Notes - Empty Hands, Open Arms - page 203

147 We often miss opportunities In “Why Didn't We Just Ask?”—the title of which perfectly sums
up their conclusion—Erik Meijaard and Andrew Marshall explain the difficulty and cost of identi-
fying orangutan populations with transects, and they explain the benefits of using local knowledge:
If we optimistically assume that a particular transect system effectively monitors population
fluctuations in some 100 km 2 , a complete understanding of orangutan population trends would
require more than 1,000 transect systems. Each transect requires monthly repeat surveys by
2-4 survey staff, at a cost of ca. US $1,500/month. An annual survey budget of some US
$50,000,000 would be required to sustain such an effort. This is about the same as the total
annual conservation investment in Indonesia, i.e. entirely unrealistic. The question is whether
there are realistic alternatives.
[The Nature Conservancy] are presently developing and testing a new orangutan census
technique in East Kalimantan. It uses structured interview-based approaches, similar to rural
surveys employed by the World Health Organization. In a set of 35 questions, randomly selec-
ted interviewees in villages, logging camps, and plantation areas are asked about the work and
frequency of forest travel. They are also asked about when and where they have last seen an or-
angutan. A combination of additional questions establishes the reliability of time-related ques-
tions and the interviewees' knowledge of different primate species. Preliminary tests in areas
where orangutan densities are well known indicate that the interview surveys provide quant-
itative information about orangutan densities with relatively small standard errors. Integrated
methods such as these are especially useful because the interviews provide multidimensional
information, encompassing not only the density of the species in question but other informa-
tion that is equally important to conserving orangutans, such as the intensity of local threats
such as hunting, habitat conversion, and human attitudes towards orangutans.
Erik Meijaard and Andrew Marshall, “Why Didn't We Just Ask?” Forest Science News 4 no.
10 (October 2008): 4, http://anthropology.ucdavis.edu/people/ajmarsha/publications-1/Mei-
jaard%20-%20Marshall%202008-Why%20didnt%20we%20just%20ask.pdf .
Economics around the Campfire
150 The problems arise when David S. Wilkie and Julia F. Carpenter, “Bushmeat Hunting in the
Congo Basin,” Biodiversity and Conservation 8 (1999): 927-55, http://www.brookfieldzoo.org/
pagegen/inc/acwilkie.pdf .
150 River barges passing through Both Dale Peterson's Eating Apes and Jeffrey Tayler's Facing
the Congo offer compelling portrayals of the bushmeat markets on the river.
150 The hunters who enter Concerning Africa, Jane Goodall writes: “For hundreds of years, people
have lived in harmony with nature, killing just those animals they needed to survive. Now the
hunters kill everything they see and send the bodies out on the logging trucks into the town to cater
to the popular taste for the flesh of wild animals. . . . It also threatens the indigenous forest people,
for when the logging companies move on, they leave behind a forest where only the smallest
creatures remain.” Michael Nichols and Jane Goodall, Brutal Kinship (New York: Aperture, 2005),
70. Furthermore, in Eating Apes , Dale Peterson describes the work of hunters: “These people are
very efficient hunters, who hunt as many as possible and then move to another place when the
forest is 'empty'” (118).
150 The proponents of logging claim Peterson, Eating Apes , 196.
150 Some of the sapele trees Ibid., 166.
151 White's point is that Lee J. T. White, “The African Rain Forest: Climate and Vegetation,” in
Weber et al., African Rain Forest Ecology and Conservation , 4.