But the philosophy or ethic was quite the opposite. The emphasis was on recovery and population and economic growth, fuelled by an economic system that depended on a large number of consumers. And the environmental damage wasn’t as obvious as it is today. I think people are still generally of the mind-set that we live on an infinite planet and there isn’t any way the human population could change things, like the climate, and kill off entire species. Today, pollution, deforestation and climate change are in everyone’s face, even though some people still prefer to bury their head in the sand. But that wasn’t in the psyche of most countries 70 years ago. Some perhaps, like China, clearly had a different view of things, but the Chinese have nearly always had a different view on most things over the course of the last 150 years. And they dealt with it in their own way, controversially of course. And India has had some controversial interventions as well – forced sterilisations and that sort of thing. I think very few countries could put their hands on their hearts and say they haven’t done something wrong in the past with respect to family planning. But Paul was a lone voice in the 1960s in a sea of promotion of growth. Now lots of people argue that Paul Ehrlich was wrong then. But he wasn’t wrong, he was just perhaps a little out of date. He projected what we are going through now, a little bit earlier than it has actually happened. But everything he talked about is coming true. That’s another reason why modelling this stuff mathematically is useful, because it gives you a timeline. It’s approximate, but it tells you whether you need to deal with issues on decadal or century scales.

HS: That brings me to a question I had about this debate of overconsumption versus overpopulation, which is often set up as a developed versus developing world debate. What is your personal take on this?

CB: They are inseparable and can’t be seen as a dichotomy. Several analogies have been used, for example, “two sides of the same coin”. Or the one Paul uses all the time: he says that “arguing whether consumption or population is more important for sustainability is like arguing whether the length or width of a rectangle is more important for calculating its area”. It’s obvious that total damage arising from a population is a product of those two components. If you have a large population with low consumption or small population with large consumption you have the same result. It’s the same amount of damage, same total consumption. But it is a very sensitive topic; when someone like me, a white fellow from a developed nation, says that the world must reduce its consumption. It seems hypocritical and I would be the first to agree with that. Australians, for example, while only 23 million people, have the highest per capita emission rates in the OECD ( Organisation for Economic Co-operation Development). We are one of the highest per capita water users on the planet, even though we live in a desert. We are superlative wasters. Do we need to address that? Absolutely. The possible advantages, I think, many developing nations have is that they have seen the paths that developed nations have gone down: fossil fuel exploitation, reduction of natural resources, and the rising pollution as a result.

14 current conservation 10.3

Today, pollution, deforestation and climate change are in everyone’s face, even though some people still prefer to bury their head in the sand. But that wasn’t in the psyche of most countries 70 years ago.

interview

kids

Illustrations: Sheena Deviah

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S S S S H H H H H H ,W I S H WA S H A - WA A A A A A A A A A H ,W I S H WA S H A - WA A A A A A A A A A H ,W I S H WA S H A - WA A A A fall the waves on my shore,S C H L O O P G L U P PA air escapes from the mud, H S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S ,H S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S ,Sand drifts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,Sand drifts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,H U S H T I C A H A A A A sing the grasses in the meadow,S W E E P S WA PA S W E E P call the birds in the trees,S U PA A PA S I P S U PA A PA the whisper in the leaves, A B R R R R T I C A TA C . . . bird flies to the sky,Mountains soar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,Mountains soar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,

S S HH H HH H H

C R A C K L E H I S S - S I H . . . temperature is rising,S A A A A A A C C C S H . . . ice in the North, P I P - P I P. . . the ice melts away,C H U R G L E G L A G A G L U G . . . so much water,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Seas riiiiise. . . . . . . . . . . . ,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Seas riiiiise . . . . . . . . . . . ,A B R R R R T I C A TA C . . . the last bird leaves,H S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S ,H S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S ,Sand drifts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,Sand drifts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,S S H H H H H H H H H H . . . . . . . . . ,

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poem Matthew Creasey

This is a small herb with tiny white flowers. It arrived in India by accident, people think, because its seeds got mixed up with wheat that was being imported for food! It is a very common plant along roadsides and in open areas. Some people are quite allergic to it.

Congress grass (Parthenium hysterophorus)

species profile Geetha Ramaswami and Ankila Hiremath

Giant African snail (Achatina fulica)

This climber, from the American tropics, is called a “mile-a-minute” weed for good reason. It grows extremely fast, and can quickly blanket entire trees. In fact, the story goes that it was introduced to India during the 2nd World War, to camouflage air fields! It clambers all over trees in plantations and forests, very quickly smothering what is underneath.

