Since 2002, people across the globe have honored June 8th as World Oceans Day. The point of this annual event is to recognize and honor the 70% of our planet covered in the briny deep. While most people love the ocean, not so many of us actually take the time to consider what it actually does for us.

Did you know that most of the oxygen in the atmosphere is generated by phytoplankton in our vast seas? The ocean also generates a tremendous amount of the food we rely on to survive. The bounty of the sea comes in the form of delicious fish, clams, oysters, and calamari. It also comes to us indirectly, in the form of abundant crops grown in fields the world over. Agriculture requires fresh water to grow. Before falling to the ground in the form of life-giving rain, our most reliable freshwater supply must evaporate from the surface of the shining sea.

The World’s Greatest Conservation Challenge

You may be asking yourself why a place like Safari West would celebrate World Oceans Day. We’re an African wildlife preserve. We specialize in not the fishes of the sea, but the beasts of the savanna. In fact, the only fish in our collection are the koi who gracefully patrol the shores of Lemur Island.

Now, we love our koi, but we’re not doing this just for them. In truth, we celebrate World Oceans Day because we’re conservation advocates. When it comes to conservation, every ecosystem matters and the ocean is the largest ecosystem out there. The five great oceans (Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic, and Southern) face many grave challenges today. Global climate change has lead to rising temperatures and ocean acidification that has decimated coral reefs. Poorly regulated industrial fishing has resulted in a massive decline in fishing stocks. According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United States, “roughly one-third of assessed fish populations are over-fished and over half are fully-fished”. Trying to tackle all the issues at once would be both exhausting and impossible. That’s why we use World Oceans Day to highlight one issue each year.

World Oceans Day 2018

This year, we’re using World Oceans Day to draw attention to a particularly nefarious problem; plastics. As we’ve covered elsewhere, plastic has become one of the most ubiquitous substances on the planet. It’s everywhere, it doesn’t biodegrade, and almost inevitably, it winds up in the sea. We’ve all seen pictures of seabirds trapped in six-pack rings. You’ve probably heard about sea turtles mistaking grocery bags for delicious jellyfish. You may even have seen the headline this week about a pilot whale that beached and died in Thailand. An autopsy uncovered a mind-boggling 17 pounds of plastic trash in the creature’s belly.

This tragic event joins a growing mountain of evidence demonstrating the dangers of our plastic addiction. Thankfully, this mountain hasn’t been ignored and change is in the air. single-use plastic grocery bags are in their final days. Plastic straws appear to be following close behind, and we’re seeing more options than ever when it comes to replacing single-use plastic bottles.

Doing Our Part

Here at Safari West, we’ve made tremendous strides in reducing the amount of plastic waste we produce. The little plastic creamer packets we used to provide for our breakfast guests have been replaced by reusable carafes. Plastic straws went away years ago and this year, nearly all our bottled water comes in plastic-free containers.

We’ve also partnered with our friends at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in their Seafood Watch program. If you enjoy sushi, southern fare, or any other cuisine heavy in seafood, you should download their app. With it, you can make sure what you put in your body was fished sustainably and in a way that helps to keep our oceans healthy and abundant.

If you’re going to be visiting Safari West on June 8th, please join us in honoring World Oceans Day. Reflect on the sea, what it gives us, and how amazing it is. Consider how you might be able to reduce your own personal impact on our beautiful oceans. And of course, stop by and visit our very own Cheetah Marie! She’s put together a display showcasing all the steps we’ve taken to reduce our plastic footprint and she’s always happy to share some tips!

Happy World Oceans Day and see you at Safari West!

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The goal of Conservation Corner has always been to introduce readers to topics and ideas that aren’t yet part of the national discourse. We want to illuminate ongoing issues in the world and hopefully, incite some critical thinking and discussion on these topics. When it comes to conservation, progress only takes place when demanded by an informed public.

To that end, we try to cover a broad spectrum of topics. While we often write about specific events such as the death of Nola the white rhinoceros, we’ve also been known to delve into the more esoteric fare, like migratory adaptation. Regardless of the topic, we always try to drive the conversation deeper and to explore the broader ramifications of the concept under discussion.

