Tuesday, September 13, 2011

CONSERVATION'S AGENT


The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) is more than just a research facility, it is a philosophy in the name of sustaining biodiversity, says its director and anyone who works for SCBI in sites around the world, including Hawaii, Panama and Gabon. Nonetheless, an expansive Front Royal campus has been home and hub to SCBI’s headquarters operation since 1975. And, in the last year, the facility, which formally had its name changed by Smithsonian Institution’s regents last January, is aggressively upping the ante on global—and local—leadership in the study of conservation biology, ecology and species survival, while still managing to furnish the National Zoo with all of its hay...


In Front Royal, Virginia, about an hour west of Washington, D.C., we are driving along the rolling roads of a 3,200-acre government facility, the
Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI). A distinctly manicured parcel of land, SCBI’s headquarters sits at the tip of the Shenandoah Mountains in Warren County. As we make our way through one gated entrance after another, there are dozens of outbuildings speckling the grassy slopes, once home to herds of horses that belonged to a U.S. Army remount depot.

It is a crisp, sunny day in early spring, and through a gated enclosure on a hill, a large Maned Wolf appears. There are two at SCBI, Rambo and Ibera. This one sits up halfway to look; it has big ears, and a thick brown coat with a shawl of black around the scruff, its fur swaying in the chilly winds that are the last traces of winter.

Several cranes come into view in enclosures down another hill, representing the red-crowned and white-naped cranes living at SCBI.

The tour guide explains that the animals we are seeing—there are about 30 in Front Royal—are at SCBI for a reason, because they are being studied. She points out a cluster of what looks like huts. They are being converted into a conservation facility for red pandas and clouded leopards, both endangered and part of research being conducted by SCBI’s Center for Species Survival. Likewise, the nearly extinct Prezwalski horses, which roam in different enclosures all around the facility, are part of SCBI’s Species Survival Plan. The endangered Maned Wolf, once a thriving species in much of South America, has been part of an ongoing cooperative breeding program at SCBI for 30 years. The 16 cranes in captivity are there to be studied for reproduction, “SCBI,” we are told, is “cracking the code on cranes.” SCBI’ scientists have even figured out how to “sex an egg” of a crane, which means identify the sex before it hatches. We are also told one of the cranes “imprinted” on her human keeper, which means she has identified him as her partner.

We are moving yet again through another gated entrance, to Cheetah Hill. This time the driver must get out of the car and somehow gain access through the fence. Once on the other side, to our left, a tall, jaunty female Cheetah comes loping down the hill to see who is there. We continue along the road.

In the next fenced off enclosure, there is another adult female who happens to have some company: in a spot of warm sunlight at the far end of the enclosure sits Zazi and her two cubs, one of which was “adopted” by Zazi after she had her own cub last December, in what made big headlines. SCBI cheetah biologists managed to unite, or “cross-foster,” a two-week-old male cub with Zazi’s newborn, and Zazi has been raising the two as her own since then. What is more: thanks to a web cam, spectators at the National Zoo in Washington are able to view this very scene.

There are many heartwarming stories that transpire amid the work performed at SCBI, particularly in the area of species survival. For thirty years, the Front Royal facility was used primarily as a breeding center for endangered birds and mammals. Yet, today, even more is slated to come out of the SCBI. Its ongoing, if rapid, growth in conservation science training, ecological studies, and as an academic facility in general—coupled with its renowned name in endangered species science programs and animal endocrinology—are thrusting the facility into the spotlight, where, presently, it has taken center stage as a champion for a better understanding, overall, of what conservation biology actually means.

Steve Monfort, director of SCBI, talks about the significance of the name change for SCBI, which, until January 2010, was known as the National Zoo’s Conservation and Research Center, or CRC.

“CRC was basically a department of the Zoo and with SCBI, we are partner with the Zoo,” says Monfort. “We are a focal point for an entire discipline across the whole Smithsonian, and the name change signifies that there is finally another space for conservation within the Smithsonian family of science.”

Monfort sites the Smithsonian’s new strategic plan, in which the language for its grand challenges was changed in order to advance “understanding and sustaining a biodiverse planet.” “In the old days, it was ‘studying and understanding’,” says Monfort. “There was nothing explicit about saving anything, conserving anything.”

