Book Reviews

542

Conservation Biology, Pages 542–545Volume 15, No. 2, April 2001

Warming up to Hotspots

Hotspots: Earth’s Biologically Rich-est and Most Endangered Terres-trial Ecoregions.

Mittermeier, R., N.Myers, P. Robles Gil, and C. GoettschMittermeier. 1999. Cemex/Conserva-tion International and the Universityof Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois. 430pp. $65.00. ISBN 968–6397–58–2.

The notion of hotspots was first pro-posed by Norman Myers and subse-quently championed by Conserva-tion International as a way to deter-mine global conservation priorities.This notion has guided conservationfunding from the MacArthur Founda-tion and has been the basis for a ma-jor 5-year fundraising campaign ofConservation International that be-gan in 1998.

Hotspots: Earth’s Bio-logically Richest and Most Endan-gered Terrestrial Ecoregions

hasbeen written to support the philoso-phy behind the campaign, first withan explanation of how the prioritieshave been set (based on data, the au-thors point out) and then to ac-quaint the readers with importantfeatures and interesting organisms ofeach of the hotspots.

The authors, three professional bi-ologists from the United States, Brit-ain, and Mexico, and a Mexican na-ture photographer, have all workedactively in the field of internationalconservation for a number of years.They make the point that “biodiver-sity is not evenly distributed overthe surface of the earth, and someareas harbor far greater concentra-tions of biodiversity than others;some of these high diversity areas . . .are under the most severe threat,[and so] to achieve maximum im-pact with limited resources, wemust concentrate heavily (but notexclusively) on those areas richest indiversity and most severely threat-

ened.” The book proposes to updatethe hotspots concept, although theauthors state that “there has been lit-tle, if anything, produced since My-ers’s original papers that could beconsidered superior.” Myers and hiscolleagues identify 25 hotspots inthis reanalysis.

The book has no standard table ofcontents, so one has to just diveright in. The authors have provideda fact-filled first section, full of tablesthat rank each of the hotspots interms of original extent of the landareas, area remaining intact, diver-sity of various groups of organisms,endemism, and various combinationsof these measures. The many result-ing tables may be interesting to spe-cialists on particular groups of organ-isms but might be considered overkillby those more attuned to strikingpictures or worried about spuriouscorrelations resulting from overanal-ysis of data. They discuss every pos-sible aspect of the hotspots concept(why hotspots are hot, islands, andholocene refugia) and briefly considerother priority-setting measures, end-ing with their view on the conserva-tion imperative resulting from theiranalysis—”the moral high ground onhotspots.” Too many of the citationsare self-citations of the authors, andnot enough has been made of con-trasting opinions on the status ofcertain groups of organisms or over-all patterns of biodiversity. The pub-lication of this book was supportedby Cemex, and it seems to be a longjustification for the current battle planof Conservation International.

After one makes it through thedense first 68 pages, one is then re-warded by traveling through hotspotsfor the remaining nearly 300 pagesof the book. Each area is describedwith a map of the region, a smatter-

ing of large, breathtakingly beautifulphotos, and smaller excellent pho-tos in a detailed and interesting ex-planation of the important featuresof the landscapes and organisms thatoccur therein. The authors have en-listed many other scientists who areespecially knowledgeable about eacharea, and most of these sections areinteresting to read and highly infor-mative. As with any book that coversthe world, a number of citations thatseem important to me have beenleft out of the areas with which I ammost familiar, but I found the sec-tions on individual hotspots to bereadable and enjoyable nonetheless.The sections on the Caribbean andMesoAmerica, mention many impor-tant environmental issues and illus-trate the areas with strikingly inter-esting and beautiful organisms. Thetreatments were not exhaustive butwere balanced and concise. The hot-spot sections are organized similarly,highlighting flagship species, threatsto the biodiversity of the region,and conservation measures. Feedbackfrom others who have seen the book,focusing on their areas of exper-tise, is that some key issues are over-looked. It is inevitable that somethingsomeone considers important will beleft out in such an ambitious project,and I think the authors have done apretty good job of covering the en-tire world (at least all the areas ofcritical concern) in one book.

