javan Gibbon will have to be in a speedy fashion. Numbers are deceptive! One major fire can kill or destroy the habitat or many animals in just hours or days.

3. The third part is the decision making section and perhaps the most difficult for humans. Once you have an estimate of how many months, or years, the species has before extinction, the workshop must make recommendations for the actions that are imperative to be taken to save the species.

Again it requires the complete cooperation and dedication of all the different groups. The scientists, government and NGOs must all be realistic in terms of saving the species within the realm of what is possible to do taking into consideration the desire of all humans for more freedom and a better personal life.

The two do not mix easily and the loser is usually the animal species unless realistic goals and timely implementation take place. The workshop groups must plan for the wild species population, the current captive species population and the possible captive breeding steps.

All of these steps must be taken in concert to ensure that you don't wake up one morning and realize you have too few live breeding pairs to save the species and the clock has stopped ticking!

Giant step

It is important to remember that this workshop was only the fifth of its kind in Indonesia, and only the 15th in all of the Far East. Hopefully this type of workshop will prove to provide a giant step in the right direction for conservation and the possibility of saving for your children their natural birthright.

That birthright is to inherit the responsibility of caring for their planet which holds as many of the living species as we can save for them to carry on with and so it will hopefully go on to their next generation.

Any sharing of scientific tools and cooperation between nations, the scientific community, the Indonesian scientists, the Indonesian government, NGOs, conservationists and the Indonesian population that will help this goal is to be congratulated and greatly appreciated by everyone because of its benefit to us all.

If computers can help humans save plants and animals in Indonesia through the efforts of Indonesians with the scientific and financial support from us all, then it is a giant conservation step. Indonesia has not only recognized the benefit for their country of these scientific tools but also come together and worked cooperatively to learn and use it.

This workshop is just part of the beginning. Many more will probably take place. Thus, this event must be yet another example of what Indonesians can do for their own future and in so doing benefit the world.