People, Values, and Land Use in Madagascar
Georgina Cullman, Ph.D. candidate, Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, Columbia University
Research interests
In the broadest sense, I am interested in the maintenance of the world’s biological
and cultural diversity. More practically, I aim to contribute to bettering
the implementation of biodiversity conservation within a social context. My
doctoral research is based in and around the newly established Makira Protected
Area in northeastern Madagascar. I investigate how different actors in the
region value different forms of land use and the effect of these land uses
on the important biodiversity of the region. I hope that the findings
from my research will contribute to reducing conflict between local farmers
and the conservation project and to identifying more culturally appropriate
conservation interventions in the region.
Me in a community-held forest around
Makira Protected Area in Northeastern Madagascar.
In March – June 2010, I undertook my pilot research in Madagascar.
I tested methods to estimate biodiversity in different land use
types in the region and conducted interviews with local landholders
with the help of my Malagasy assistant,
Claudin Zara. During the time I spent in these rural communities,
it became clear to me that the forest is important to them both
materially and culturally. Local people hold detailed and sophisticated
knowledge about forest species and ecology. I hope that
as I continue to do my research I will be able to learn more
about how local people value the forest so that their values
can inform the future management of the forests in and around
Makira Protected Area.
Claudin interviewing a community member.
Academic Background
I received my MS in Interdisciplinary Ecology from University
of Florida's School of Natural Resources and Environment, with
a certificate from the Tropical Conservation and Development
Program. My master's research explored local land tenure systems
and natural resource management in the Bolivian Amazon. Before
graduate school, I worked at the American Museum of Natural
History's Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, developing
free, locally appropriate, high-quality resources for teaching
biodiversity conservation around the world (http://ncep.amnh.org/).
Sharing a laugh and a meal with a local leader after a long day in the forest.
Other stuff to know about me
I was born and raised in New York City. I became interested in ecology and conservation
because my grandmother would take me on nature walks on her farm in Connecticut
when I was a child. I was never able to stump her on the name of a plant or a
bird, and that inspired me to know my surroundings as well as she does. While
I still can’t match her naturalist knowledge, I hope that I will be as successful
as she has been in instilling a love of the natural world in my own children
and grandchildren.
Dung
beetles, mammal hunting, and ecosystem functioning
Liz Nichols
Liz Nichols is a PhD candidate at the
Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology
of Columbia University. Her current research interests
center on understanding how changes in mammal biodiversity
(due to overhunting) cascade through tropical forest systems,
to affect dung beetles and the important ecological functions
they provide.
Liz’s fieldwork takes place in the very western edge of the
Brazilian Amazon – in two contiguous multiple-use protected
areas. This designation of protected areas is one of the most
common and rapidly expanding across the Amazon – and seeks
to create areas where human populations, extractive practices
and biodiversity can successfully co-exist. In these areas,
hunting and fishing are broadly unregulated activities (except
for a few highly endangered species like caiman and jaguars).
Yet little data is available to evaluate the conservation
success of this style of protected area. One important question
centers on mammal hunting in tropical rainforests – how sustainable
is it? And how does one define sustainability?
Liz’s work seeks to understand this notion of sustainability
through a new lens – by measuring the impacts that mammal removal
in tropical forests has for a group of insects that are wholly
dependent upon mammals for their survival. By linking data
on human hunting practices, mammal population responses to
hunting, dung beetle responses to mammal population densities,
she will begin to address the secondary or ‘cascade’ effects
of unregulated mammal hunting. Her work also addresses the
consequences of these cascade effects on ecosystem functioning,
by measuring how several important dung beetle functions (waste
removal and seed burial among them) are altered in more and
less heavily hunted areas.
Studies like this can help us understand more about the links
between biodiversity loss and the future of the tropical ecosystems
so many people depend upon.
For more about Liz and her research: http://columbia.academia.edu/ElizabethNichols.
Conservation in human-dominated landscapes
Leo Douglas
Leo Douglas is a Ph.D student in the Department
of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology at Columbia University. Leo
came to Columbia University from Jamaica with a Fulbright OAS Scholarship
and has continued his education through the International Graduate Student
Fellowship Program of the Center for Biodiversity
and Conservation at the AMNH. Leo’s broad research interests center
on biodiversity conservation within human-dominated landscapes, the study,
mitigation, and management of people-environment conflicts, and rural poverty
as this relates sustainable land management. Currently Leo works closely
with CBC Assistant Director for Capacity Development Dr.
Ana Luz Porzecanski and anthropologist Dr. Paige West to examine conflict
surrounding birds within the parrot family and human interests on the island
of Dominica in the Caribbean. Human-wildlife conflict is a growing,
poorly studied threat to nature conservation throughout the world, and an
important challenge for local protected area managers and international conservation
practitioners. Leo’s project aims to understand the importance of parrots
as a cause of, and environmental determinants of crop losses, the economic
costs that agriculturalists face, the effect that parrots have on the wilder
bird community structure, and the attitudes, practices, and conservation
implications of parrot-agriculture conflict for parrot conservation on Dominica
and beyond. As a volunteer, Leo has worked extensively to raise
the capacity of Caribbean conservation professionals. Among his most
important achievements is his nine-year capacity development work for the Society
for the Conservation and Study of Caribbean Birds (SCSCB) in the form
of ongoing training, resource development, and public relations activities
in his capacity as their media relations officer. The Society, the
largest organization devoted to wildlife conservation in the Caribbean. In
New York, Leo has volunteered for the organization One To World for 5 years
and served on their board for three years. One
To World is a not-for-profit organization, creating global learning opportunities
for and between students, educators, and the New York City community in the
spirit of Fulbright. Through One To World Leo has conducted workshops
on diverse issues such as toxic chemicals and the important of biodiversity
to both high-achieving and underserved high schools, and college students
across the greater New York area. 
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