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Biodiversity: A tragedy with many players
Oko jedne trecine, mozda vise, vodozemaca je pred pomorom.
A tropical peat swamp is not a welcoming place. Its acidic waters sting every tiny scratch on your body. Hold your hands just beneath the surface and you can't see them through the tannin-laden water. The only bonus is that leeches don't fancy the murk. But Peter Ng, a taxonomist and conservation biologist at the National University of Singapore, loves getting up to his armpits in the mire.
Ng has discovered that the peat swamps of southeast Asia are teeming with rare species of fish and crustaceans, many of which are new to science. "Peat swamps have been badly neglected," says Ng, who pulls out novel specimens on nearly every dip into these hostile waters. His team has found a treasure trove of biodiversity in other unlikely places too, including the broken rubble of dead coral found off tropical beaches.
Now Ng is engaged in a race to catalogue these neglected faunas before many of them are wiped out by Asia's relentless economic development. The peat swamps, in particular, are being drained as fast as he can sample them, sometimes for urban or agricultural development, at other times — in a bitter irony — under the guise of 'environmental improvement'.
The rich faunas found in such neglected habitats underline a growing realization that conservation biologists really know very little about our planet's biodiversity (see 'Hyperdiversity, or hype?'). But Ng's quest is driven by more than academic interest. "Scientists and environmental managers need to know these habitats exist and that they deserve to be conserved," he says. "If they are lost through ignorance or misinformation, then it will be a terrible tragedy." [...]
Vanishing world
Living in the concrete jungle of Singapore, Ng knows all too well the consequences of unfettered development. Last year, he published a paper in Nature8 that used the detailed records made by British colonial naturalists to document the extinctions that have occurred since most of Singapore's forests were cut down. Extrapolating from these data, Ng and his colleagues concluded that up to 42% of the species currently in southeast Asia's forests will disappear over the next century if habitat destruction continues at its present rate. About half of these will be global extinctions, as the species are not found elsewhere.
The race to catalogue biodiversity before it disappears is particularly intense in the peat swamps, which are disappearing at a frightening rate. The drainage is even affecting neighbouring bits of forest; dried peat bogs have fuelled huge fires that have razed some areas.
When he talks about the threats to the peat ecosystems, Ng's natural enthusiasm can't hide a deep melancholy. He has become a reluctant ambulance chaser, rushing in to sample sites earmarked for development. The collecting methods that Ng's team uses in such cases are severe and destructive. "We call them salvage operations," he says. "We catch whatever is scientifically valuable, knowing full well that there is no tomorrow. It is a very rotten feeling."
Ng hopes his work will counter the ignorance that underlies the blasé destruction of these habitats. Officials and developers argue that there is no point conserving the swamps because there is 'nothing' there. "These places don't have big, sexy animals," Ng concedes. "But in almost all cases, when they say a place is species-poor, they're wrong."
He remains gloomy about the chances of protecting the remaining swamps from the tide of development. But at the very least, Ng is determined to reveal for future generations the true magnitude of the devastation that is now being wrought. "The story is much more tragic once you know the characters," he says.
Post je objavljen 19.10.2004. u 22:37 sati.