Sara's
Notes (be sure to scroll down for notes from later dates)
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October 1, 2002
Possible Plan for Mission 2006 Fauna Group
For
Fauna:
Problems: loss of species
(therefore, loss of biodiversity)
(this is our only concern as the fauna group. the only problem involving
animals is that they are dying off. these are losses which would
not occur if humans were not present in the rainforest--that is, non-indigenous
peoples unlike the native tribes in the rainforest which have found a
balance with nature)
Reasons for this Problem: 1)
Loss of Habitat (deforestation)
2) Loss
of Food Sources (either loss of plants as a result of deforestation, or
loss of lower order species which are other species' food)
3) Poaching
(also to note is the removal of species from the rainforest: for example,
the butterflies)
4) Introduction
of Non-Indigenous Species (humans introduce other species that completely
destroy the balance of nature in the rainforest)
5) Introduction
of Poisons (pesticides or herbicides used for farming, or just used in
the rainforest for various purposes, leaking into air, water, and plant
life.)
6) Climate
Changes (global warming and acid rain as a result of pollution, erosion
as a result of deforestation, or water temperature increase--as a result
of pollution--which decreases the amount of oxygen in the air and kills
off aquatic life)
Solution to the Problem (our
project): Many of these reasons for the loss of species do not
have a direct effect on the loss of animals, therefore Fauna as a group
should be more concerned with how these problems specifically affect the
animal life, and which animals in particular are most threatened.
Fauna Research: a)
if each of these "reasons"is actually a real problem with a significantly
negative affect on the rainforest.
b) what species are
most directly and most dangerously affected for each of the "reasons for
problem" (note: deforestation can perhaps be seen as the most dangerous
threat because virtually all species are affected)
*also to be
considered is if there is an encroachment of the Amazon river area (population
problems, towns being built, etc.) similar to the encroachment of the
"tree" part of the rainforest. Find out if it's a real problem,
and in what way, and to what extent.
As far as monitoring goes....
1) Focus--Our
focus should be on monitoring the population numbers of those species
found to be most affected, or "endangered". watch and monitor the
animals most threatened (this will allow us to see if the population is
recovering, and therefore if our strategies are effective)
2) General--We also
need some sort of very general view of the health of the animal population
numbers. This very broad monitoring will serve both as an alert
for drastic, unnatural population changes, as well as a source for information
and discovery.
How do we do this
monitoring? We currently do not know at all what any of the common
monitoring practices are for any habitat, much less the rainforest. Once
we do research to learn this, then we can adapt the monitoring practices
to become more effective for our purposes of monitoring in the rainforest.
October 22, 2002
The meeting held yesterday afternoon following the official
class took place in the Terrascope Lounge. The people present were
one representative from each of the groups. Though unclear, the point
of the meeting seemed to be to get the project organized into some better
way that would make it suitable for the final presentation. Some
people wanted to completely reorganize/rename the groups, while others
simply wanted (to my understanding) to place the groups under larger "groups".
The latter idea seemed to stem from the fact that many threats to
the rainforest, or at least many parts of the Mission 2006 problem seemed
to coincide with more than one group, and by combining some groups, a more
effective solution could be found more quickly.
It was this idea that seemed to make the most sense. My idea as to
what the meeting should have been and/or seemed to be about was to organize
the teams or make up larger teams in such a way that the work done by the
individual teams could be put into a format more suitable for presentation.
That is, each team has a specific task to do, but the final presentation
cannot simply be each team presenting "what they found". Thus, the
larger subdivisions will bring together the common elements and findings
of each team to blend them into the total "solution" or "strategy for a solution"
as described in the Mission 2006 mission statement. But that's just
what I thought....
Anyway, at some point (amidst much heated discussion and hot chocolate)
it was decided that each representative should briefly describe the main
goals of the team. This took much longer than it should have, most
definitely because there was more heated discussion and circular arguments
following each team report (actually, all except for fauna--though I don't
know if that's a good thing because we're not controversial or lacking in
any way, or a bad thing because no one really cares what our team does....
: ) I could only stay for an hour of the meeting (I don't know how
long it lasted) and that only took me up to group 6. But here are my
notes on the groups, as I understood them:
Team 1&2: Legal, Political, Public Relations, and Data Management's
concerns/goals
-public education
-paying indigenous peoples to go into the
cities and raise awareness (might they have immunity problems?)
