Tag: conservation

Anthro in the news 5/27/13

A monument to those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexico border./© Tomas Castelazo, http://www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0

• Heavy toll at the border

The Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office in southern Arizona holds the largest collection of missing-person reports for immigrants who have disappeared while crossing the United States-Mexico border. Many hundreds of remains await identification. An article in The New York Times quotes Bruce Anderson, the chief forensic anthropologist at the medical examiner’s office and adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona: “Less people are coming across…but a greater fraction of them are dying.” There were 463 deaths in the past fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30 — the equivalent of about five migrants dying every four days, according to an analysis by the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group. As security at the border has tightened, migrants are pushed to seek more remote and dangerous routes.

• Conservation vs. people in Chagos

Chagos Islands

Sean Carey provided an update on the situation in the Chagos Islands in an article in The Independent (UK). He notes the pleasure of marine biologists and conservationists working in Chagos who take pleasure in the absence of any people living there. Meanwhile exiled Chagossians are still fighting for the right to return.

• Take that anthro degree and…

….become the Director of UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) and the first East African to direct a UN body. Mukhisa Kituyi will take on the UNCTAD leadership role this September. He is a graduate of political science and international relations from Makerere University in Kampala and also holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology.

…study the fashion industry at the new Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design. A few months ago, Zuzanna Ciszewska was working at a public relations agency in Warsaw. The 24-year-old with a master’s degree in anthropology and a lifelong passion for fashion saw an ad in British Vogue. Now she is one of the first 45 students at enrolled in a 10-week course meant to introduce them to topics like the fashion calendar, the history of fashion, important designers, fashion journalism, retail, business, marketing and public relations. Continue reading “Anthro in the news 5/27/13” →

The purrfect solution?

by Barbara Miller

Cheetahs are major draws for the international tourist industry in southern African countries. In Namibia, home of one-fourth of the world’s population of cheetahs, tourists pay big money for the chance of a close-up look at these large cats. The cheetah population has been declining in recent decades, however, mainly due to being killed by farmers. The tourist industry therefore cannot guarantee a sighting to high-paying visitors.

In an article in the Financial Times, journalist Colin Barraclough describes his stay at the Okonjima Lodge in Namibia where a double room costs between US $250-1000 per night. The AfriCat Foundation, based at the Lodge, is a nonprofit organization established to help protect Namibia’s big cats. Barraclough saw pens where injured and orphaned cats are housed in preparation for their return to the wild. While this effort may warm the heart of animal lovers, it’s not done out of altruistic feelings about the animals but to protect profits from high-end tourism.

A major challenge in cheetah population management is tracking the whereabouts of wild cheetahs. Conservationists need data on their numbers and location so they can step in to help if a problem arises that would affect cheetah health and wellbeing. But cheetahs don’t like to be monitored. Radio collaring, for example, causes them stress. The age-old way of reading their tracks appears promising as a non-invasive method. The article proclaims: “San Bushmen can consistently identify individual cheetahs from their footprints.”

So, the tourist industry and conservationists want to track cheetahs and San Bushmen know how to track them. Does this sound like a wonderful opportunity for the San to benefit from tourism by using their traditional tracking knowledge?

No such luck. The article further states that AfriCat is partnering with WildTrack, an animal monitoring group that aims to use computers to produce an algorithim to track free-roaming cheetahs based on data about their footprints. Computers will digest San knowledge and generate output for scientifically technicians to use.

Here is a shining example of how indigenous knowledge has potential to contribute to conservation and cultural survival by providing employment to the San people who have been harshly displaced from their homelands. Instead, once again, a takeover — only this time of knowledge instead of land. The takeover is glaringly obvious in the article’s proclamation: “Bushmen put scientists on the right track” followed by the words of a European cheetah researcher at a wildlife sanctuary in Namibia: “We hope computers can do the same.”

Photo, “Cheetah”, from Flickr via Creative Commons.