The death of Nola was perhaps the biggest news item so far covered by Conservation Corner. When she passed away at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, the number of northern white rhinos left on the planet was reduced to three. The story blew up online and on TV for all the usual reasons; it was dramatic, it was traumatic, and it illuminated a gigantic and obvious conservation problem. People responded in droves and that can only be counted as a win for the forces of wildlife conservation.

In our coverage of the loss of this beautiful animal, we tried to refrain from focusing on the depressing and macabre and instead investigated what her species’ decline had meant for the particular ecosystem.

That article led directly to our opening piece of 2016, entitled “Settling for Second: The Evolutionary Cost of Trophy Hunting”. This piece focused on a frequently unnoticed side-effect of human hunting. While it’s well-documented that such pressures can eliminate a species (as seen in the dodo, Stellar’s sea cow, and others). What has been largely ignored is the effect it can have even on well-managed target populations; such as those of bighorn sheep or mule deer. Whereas standard predatory practice targets the old, the sick, and the weak thereby weeding out undesirable genetic traits, trophy hunting specifically targets idealized specimens. This has the side-effect of leaving less-qualified individuals to reproduce and carry on the species.

From there we covered another topic related to anthropogenic over-hunting; a novel reintroduction project enacted by the Sahara Conservation Fund and their partners, Environment Abu Dhabi, and the Government of Chad. This ambitious project aims to reintroduce into the deserts of Chad, a species of antelope that has been extinct in the wild for nearly three decades. The scimitar-horned oryx (which roam in the habitats here at Safari West) is one of the many victims of unrestricted human hunting discussed above. Luckily, forward-thinking conservationists were able to establish functional captive breeding programs before the last wild individual was shot in 1989. Thanks to that foresight and the ongoing work done by so many, including our own hoofstock keepers, the species is now getting a second chance to thrive in their natural habitat.

This is not to say, however, that the re-wilded scimitars are being released into an Edenic, human-free environment. Quite the opposite in fact. They will be competing for resources with domesticated goats and cattle. They will need to contend with roadways and vehicles. Undoubtedly, hunters, human and otherwise, will also be a concern.

We explored this intersection of humanity and our wild neighbors deeper in a piece focused on the ways in which animals are adapting to us. In the long history of this planet, life has always had to evolve to deal with challenges; climate change, sea level rise and fall, the invasion of novel species, and natural disasters galore. While the ubiquity and industry of the human species may be unprecedented in nature, life appears to be up to the challenge.

In that article, we focused primarily on the fascinating and mysterious monarch butterfly. This world-famous pollinator makes the longest migration of any insect species, traveling up and down the United States; from the border of Canada to the forests of northern Mexico. Although they’ve always been forced to fly around the Gulf of Mexico—sticking doggedly to the coastlines along the way—they’ve recently begun to make surprising use of offshore oil rigs. Normally a symbol of environmental exploitation and degradation, these machines of industry are increasingly becoming stopover points, allowing millions of delicate but determined butterflies to rest their weary wings as they make the arduous trip south.

Discussion of this migration must’ve stuck in our minds because the very next edition of Conservation Corner furthered the discussion. Dovetailing into the centennial of the National Parks Service, we discussed their incredible success at protecting specific areas of the wilderness and the sedentary species that make their homes there. What the park system has been less successful at is creating safe havens for migratory animals like the monarch. Their focus as they move into their second century is centered on how to address the needs of migrating birds, pronghorn antelope, salmon, butterflies, and more.

The National Park Service is one of the world leaders in human management of the ecosystem, but the example they’ve set is being followed by others. The Pepperwood Preserve—Safari West’s neighbor to the east—is among those pioneering forces. Earlier this year they held a prescribed burn. They intentionally set fire to a portion of their vast acreage. This technique is increasingly used to reduce the potential for wildfires across the world, but Pepperwood’s experiment had a different aim. They were hoping to reduce the spread of an invasive grass. Medusahead grass has exploded beyond its original range and continues to flood into novel environments at an alarming rate. The Pepperwood experiment is part of an increasing trend toward utilizing natural processes rather than synthetic ones—like toxic herbicides—to help control and restrict environmentally destabilizing invasive species.