The size and beauty of this bookis reminiscent of

Cloudforests andRainforests

by Kjell Sandved, but itappears to have more serious scien-tific content than other books of thistype (compare also to

Manu

by F.Patthey or

Jungles

by E. Ayensu).This coffee table book will be mostappreciated by those with some sci-entific background. It will probably

Book Review

543

Conservation BiologyVolume 15, No. 2, April 2001

not receive the acclaim of other booksof this size and beauty written in a sim-pler manner, emphasizing only thewonders of nature and graphicallyportraying threats to biodiversity andlife in imperiled regions. I think itwould be a useful book for discus-sion in undergraduate and graduatecourses in ecology and conservationbiology and for all people interestedin biodiversity issues and conserva-tion priorities.

Suzanne Koptur

Department of Biological Sciences, Florida Inter-national University, Miami, FL 33199, U.S.A.,email kopturs@fiu.edu

A Retrospective on Conservation in West Africa

Myth and Reality in the Rainfor-est: How Conservation StrategiesAre Failing in West Africa.

Oates,J. F. 1999. University of CaliforniaPress, Berkeley, California. 310 pp.$19.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–520–22252–0. $50.00 (hardcover). ISBN0–520–21782–9.

John Oates’s critique of conservationin poorer nations raises profoundlyimportant questions that no conser-vationist should ignore. To refuse toengage his critique—whether to em-brace it as a basis for changing courseor to counter his arguments withcontrary evidence—would be grosslyirresponsible.

Oates’s thesis is best put by him,so I quote at length:

[T]here are serious flaws in thetheory that wildlife can best beconserved through promotinghuman economic development.It is a powerful myth that hasmade all those involved in itsformulation feel good. . . . [I]tseemed to provide the best ofseveral worlds: both peopleand wildlife would benefit. . . .[I]n reality. . . the approach hashad disastrous consequences formany wildlife populations. . . .[I]t has led all concerned to as-sign low priority to basic protec-tion efforts that, because theymust involve some enforcement,

are considered to be “antipeo-ple” and therefore opposed tohuman development efforts. Yetthe conservation and develop-ment approach has done littlefor human development in mostplaces where it has been ap-plied. The material benefits . . .to ordinary rural people . . .have often been slight relativeto those that have flowed to po-litical leaders and bureaucratsin the countries where theprojects have been put intopractice, and to the consultantexperts and conservation ad-ministrators (based mostly inNorth America and Europe)who have planned the projects.

Based on 40 years of research andconservation field experience inCameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia,Sierra Leone, and India, Oates iden-tifies several problems that flow likea toxic river from one country to thenext, stripping life from the forestand often stripping the forest itself.Oates recognizes that the threats towildlife and wildlands are many andpowerful. They lie beyond the capac-ity of nongovernmental organizations(NGOs) and many government agen-cies to solve. Population growth, thespread of commercial logging andagriculture, and volatile energy andcommodity prices all lend themselves,along with historical factors, to polit-ical instability. Because of this politi-cal instability, conservation organiza-tions such as the World ConservationUnion and World Wildlife Fund Inter-national, along with United Nationsenvironment and development agen-cies and international aid agenciesfrom the United States and Europe,moved to a new approach in theearly 1970s. There were several ele-ments in this shift away from basicprotection. The first was that con-servation could succeed only if itwere part of overall efforts at eco-nomic development. The secondwas that although states and nationsmay show political instability, com-munities did not, and they should beworked with directly. The assump-tion was that communities lived inharmony with nature (or would doso if given the chance) and had astrong interest in protecting the nat-

ural world they depended on fortheir well-being.