-getting Brazilian government involved
-other companies buying rainforest land
(and taking care of it...to compensate for pollution they cause...Coca Cola
does this)
-stuff like Kyoto, except companies instead
of countries, promote such existing programs (this is where it got hazy...)
Team 3: Flora's concerns/goals
-deforestation (this report was very hard
to follow, as it almost immediately turned into random discussion)
Team 4: Fauna's concerns/goals (this is what I said)
-We're focusing on the health of the ecosystem,
based on the idea that the rainforest would be healthy if humans weren't
there (excepting native peoples)
-We've basically left it up to the other
groups to take care of the human factors, our concern is only with the fauna,
and how we can basically use the animals to give us information about ecosystem
health
-we're choosing indicator species (species
that are easy to monitor and offer significant information about fauna/rainforest
health) such as bats, amphibians, caiman, and jaguars (I described a bit
how each was an indicator species)
-as far as the highly endangered species
are concerned, there's not much we can do except try to promote existing
groups that help endangered species...look for charismatic mega-fauna (it
was a new big phrase that I learned, so I had to use it) that will get the
public interested, like the panda did for China
Team 5: Land's concerns/goals
-Chemical composition of the soil: what's
there, what needs to be there
-Land use: mining, etc. and how that affects
chemical composition
-how they need to work with Flora
-monitoring: basic soil tests, erosion
tests on a large scale using satellites
Team 6: Water's concerns/goals
-mines: mercury, from gold mining, old
mines
-deforestation, and how that affects the
water
-viability of transportation on rivers
Those are
all the notes I have for now, but I do plan on getting the rest of the
notes from the meeting (in fact, now that I think of it, minutes from the
meeting are going to be sent out, which makes this useless, except that
you'll get a bit of my bias on the whole thing.....) From what I could
tell, the rest of the meeting was going to try to make up the larger groups,
and then send out an email saying that each person had to sign up for one
of the mailing lists for a larger group.
October 30, 2002
Possible final presentation format;
Policy Debate
Style
Introduction
Statement of why the Amazon is important. Not emotional,
rather objective.
Summary of "what is Mission 2006"
Inherency:
Our proposal is completely unique. I.E. in the status
quo there exists no similar policy to our own
Harms (Characterization)
List of the top six threats to hte Amazon:
Threat 1:
If the threat is
something like, Mining companies, briefly list the importance or positive
aspects of these companies' existence so as not to offend members of the audience
objectively outline
the main concerns in this area. Cite facts, statistics, impacts (long
term and short term)
Follow this pattern for threats 2, 3,
4, etc.
Plan (for preservation and monitoring of the Amazon)
Here we describe Mission 2006's comprehensive
strategy for monitoring and preserving the Amazon and combatting the harms
cited above.
i. Logistics, legality, timeframe, etc.
ii. funding, enforcement, etc.
iii. describe our strategy as it pertains to each one of the harms listed
above.
Solvency;
Now we move on to offer evidence proving why
our harms-specific strategies will be effective. Examples of evidence
include citation of specific reports, empirical examples of effectiveness,
a "case study" say in Brazil, etc.
i. prove the logistics of the plan are feasible
ii provide evidence of the effectiveness of our monitoring strategy
iii prove the effectiveness of the plan as it relates to each individual
harm (go through, one by one) this will take a while...
iv case study as evidence of the effectiveness of our proposal
v why our strategy will be effective on a grand scale (for preserving
the Amazon as a whole) because of the positive results of our case study (i.e.
prove our case study was conducted on a representative area of the rainforest
and why it serves as a useful model for preservation elsewhere
Pre-empts
Here we attempt to pre-emptively answer some
of the likely questions which will be asked after our presentation. (we will
not explicitly indicate this is what we are doing, of course.) if
we can answer some of these concerns before the judges have the opportun
Examples:
Will the Brazilian government support/want to pass your
proposal?
How will the plan impact South American economies?
How expensive is the proposal/
Isn't this being done already?
What about the indigenous people?
Conclusion
Going back to the importance of the Amazon, the
realistic potential of Mission 2006, begin the question/answer phase of the
presentation.
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