Ecosystem engineering of this sort is looking more and more like it will be a necessity in the world of tomorrow and further exploration of the idea lead us to explore the kind of bioengineering that takes place even without our intent. We looked into how species like beavers can transform an entire forest with their teeth and tails as effectively as we can with chainsaw and bulldozers. This exploration revealed how ecosystems that have adapted to the activity of bioengineers like beavers suffer at their loss, whereas ecosystems that experience novel engineering, such as that so frequently brought about by human industry, tend to suffer.

Tying into this idea of environmental resilience, we then discussed invasive species more directly. Invasive species have become one of the largest conservation issues dealt with by facilities like Safari West. The term “invasive species” is one that has established itself in the common discourse and is familiar to any farmer, rancher, any boater, or any traveler who’s crossed a state line. They’ve become the boogeymen of modern conservationist thought which is a bit of a mixed blessing. While public awareness of the problems of invasive is by all accounts a good thing, the underlying fact is that invasive species are also critical to the process of evolution. Ecosystems are by their very nature dynamic and novel influences help keep populations healthy and strong. To an extent. In isolated ecosystems like those found on many islands, the much slower pace of invasion leaves them vulnerable to extreme disruption when something new appears. As with the bioengineering article, our exploration of invasive species revealed a concept in which frequency or intensity made the difference between what is a stabilizing influence, and what is catastrophically destabilizing.

That article brought us into back-to-school season and so we came out of the deep weeds on conservation philosophy and presented a targeted piece that aspired to illuminate the vast and growing problem of rampant consumerism. We now live in a culture that constantly tells us that every occasion requires a purchase and that last year’s model can’t compare to this year’s. In a world of more frequent buying, products must be cheaper and more disposable. This leads inevitably to exploding waste, primarily of cheap and easy to produce plastics.

Ecosystems may be able to adapt to a novel species in their midst, but thus far, no system has come up with a cure for plastics. Plastic polymers persist almost eternally, don’t biodegrade, and are detrimental to virtually all forms of life. We are filling our planet with plastics and most of the human race is so far unaware that there’s a problem.

The last two articles of the year continued the theme of illuminating largely invisible problems. The first piece focused on palm oil; an ingredient nearly as ubiquitous as plastic and one which has an equally detrimental impact. The oil palm is an amazing plant that produces—quite efficiently—a product which has found use in everything from food to cosmetics. Many studies have suggested that over fifty percent of all products on store shelves contain palm oil derivatives. The problem with palm oil is that it grows best in the same places that tropical rain forests do and coincidentally, those tend to be the very same locales that have the least amount of legal protection. The high and growing demand for palm oil has led to unrestrained deforestation on an apocalyptic scale. Slash-and-burn land clearing techniques and unrestricted persecution of local wildlife has led to precipitous declines in hundreds of irreplaceable species like orangutans, Sumatran rhinos, and elephants. Luckily, there is progress even on this front and it is now easier than ever to track you palm oil usage and direct your dollars toward companies that supply it sustainably.

The most recent issue of Conservation Corner focused on yet another widely unknown but absolutely critical conservation issue; that of our seafood supply. Fish arrive in our supermarkets daily and almost none of us question where they come from. The oceans are vast and fished by massive fleets representing hundreds of nations. The difficulties in regulation, the loopholes in labeling, and a complete and utter lack of transparency have all helped to lead us where we are today. Worldwide, fishing stocks have been depleted by anywhere from seventy to ninety percent. Our oceans are becoming deserts and the vast majority of us don’t even know there’s a problem.

Over the last year, we’ve covered a long list of topics that range from land to sea, and from practical to philosophical. We’ve made an effort to be illuminating rather than depressing and to offer solutions wherever possible. As we close out this year, and in case we failed in that goal, I’d like to point out a few of the bright rays of hope that have 2016 shine.

Safari West became partners with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program. This program is one of the leaders in combating the issues with our seafood supply. Simply by downloading their app onto your phone, you become instantly equipped to make informed choices in your seafood purchases, whether in a restaurant or at the grocery store. Experience has shown again and again that industry follows the money. If we’re buying sustainable supplied products, they will shift to capitalize on that trend.

