Category: Policy

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Conserving crop wild relatives

A paper just out in Biological Conservation discusses crop wild relatives (CWR) in the UK. 1 The authors include some of the same British boffins who wrote a global survey of CWR conservation. The paper describes how to develop a comprehensive national plan for the conservation of CWR, using the UK as an example. Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall, but I’ll summarize the main points.

First, of course, you need to know what you’re dealing with. A UK national inventory of CWR was developed as part of the EU-funded PGR Forum project. It contains 15 families, 413 genera, 1955 species (44 endemic) — that’s 65% of the native flora. So then you have to prioritize. For example, 13 of the UK’s CWR species are considered threatened according to IUCN criteria and one is apparently extinct in the wild ( the grass Bromus interruptus). The authors ran an iterative algorithm on the distribution data for about 250 CWR species 2 to identify the smallest number of areas which would contain the largest number of species. Seventeen 10×10 km grid squares were selected within which could be found two thirds of the priority CWR species.

To what extent are these “hotspots” already protected? Interestingly, none of them “did not overlap with existing UK protected areas.” What’s now needed is to confirm the presence of the target species in the protected areas and come up with management plans specifically aimed at the CWR.

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Lose the farmers, lose the environment

Banaue Rice Terraces2 Further to Luigi’s thoughtful article on how hard farming is becoming, and how the skills needed to farm effectively are being lost as young people abandon rural life for the city, news that a farming environment often considered the eighth wonder of the world is under threat. The Banaue Rice Terraces of Luzon in the Philippines are beyond words. But they are apparently being destroyed by giant earthworms and edible snails, among other pests. But honestly, if the people are introducing snails to supplement their diet, how sustainable can the terraces possibly be? Only human labour can sustain such artifice, and only human need can command and coordinate that much labour. The President of the Philippine Senate has called for a “comprehensive study”. But what is it likely to recommend? That maintaining the terraces be a government-funded job to keep a tourist attraction in a state that will attract tourists, and their cash? Or can the communities that have inherited the Banaue terraces somehow be shown ways in which they can benefit directly from the tourist cash?

Photo from Wayfaring Travel Guide (because Flickr doesn’t work too well here in China.)