Mile-a-minute weed(Mikania micrantha)

The first know pair of African giant snails was brought to Kolkata by a British malacologist in the 1800s from Mauritius. (A malacologist is a scientist who studies animals like snails and oysters and even octopuses!) He presented this pair of snails to a friend to keep in his garden. Very soon, the snails had multiplied and were all over Kolkata! These large and unusual snails got carried as pets to other parts of the country and are now found in huge numbers, in places like Kerala and Assam. They are hungry creatures and chomp through crops like potatoes, spinach, bananas, and tomatoes, doing a lot of damage.

Alien invaders—our top six!

The Burmese python is one of the largest snakes in the world. In the US many pet shops sell baby Burmese pythons. But these snakes grow fast, and aren’t such cute pets after some time. People release pet snakes into the wild once they grow big and become difficult to look after at home. These snakes have become a huge problem in places like the Florida Everglades, where they have eaten up most of the wildlife. They have even been known to eat alligators!

Burmese python (Python bivittatus) The brown tree snake

(Boiga irregularis)

This snake is native to Australia and Papua New Guinea and was accidentally transported to Guam as a stowaway on ships some time in the late 1940s or early 1950s. On Guam there are no animals that eat the brown tree snake, but the snake has found lots of things that it can eat, like birds, rodents and reptiles. So much so that some birds have even gone extinct on Guam, thanks to this invasive snake!

This is a medium sized thorny tree with yellow flowers and pods that goats, buffaloes and camels feed on (they also help to spread it!). It was introduced to India in the 1850s because it grew fast and could rapidly provide lots of fuel wood. Now it is an invasive plant all across the hot, dry parts of the country, and has taken over grasslands and farms. Because it spreads so fast, it is called the ‘mad babool’ in some places! But people have also figured out a use for it—in many places, people make charcoal from its wood.

Mesquite (Prosopis juliflora)

What can you do to reduce the spread of invasive plants and animals? 1. If you are arriving from abroad, don’t bring plants and animals back with you! 2. Don’t buy exotic pets. And certainly don’t release exotic pets into the wild. Even tiny goldfish can become big and invasive.3. If you are planting a garden, try to use native plants. Even if you do not intend to attract pollinators and dispersers, be aware that colourful flowers will get pollinated and sweet fruit will get eaten! So help prevent accidental garden escapes via bird- and bat-mobiles. 4. Join the SPAIS programme and report the occurrence of invasive plants and animals (http://indiabiodiversity.org/group/spotting_alien_invasive_species). 5. Don’t remove creatures from where they belong and put them in places where they don’t.

Archana Sreenivasan

You’ve seen Lantana everywhere, yet you probably don’t know very much about it. It has pretty little flowers but has prickly leaves and thorny stems. Gardeners like it. Elephants and deer avoid it. Butterflies and birds love it! Biologists call it an invasive plant. GEETHA RAMASWAMI studies it, and tells us a little more about it.

lantana! lantana! E V E R Y W H E R E . . .

CC Kids: Tell us about in-vasive plants and animals. What are they?

Imagine that you are a brightly coloured little frog living on an island in the Carribean. You would be a ‘native’ frog on that island. But suppose you caught the fancy of a visiting pet trader from Sri Lanka, who thought that you would look great in an aquarium. He captures some of you and

Shreyas R Krishnan

brings you home. You are now an ‘introduced’ frog in Sri Lanka.

Supposing some of you frogs get washed down the drain when your aquarium in the pet shop is being cleaned. You end up in a pond outside, have lots of baby frogs, and spread to other ponds. There are soon so many of you that you start to compete for food with all the Sri Lankan frogs. You might also eat up all the useful insects. This is when you will be called an invasive frog.

How can a little frog become such a nuisance, you ask? Well, it could be because you don’t get eaten by

other animals the way local frogs do. Or perhaps you are just better at catching insects than the local frogs. And so one way or another the locals don’t stand a chance against you! People introduce lots of plants and animals to new places. Many of these become invasive. Others don’t, maybe because they didn’t find the right things to eat, or they couldn’t deal with the weather, or weren’t able to spread very far.

CCKids: Tell us a little more about the invasive plant that you work on.

I work on a thorny, bushy plant called Lantana. In India it is spread over many millions of hectares. You are sure to have seen it – it has clusters of pretty pink flowers and juicy, sweet, black berries. I am interested in all the mischief it brings about in the forests that it invades.

CCKids: How did Lantana get here? And how did it become invasive?

Well, Lantana was introduced from South America to grow in gardens, because its flowers looked so pretty. It was brought to India by British botanists more than 200 years ago!

Lantana was able to invade because it has several ways to ensure that it can get around and grow. Lots of birds and some animals eat the fruit, and poop the seeds out in different places, helping to spread it far and wide! Lantana can also sprout right back if its top is cut off or if it is burnt.