“This is the first time the Smithsonian has explicitly stated that this is a priority to actually conserve species,” adds Ruth Stolk, head of strategic development for SCBI, “With SCBI, the Smithsonian regents renamed what was already the National Zoo’s conservation science arm. Now the meaning of the name is to be more inclusive and to establish a conservation institute and have a presence in the world.”

Stolk puts SCBI’s annual budget for running its science centers at about $12 million, with roughly $3 million more per year in facility costs at Front Royal. Forty percent of the budget, however, is generated through competitive grants that the scientists bring in. The facility is closed to the public save for an open house once a year, when visitors can tour the complex for its Autumn Conservation Festival, always held the first weekend in October.

In the meantime and well before it’s name change, SCBI had already established an unparalleled reputation for professional conservation training programs, both at the Front Royal Campus and “in country,” meaning in the more than 20 international locations where SCBI has a presence. For 30 years, the training programs have served undergraduate and graduate students, and university, zoological and field management professionals from more than 85 countries –with an eye on serving people and institutions from developing countries.

Kate Christen, SCBI’s graduate and professional training manager, will tell you that conservation biology, in case anyone asks, involves an integrative approach to the protection and management of biodiversity that uses appropriate principles and experiences from basic biological field such as genetics and ecology; from natural resource management fields such as fisheries and wildlife; and from social sciences such as anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and economics, and even the humanities.

“It’s tricky,” said Christen, “Conservation biology is a subset of conservation.”

Yet, says Christen, conservation biology involves “integrative interdisciplinary work”, which deals with being both a scientist and a manager. Even the Smithsonian press materials try to make layman’s sense of the term by writing: "Conservation biology is based on the premise that the conservation of biological diversity is important and benefits current and future human societies.”

Monfort stresses an understanding of conservation biology because he believes it is at the heart center of sustaining biodiversity. “We aren’t just there to study and understand, we’re there to save some of the last individuals on earth,” says Monfort. “At SCBI, we’re envisioning the focal point for conservation. We want to be recognized as the convener, the connector and the scientific source for conserving habitats and species.”

Christen, who runs SCBI’s training programs, herself teaches SCBI courses in conservation biology. She said SCBI’s scientists and staff collaborate to teach courses to the visiting students and professionals. The range of courses includes spatial ecology, conservation conflict resolution, effective conservation leadership, non-invasive genetic techniques in wildlife conservation and statistics for ecology and conservation biology, all taught as intensive one or two-week courses for either professional training or graduate credit, says Christen.

“It’s both scientific techniques and practices and then also human dimensions, so we have a suite of training courses,” says Christen. “I don’t think there are many places that are doing professional and graduate training combined and taken the way we are, which allows for a nice mix of people communicating with each other.”

Still, in 13 months in conjunction with its new name, the institution has transformed, if not expanded, its workload and portfolio significantly, including forging a wide range of new partnerships on both the global and local stage.

“We are branching out to different audiences,” says Monfort.

From the World Bank, the National Science Foundation and U.S Fish and Wildlife, to Virginia’s George Mason University, the Piedmont Environmental Council, and the Shenandoah National Park Trust, SCBI is highly engaged, and “adding value” through its new partnerships, he says. Stolk is quick to site the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI), a high-profile program in which SCBI and World Bank have partnered to lead a global alliance dedicated to stabilizing and restoring wild tiger populations, as a good a example of what it means to be raising the bar for SCBI’s training presence in the world.

SCBI has always had ties, says Stolk, to Asian conservationists, whom she says “grew up” in Smithsonian certification and training programs and have become heads of wildlife departments in Nepal, India and Sri Lanka, countries that also happen to be tiger range countries in which the world’s remaining tiger populations live.

“The Global Tiger Initiative has become the cornerstone of our new training presence in the world,” says Stolk. “It’s really exciting to bring together some of the old ‘graduates’ of Smithsonian conservation training programs, and then all kinds of new people that are the new generation beyond them. So we’re actually tapping our own network out in the world. This is our old training presence in the world, but with steroids.”