On a similar note, the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo has an app that accomplishes the same thing with palm oil. The app includes a barcode scanner that will tell you at a glance whether the ice cream in your hand is produced by a member of the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil. It’s a great tool for identifying sustainability-minded companies that you may want to support.

This was also a year which saw the meeting of nearly two-hundred nations in Johannesburg, South Africa to discuss and regulate trade in endangered species. This conference of parties to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) not only shut down several proposals to re-legalize trade in ivory and rhino horn, but also established new protections for many species including elephants, rhinos, pangolins, and numerous species of sharks and rays. The conference was a big step forward for many endangered species and ecosystems.

Lastly, I want to take a moment to mention some of the practical things that have been accomplished right here at Safari West. We updated the plumbing system throughout our luxury tent camp. While this update in no way impacted guest experience, it did reroute all gray water (water draining from sinks and showers) to be used in our landscaping. Thousands of gallons that would otherwise have drained away wastefully are now being put to use among our vegetation. In a state stricken by drought, this is a valuable conservation action.

We’ve also initiated a brand new wildlife monitoring project. Our habitats aren’t only home to our exotic collection, but also to all manner of local wildlife. At Safari West our safari guides and keeper regularly encounter hawks, vultures, snakes, turtles, deer, otters, and countless other member species of the Mayacamas Mountains biome. This wildlife monitoring program will help us to better understand how these species are adapting to our presence and how to make the environment of Safari West more welcoming to them.

As we close out this chapter and begin the next, it is with a palpable sense of excitement and motivation. Many challenges await—both those we know about and the inevitable surprises waiting in the wings—but every year, our species gets smarter and more ambitious. We figure out what we’re doing right and how to correct what we’re doing wrong. We continue to improve our ability to live effectively within our ecosystems, rather than struggling to dominate them. Progress is being made and it’s thanks to people like you. We at Conservation Corner thank you for your support throughout this year and we look forward to working with you to make the next one even better.

Happy Holidays to you and a very Happy New Year!

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I recently watched “The End of the Line” an award winning documentary about the overfishing crisis. In it, the opposing claims of two respected scientists were debated. The first, Dr. Boris Worm of Dalhousie University conducted a study with results that indicate a 90% decline in populations of virtually all commonly targeted fish. That’s species like tuna, swordfish, marlin, cod, all the fish you see in the supermarket, all of them with populations barely 10% of what they were just a hundred or so years ago. A conflicting view was proposed by Professor Ray Wilborn of the University of Washington who took exception to Worm’s methods and results. “Totally wrong,” he rebutted. “There’s just no question, that’s totally wrong.”

If you’re like me this all sounds pretty familiar. Over the last decade or two, we’ve seen countless debates play out between climate scientists and climate change deniers. Before that, it was between lung cancer specialists and the scientists employed by tobacco companies. It seems as though any scientific whistle-blowing has its contingent of ardent opposition. I assumed that once Prof. Wilborn finished picking apart the work of Dr. Worm he’d move on to explain how fish stocks remain healthy and abundant. I was wrong. His argument was simply that a more accurate measure of global decline would be 70%.

I was stunned. When it comes to fish, the argument isn’t about whether or not there’s a problem. The debate among academics is merely about exactly how catastrophic the problem is. As it turns out, global overfishing may be the most pressing conservation issue facing us today. It is for this reason that Safari West recently became a Conservation Partner of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch. As a facility specializing in terrestrial mammals and birds, it might seem like Seafood Watch is a bit outside our wheelhouse. The truth, however, is that the situation faced by species like bluefin tuna is eerily similar to that faced by our own white rhinos.

Like rhinos, bluefins have been hunted by humans for centuries. Also like rhinos, advances in technology, staggering increases in human population and demand, and economic pressures valuing short-term gain over long-term sustainability has lead to nearly insurmountable devastation within the population. The northern white rhino, in particular, serves as a poignant example as there are now only three left in existence.