The result of this shift in conserva-tion strategy in every project Oatesworked on and writes about bodesill for conservation. Developmentprojects invariably opened up newareas for logging and agriculture. Fol-lowing both was widespread hunting,legal and illegal. Moreover, develop-ment projects attracted migrants, whousually outnumbered locals. Neithermigrant nor local, Oates reports, dem-onstrated or espoused the assumedlong-term commitment to the land.Both groups viewed local wildlife aspests, welcoming hunting. Such is apoint of view no different than inmany rural populations in North Amer-ica, so this attitude should not surpriseus in populations elsewhere. In onecase, a village located in a develop-ment zone just outside a conserva-tion area, it was proposed to captureall the wildlife for removal to someother place so villagers could expandfarms into the conservation area.Even where logging prohibitions wereenforced, forests were systematicallyemptied of mammals by bushmeathunters to feed the burgeoning pop-ulation of local migrants and peo-ple in more distant towns. To com-pound matters, the developmentprojects rarely delivered on their in-flated promises. Intended recipientsin their disappointment often turnedtheir anger toward protected areas.

Other problems also grew from thisrevised conservation approach, Oatesreports. In some cases, conservationplans were drafted by foreign consult-ants who did not make site visits andwho lacked any understanding of theecosystems targeted for protection.In other cases, conservation receivedshort shrift, with all the focus on de-velopment. One 98-page proposal hadonly a single paragraph on conserva-tion. In yet another case, a conserva-tion project manager had past experi-ence only as a plantation manager andno experience with wildlife and wild-lands. And as with many poverty pro-grams in the United States during the1960s and 1970s, most of the money

544

Book Review

Conservation BiologyVolume 15, No. 2, April 2001

from these projects did not reach theannounced target; in the case of con-servation, money went to foreign con-sultants and experts or to bureaucratsin recipient countries. Money did notgo to buy land, to pay park rangers, toprovide adequate science, or to fundon-the-ground conservation necessi-ties. Bigger budgets brought statusand big incomes to those who pro-posed them, while much cheaper,more timely, and more effective ac-tions were ignored.

Oates does more than offer a cri-tique of failure. He also identifies whathas worked, pointing outside of WestAfrica or to some functioning pro-tected areas within the region in the1960s. He notes that India shares manyof West Africa’s problems: a burgeon-ing population, high population den-sity, extreme poverty and inequality,and inefficient government. Yet con-servation focused on basic protec-tion has worked in India, he argues,pointing to recovering populationsof rhinos, tigers, and crocodiles. Oatesprovides several reasons for this suc-cess. Conservationists can’t solve theworld’s problems and are effectivewhen they focus on what they know,that is, conservation. Good laws andgood enforcement are critical and arenot necessarily expensive. They arecertainly much cheaper than US $100/hour consultants and bureaucrats. In-dian conservation also is largely self-funded, so it does not rely on thegrand scheming of distant agenciesand NGOs. The Indian civil service,though inefficient, takes its missionseriously. And with a weak huntingtradition and a culture that calls forpeople to value the lives of all spe-cies, there is widespread if not ac-tive support for conservation.

Conservation successes in WestAfrica, minimal as they are, showsimilarities with those of India. Con-servation, Oates notes, has been suc-cessful in West Africa when commit-ted individuals have been willing tofight indefinitely for protection. Suc-cess is also associated with enforce-ment and with cultural educationabout the value of wildlife and wild-

lands. Where long-term research ef-forts conducted by indigenous scien-tists have existed, protection has beenmore effective. Moreover, the exist-ence of specific management recom-mendations for a well-defined area, asopposed to grand but general schemes,pays off. It is also important, Oates ar-gues, to deal with those who reallyhold the power rather than with themythological “noble community” (read“noble savage” of another era).

