Computer to the rescue of rare species

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.