The plight of fish in our seas has many variables—climate change, ocean acidification, pollution—but Seafood Watch is specifically concerned with overfishing. How on earth could human beings in boats have overfished something as massive as the ocean?

First of all, bear in mind that for most of our history the seas have been like the vending machines that stand in many of our offices and break rooms. We usually can’t see into the office Coke machine, but we take for granted that if we drop in some change, we’ll be rewarded with a refreshing beverage. The sea has always been the same. We’ve generally been unable to tell how many fish are swimming off our shores but we could safely assume that if we dropped in a hook, we’d eventually pull out a fish.

For much of human history that technique has served us beautifully. In pre-industrial times the ocean kept us supplied with nutrition and our take was insignificant enough to not overly disrupt the system. Even as we took to the seas in boats designed for fishing, our impact remained relatively unchanged. We’d drop in hooks and pull out fish, but at a rate that went seemingly unnoticed by the oceans at large. It wasn’t until fishing became a large-scale commercial venture that our efforts began to have a significant impact.

A good example of this is Georges Bank, one of the most famous fisheries in the world. Situated off the northeast coast of the United States, the bank used to teem with cod and halibut. It was such a profoundly fertile source of fish that in the 16th century, over half the fish consumed in Europe originated from Georges Bank. New England’s history as a commercial fishing center is based on its proximity to the bounty of Georges Bank. For hundreds of years, the Bank was fished by ships dropping hooks. Even with this simple technique, the scale of the of Georges Bank catch was such that by 1850 halibut populations were nearing collapse.

But the worst was yet to come as technology improved and new gear revolutionized the fishing industry. Single hooks developed into long lines, which are literally miles-long lines of filament dangling thousands of baited hooks. With the advent of steam power, drag nets came into play. Eventually, we saw the invention of the bottom-trawler; a tremendous net dragged behind a boat and scraping against the sea floor. Bottom-trawlers made it to Georges Bank by the 1920’s and were able to catch in an hour or two what the old hand-reel fishermen could catch in a month. The impact was devastating.

Bottom-trawlers—with their unfortunate side effect of demolishing the sea floor—were the worst offenders, but other commercial fishing devices were devastating as well. Gill nets and longlines are exponentially more efficient at bringing in fish that single hooks but at the cost of being completely nondiscriminatory. A ship trawling for cod will inevitably haul aboard a lot more than the fish of choice including other fish species, sea birds, dolphins, sea turtles, and even sharks and rays. All this extra stuff is called “bycatch” and generally speaking, it goes right over the side and is usually dead or dying when it happens.

Let’s compare this style of fishing to some of our terrestrial hunting techniques. A single human fishing with a single baited hook or harpoon is roughly analogous to a single human hunting with a bow or spear. The take is minimal and relatively non-disruptive.

As fishing gear advanced from hooks and lines to shrimp boats and trawling nets, so too did our bows and arrows give way to high powered rifles. When it comes to the mass-capture capabilities of fishing nets, however, there are few terrestrial analogs. Possibly the closest comparison we can make between hunting and our current fishing capabilities is the method of driving stampeding animals off cliffs once employed to hunt herds of American bison. By panicking an entire herd and driving them toward a precipice, hunters were able to save tremendous amounts of time and effort and kill hundreds of bison in one go. The trade-off to this bounty was an incredible waste since the method usually killed more animals than could be effectively used. The simultaneous annihilation of entire herds—young and old alike—had major ramifications for the long-term stability of the bison population as well.

The American bison is now the national mammal of the United States and yet relatively few Americans have ever seen one because their range is so drastically reduced. Marked declines like that of the bison have been instructive to us on land and their complete extinction was avoided in part because we were occupying the same space and could see the decline in real time. The opposite is true of our aquatic prey species. We are generally much less aware of what is happening beneath the surface of the sea. Fishing records have long suggested a decline in returns as well as a general shrinking in the size of specimens caught, but this data has gone largely unrecognized and ignored. As a species, we’ve simply been unable to imagine that there won’t always be plenty of fish in the sea.