In the penultimate chapter, Oatestakes on captive breeding, buildingon the insightful and comprehensiveearlier work by Noel Snyder andhis colleagues. While acknowledgingthat captive breeding may have a role,Oates notes that protection in thewild is much cheaper and avoidsmany problems associated with cap-tive breeding, including disease, de-pletion of the species in the wild, re-introduction difficulties, the frailty andunreliability of human institutions,and the inability of captive breedinginstitutions to garner adequate fund-ing. In the end, Oates’s argumentand plea is simple: conservationistsneed to return to basic protection. Ifone-tenth of the money that goes toconservation/development projectswent to direct protection, enormousthings could be achieved in conser-vation in West Africa.

The great weakness of Oates’s workis that it is anecdotal and not a system-atic review of a random sample. Yetthe strength of his “data set” and his ar-gument is strong enough that the bur-den of proof must be clearly placed onthe shoulders of NGOs and agencypersonnel spending millions in scarceresources, apparently achieving nei-ther conservation nor development.

David Johns

School of Government, Portland State University,P.O. Box 751, Portland, OR 97207, U.S.A., emaildjohns@viclink.com

A Conservation Tool: Software to Identify Tropical Tree Species

Arboles Tropicales Comunes delArea Maya, Sistema de Identifi-

cación Taxonómica.

Ogata, N., A.Gómez-Pompa, A. Aguilar-Meléndez, R.Castro-Cortez, and O. E. Plummer. 1999.CD-ROM developed by Q-TAXA, De-partment of Botany and Plant Sci-ences, University of California, River-side, California. $24.00 plus shipping.To order, contact Susan Beauchene,General Book Department, UCR Book-store, University of California, River-side, 900 University Ave East, River-side, CA 92521, U.S.A. Telephone, 909-787-4211; fax, 909-276-9105; email,susan.beauchene@ucr.edu; UCRBookstore web page, http://www.bookstore.ucr.edu. Requirements area Pentium with at least 90 Mhz ofspeed and 16 MB of RAM, a 800

3

600 resolution screen of at least 256colors, a CD-ROM drive of 6

3

speed,and Windows 95 or 98 (programswill not run in Windows NT).

The ancient Maya occupied a terri-tory that stretched from NorthernSan Salvador and Honduras in thesouth, across Guatemala and Belize,and into the states of Quintana Roo,Campeche, Yucatán, Tabasco, and Chi-apas in Mexico. Although some partsof this extensive territory have beenseverely denuded of their naturalvegetation (e.g., Tabasco and north-western Yucatán in Mexico), otherregions still contain large and healthytracks of contiguous forests (Primacket al. 1998). The Maya area offers tre-mendous variation in elevation (fromsea level to above 3000 m), annual pre-cipitation (from 500–5000 mm), maxi-mum and minimum daily tempera-tures, and vegetation types (from pine-oak forests in the colder highlands totropical rainforest in the wet low-lands and scrublands in the dry low-lands). Yet this region is bound byone important common feature: theurgency to conserve the high biolog-ical and cultural diversity within it.

Without a doubt, ecologists andconservation biologists working inthis region and adjacent areas willfind

Arboles Tropicales Comunesdel Area Maya. Sistema de Identifi-cación Taxonómica

an invaluableresource. This software was developed

Book Review

545

Conservation BiologyVolume 15, No. 2, April 2001

to aid in the identification of the mostcommon trees in the Mayan region.Through the use of menus, the usercan find tree species by lookingwithin families (60 plant families to-tal) or within genera (244 genera in-cluded). For each of the 658 treespecies included in the program, theuser can gather information aboutcommon names (in 40 languages),uses, worldwide distribution, and syn-onimia and can peruse a small biblio-graphic selection on a species’ ecol-ogy or taxonomy. For some species,comments on flower and fruit phenol-ogies also are included. In addition,each tree species is accompanied byat least one (typically two or three,and for some species as many asnine) image of an herbarium speci-men or of living individuals.

In addition to information on treespecies, the program includes a guideto the vegetation types of Mexico, fol-lowing the classifications of Mirandaand Hernández-Xolocotzi (1963) andRzedowski (1981).