The notion of a next generation for conservation biology is an important one to Monfort and SCBI, and even more devoted to this idea is the ever-growing George Mason University, whose main campus is in Fairfax, Va. Less than two years ago, SCBI and the university’s College of Science established the Smithsonian-Mason Global Conservation Studies Program, a sort of “semester abroad” in which Mason undegrads spend a semester immersed in SCBI’s active research community, while earning 16 credits through a course load of five classes. The program has hosted about 20 students a semester and is wrapping up the fifth and last of its “pilot” semesters, thus, shifting, into the growth phase. Mason has brought in capital resources to bolster additional fundraising that will allow SCBI to renovate an existing building at the facility as well as build a dorm, which will house up to 120 students, the projected size of the program over the next several years. The partnership with George Mason is “big” for the Smithsonian and SCBI, not just because it brings an accrediting capacity to the institution, but because Mason is so entrepreneurial and forward-thinking in terms of conservation science, says Jennifer Buff, SCBI’s academic program manager.

“SCBI has a long history in capacity building and the Mason program ups the ante,” says Buff.

Buff credits the faculty at George Mason University for pushing forward and integrating their conservation studies program with the scholarship at SCBI.

“George Mason University is willing to take risks in doing things,” says Buff. “They are thinking that the professions the students will be in and that the conservation questions they will be dealing with ten years from now aren’t even dreamed of yet, and George Mason recognizes that the students need to be approaching this world slightly differently.”

SCBI’s Virginia-based partnerships are blossoming not just in the academic arena but also by way of directing SCBI’s scientific talent toward protecting and enhancing Virginia’s native habitats through cooperative efforts that are helping local landowners become better stewards of their land. Even more, an outgrowth, as it were, of this effort, allows for more hay at the National Zoo, which SCBI produces en masse, unlike any zoo in the country.

“Hay is one thing we don’t have to worry about,” says Mike Maslanka, head of department of nutrition, in charge of procuring all the food for the zoo animals, including meat and produce. And, there are even some active bamboo stands in Front Royal, used on a sporadic basis, says the nutritionist, to feed the pandas. As it stands, there are about 190 acres of land—or hay pastures—at SCBI that yield up to 16,000 bales of hay, much of which can be stored in hay barns which hold 600 tons of hay, or a year and half supply. Every five or six weeks, hay is loaded and sent to the National Zoo, where, hands down, the elephants consume the most, says Maslanka. Maslanka says the animals consume mainly cool season grasses, specifically orchardgrass.

He said they are also experimenting with growing grasses native to Virginia, and that portions of the hay fields have been planted largely with certain warm season grasses for this purpose. Maslanka is working with SCBI ecologists Bill McShea and Norm Bourg in an effort intended to reach beyond SCBI’s borders so as to be embraced by Virginia’s large landowners. Called “Virginia Working Landscapes”, SCBI has partnered with the Piedmont Environmental Council and Shenandoah National Park Trust to pique local landowners’ interest in biodiversity enhancement and in conserving their land, much of which is put easements and left unattended. The program encourages the landowners to devote some their acreage to establishing and harvesting native grasses or engage in species studies by monitoring native wildlife—all meant to be an information-sharing network to study best practices in the management the of “working landscapes.”

Meanwhile at SCBI’s veterinary hospital, Janine Brown, SCBI’s chief of endocrinology, is talking about her work on a program recently funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services entitled, "Using Science to Understand Zoo Elephant Welfare." She will participate with fellow scientists around the world in a study of the world’s population of elephants in captivity, about 290 at more than 70 zoos, to look at factors for improving their reproduction, health and welfare.

Brown, an authority on
wildlife endocrinology, and the team at SCBI have conducted extensive studies on elephant ovarian cycles, or the absence of them, known as reproductive acyclicity.

“We discovered a unique hormone pattern in elephants,” said Brown, referring to the circumstances surrounding the birth of Kandula, one of the first calves in the world to be born by artificial insemination. It was Shanthi, then a 26-year-old female Asian elephant who was a gift to the National Zoo from the children of Sri Lanka as a calf back in 1976, who gave birth to Kandula on November 25, 2001, and both live at the zoo today, along with Ambika, an Indian elephant born in 1948.

Recalls Brown of those days a decade ago: “I said when Kandula was born, I could die happy.”

Monfort says he has evolved into becoming a conservation biologist, though other scientists might think that is too applied.

“I am proud to have that label,” says Monfort, who, by training is a reproductive physiologist, endocrinologist and veterinarian. “It’s a different level of intensity…We want to solve problems, we want to save species, we’re cause driven, we have a passion for animals and for species and for saving habitats with the science knowledge that we have, and we view ourselves in that way, and that’s different.” -30-


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