Here’s the other piece of it; just like bison, tuna, marlin, and other large fish species aren’t born large. They’re born tiny and vulnerable and during this stage in their lives, they need a place to hide. Kelp stands, beds of seagrass, coral reefs; all of these seafloor environments act as nurseries for fish fry that may one day grow to become our sashimi. When a bottom-trawler scrapes across them, these nursery habitats are heavily damaged or completely destroyed. I the most fecund of commercial fisheries, the same areas can be trawled over and over again within a single year, leaving the seafloor a sterilized wasteland.

Another misconception about how sea life works is a widespread belief that fish breed readily and often. We ate nearly all of the orange roughy before someone discovered that it takes them two decades to reach sexual maturity. We gobbled them like Thanksgiving dinner without ever realizing how long it would be before the next generation came along. In another spectacular blunder, we developed an incredibly efficient method of catching salmon as they struggled upstream by the thousands. They practically threw themselves into our nets and it wasn’t until the population completely collapsed that we realized we were catching them just before they laid the eggs that would’ve replaced them. So our practices have been ignorantly short-sighted for a long time, and now the oceans are emptying.

This is not an issue of luxury. It’s not just that we won’t be able to enjoy sushi or blackened halibut as much. Over one billion humans (that’s a full seventh of the global population) depend on fish to survive. Beyond strict necessity, fish make up over 20% of the animal protein intake for half the humans on the planet. Currently, as a species, we’re consuming at least 95 million tons of wild-caught fish each year (plus an addition 75-80 million tons of farmed fish). That’s approximately 375-Billion pounds of fish! Meanwhile the bycatch—the dead and dying bystander organisms we catch by accident—we throw about 7-million tons of them back into the sea every year. Calling that amount of waste colossal doesn’t even come close.

Luckily there’s quite a lot that can be done, and from what we’ve seen the ocean appears to be both strikingly resilient and quick to rebound when given a chance. The best first step, which it seems most every scientist agrees on, is a massive scaling up of our establishment of marine protected areas (MPAs). These are essentially our national parks but in the ocean. Protected areas free of fishing are as effective than preserves on land. Without us netting them, many fish populations recover quickly.

Unlike our national parks which are usually bordered by urban development, MPAs are usually bordered by nothing but open ocean. This means that as fish populations expand, they naturally spill out of protected reserves. Many MPA advocates describe them like banks. The reserve is the initial investment and the overflow fish are the compounding interest. This methodology already has proven results. Blue Ventures (please link to www.blueventures.org), has already recorded tremendous successes with this system in Madagascar.

Over a decade ago, Blue Ventures teamed up with the people of a fishing village in southern Madagascar to close off a portion of the offshore reef in which the locals fished for octopus. After a relatively short period of time, the area was reopened with staggering results. As news of this techniques spread, other villages mimicked the technique. Eventually, this leads to the first locally managed marine area (LMMA). Today there are 64 LMMAs in Madagascar which combine to protect a full 11% of the Madagascar sea floor.

In 2010, over 200 nations gathered in Japan and set a goal of protecting 10% of the entire ocean by 2020. This is an important first step toward the 30% protection determined by scientists to be a requirement for comprehensive, ocean-wide sustainability. Progress is being made but it is unnervingly slow. Numbers vary depending on the source but we’re currently only at 3-4% protection. There’s a lot of work left to be done.

There are a number of things us average citizens can do to help with this situation. Support the creation of more MPAs and pressure your leaders to that end. Another thing you can do that’s more immediate and ongoing is to join us on the Seafood Watch. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has built a useful downloadable app that highlights seafood that’s caught sustainably and that which clearly isn’t. It’s a simple to use feature on any phone and it can help you avoid buying fish that are endangered or caught in a destructive way. Pausing to check if the salmon at your store is a good buy or not may add a minute or two to your trip, but this truly is the most impactful thing we can do to help. Ever heard of dolphin safe tuna? Dolphins had been dying in droves as a form of bycatch and public pressure on retailers and suppliers from consumers like us changed the industry. Regulations, MPAs, and policing are important, but consumer demand shapes the market. Help us and help the seas. Pay attention to what you buy and let your grocers and restaurants know that you’re paying attention. If we each do that, we change the tide.

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