Arboles TropicalesComunes del Area Maya

also in-cludes a program to identify plantfamilies, genera within families, andspecies within genera. Through a se-ries of menus, one chooses from anumber of vegetative or reproduc-tive characters until an identificationis reached. Once the specimen isidentified, one can return to the orig-inal menu, select the species, andcheck the specimen, with the imagesoffered for corroboration.

As with any other tool, this soft-ware will be more useful if one iswell aware of its limitations beforeand during its usage. As stated in thetitle, this software is intended to

help with the identification of themost common trees. Hence, otherplant forms (e.g., lianas, herbs, andshrubs) are not presented. Likewise,rare tree species are not included.One must be aware of this fact, forthe danger exists of mistaking a raretree species for a similar-lookingcommon tree. Also, when selectingsome species, the program selectsthe correct family to which it be-longs, but sometimes it also statessome unrelated subfamily. So onemust learn to ignore this and useonly the family listed. The programhas an information bias toward Mex-ico, perhaps reflecting the origin ofmany of the authors, but it is stilluseful for biologists working in Cen-tral American countries. As a pieceof software, the program’s usefulnessis still seriously limited for many re-mote field sites.

Compared with other plant fieldguides for tropical countries or re-gions, this source falls within thelower range of number of taxa in-cluded. For comparison, Penningtonand Sarukhán (1998) include 191tree species, Killeen et al. (1993) in-clude 2733, Gentry (1993) includemore than 2666 genera of woodyand some herbaceous plants, andRibeiro et al. (1999) include 2733species of vascular plants. The amountof information provided for each treespecies in this CD-ROM is consider-able, however.

Arboles Tropicales Comunes delArea Maya

is an important step for-ward in aiding the work of ecolo-gists and conservation biologists whoare not specialists in plant taxonomy.The program is written in Spanish,

which should make it more acces-sible to local professionals withoutconstraining substantially its use bythose who speak other languages.

Diego R. Pérez-Salicrup

Departamento de Ecología de los Recursos Natu-rales-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México,Antigua Carretera a Patzcuaro 8701, Col. Ex-Haci-

enda de San Jose de la Huerta, CP 58190, Morelia,Michoacan, Mexico, email diego@oikos.unam.mx

Literature Cited

Gentry, A. H. 1993. A field guide to the fami-lies and genera of woody plants of north-west South America (Colombia, Ecuador,Peru) with supplementary notes on herba-ceous taxa. Conservation International,Washington, D.C.

Killeen, T. J., E. E. García, and S. G. Beck.1993. Guia de arboles de Bolivia. HerbarioNacional de Bolivia and Missouri BotanicalGarden, La Paz, Bolivia.

Miranda, F., and H. Hernández-Xolocotzi.1963. Los tipos de vegetación de México ysu clasificación. Boletín de la SociedadBotánica de México

28:

19–179.Pennington, T. D., and J. Sarukhán. 1998. Ar-

boles tropicales de México. 2nd edition.Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Méx-ico–Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico.

Primack, R. B., D. Bray, H. A. Galletti, and I.Ponciano. 1998. Timber, tourists, and tem-ples. Conservation and development ofthe Maya Forest of Belize, Guatemala, andMexico. Island Press, Washington, D.C.

Ribeiro, J. E., M. J. G. Hopkins, A. Vicentini,C.A. Sothers, M. A. Costa, J. M. Brito, M. A.D. Souza, M. A. D. Martins, L. G. Lohmann,P. A. Assunção, E. C. Pereira, C. F. Silva, M.R. Mesquita, and L. C. Procópio. 1999.Flora da Reserva Ducke. Guia de identifi-cação das plantas vasculares de uma flo-resta de terra-firme na Amazônia Central.Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas de Amazônia,and Department for International Develop-ment

Rzedowski, J. 1981. Vegetación de México. Li-musa, Mexico.