CCKids: Ok, so we know how Lantana is able to spread. But is it also harm-ful, like the invasive frog?

Yes, Lantana can change a lot of things. It can grow so fast, that many native plants just cannot compete with it. It can change soil conditions. Lantana also grows in dense thickets and sometimes this can make it difficult for large animals to move around! Also, not many animals can eat lantana leaves without getting really sick, so it is bad for herbivores.

CCKids: Is Lantana always this harmful or do some animals benefit from it?

Oh yes! Many insects drink nectar from its flowers and in return transfer its pollen to other plants, helping it to produce more fruits and seeds and so, more baby plants. Lantana also has delicious, juicy, sweet berries that lots of birds and some animals like to eat. (Because these birds and animals help spread Lantana seeds, they are also called ‘seed dispersers’.)

CCKids: Why are you studying Lantana?

I am trying to understand if Lantana steals away seed dispersers from other plants. (Many plants need fruit-eating animals to visit them and spread their seeds.) But Lantana could be more attractive to animals than other plants, thanks to all those juicy berries it produces. This will eventually result in more lantana plants spreading instead of native plants.

column Geetha Ramaswami

currentconservation.org 15

context of meeting future emission targets. We are already such high emitters, and the addition of more people makes reaching those targets even more difficult. How much more difficult? As it turns out, we have so far to go that even high immigration rates are only going to modify that capacity by 10% or so over the next 50 years. But the other issues are that Australia is a very dry place and has poor soils. The continent has had no glaciation since the Permian, and no major volcanism, so our soils are depleted. We need lots of area to grow food for our own population and we are sustained in a large way by global trade, like many countries these days. One could even argue that we have already exceeded our carrying capacity, so any additional people will put more pressure on our natural systems. We have already lost over 40% of our forest cover in the last 200 years, and the remainder is highly fragmented. We are losing our world-class coral reef system from agricultural practices and climate change. Overfishing has also been an issue, and we have some of the highest densities of feral animals in the world. We also have the world’s highest mammal extinction rate. People cannot point to Australia as a model for conservation. We have a large protected area network, but even in our largest park, Kakadu,

In other words, the developing world has very good examples of what not to do, what not to follow. Moreover, the consumption pathway has led to all sorts of corollary issues – obesity, diabetes, heart diseases. Even political stability is not guaranteed. There are plenty of things to avoid. Now I know every country has a set of issues and problems, but I always argue that taking Western societies as examples of what not to do is how developing nations can learn to do better. Because now the technology and knowledge are there, and alternative pathways are now available, which weren’t necessarily the case when Western nations were developing. We didn’t have access to renewable technologies or nuclear power and we didn’t have family planning on the mind. So in some ways the developing world is at an advantage and I guess that’s the message I try to get out. Absolutely, I will be the first to scream out that my government isn’t doing enough on the consumption side, just as I will say that to Indians, the Chinese or Africans. In fact, I would also say that my country is probably not doing enough on the population side either.

HS: When you say Australia isn’t doing enough in terms of population, do you mean in controlling immigration? That is something you briefly touch upon in the paper, but which you didn’t include in the regional analysis.

CB: Not in that paper, but I’ve written a subsequent paper about Australia in particular that specifically deals with the immigration issue, which of course is a loaded gun as well; it’s entirely politicized. In Australia, right now, that’s almost the number-one election issue: how we deal with refugees in particular, but with migration in general. I myself am an immigrant to Australia: I came from Canada and was naturalised twenty-odd years ago. And there is a certain amount of racism involved there. I happen to be the same colour as most Australians, and so my entry into Australia was probably a little bit easier than someone from say, Sudan or Indonesia. But Australia has a classic European-like demographic structure, in that we don’t really have any intrinsic growth. We are hovering at slight increase or stability. All of our growth - pretty much all of it (98%) - is from immigration. And that’s a political choice. We have approximately 2,15,000 net immigrants per year, which is about 1% of the population. So in that paper we put this in the

The flip sideJim Jourdane illustrates some of the misadventures experienced by field biologists

in our new ‘The flip side’.

CCKids: Do we have ways to deal with Lantana? It sure seems like quite a problem.

Well, Lantana has been around for a long time now, so there’s probably no getting rid of it completely. But people try. Forest Departments remove

Lantana by the thousands every year. It’s a lot of work! And farmers definitely don’t want Lantana on their lands, so they till it. But Lantana’s seeds keep arriving, thanks to its dispersers. Keeping lantana at bay is hard work indeed, but we must definitely strive to control it in areas

that are important for people and wild animals.

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Agata StaniewiczAccidentally glued herself to a crocodile while attaching a radio transmitter.