This restoration project was initiated with the specific purpose of benefiting wildlife—the migratory birds and their wetlands habitat in China. To me, it illustrates the need to improve the lives of the local people in order to protect nature.
The Cao Hai Nature Reserve in China’s southwestern Guizhou Province is a wetland area with a lake at its center. It is also an internationally important winter home for more than seventy thousand migrating waterbirds, including approximately four hundred endangered black-necked cranes, up to a thousand Eurasian cranes, and thousands of bar-headed geese. The history of this area illustrates well-meaning but environmentally unsound efforts to improve the situation.
In 1971, the people in the area were so desperate for food that, in an attempt to provide more land for the farmers, the authorities drained the lake. This was a disaster: The soil was not suitable for agriculture, and the fish, hitherto an important source of protein, were gone. The farmers, in an effort to create even more land for crops, were cutting trees in the surrounding hills, soil erosion increased, weather patterns changed, pests ravaged what crops were left, and ground water levels dropped so that it was hard to find drinking water. In short, people suffered and the migratory birds vanished. The situation was so bad that, in 1982, a dam was built to restore the lake—and unexpectedly many of the birds returned. Indeed, by 1985 so many birds had returned that Cao Hai became an official nature reserve.
With the opening up of China in the early 1980s and the growing awareness of environmental issues, a number of international conservation groups began working hand in hand with Chinese organizations for the protection of wildlife. One such group, the International Crane Foundation (ICF), had been very successful with crane conservation around the world, but at Cao Hai it was confronted with new issues that demanded a fundamentally different way of approaching environmental conservation.
When the ICF first joined forces with the Cao Hai Nature Reserve, its members understood that their primary job was to protect the birds by keeping people and their activities away from them. But the desperately poor villagers living within the reserve were often short of food and, naturally, when they were hungry and told to leave the fish for the birds, they become angry. In order to try to get more land for their crops, they drained some of the prime wetlands around the lake. With fewer wetlands, the hungry birds then fed on their grain. As conflict between villagers and birds increased, reserve staff reflooded the wetlands. Resentment intensified, and the local farmers became aggressive and violent.
A Model for the Future: Healing the Earth While Improving Incomes
This animosity peaked in early 1993, and at this point the reserve staff realized that things could not go on as they were. There were more than twenty thousand poor people living and working within the reserve, and it was obvious that without their help, no conservation efforts would succeed. If the villagers were to help protect the birds and their environment, it was first important to improve their lives.
This is when Stephen Young, who was working with ICF, joined with Huang Mingje from the Guizhou Environmental Protection Bureau (GEPB) and other Cao Hai Nature Reserve (CHNR) staff members to implement a radical new approach to conservation. They teamed up with the New York–based Trickle-Up Program (TUP)—a poverty-alleviation organization with a system of micro-credit loans to the poor similar to the Grameen Bank. It was the first time that TUP had considered linking its poverty alleviation program with protection of the environment. And it worked!
With access to tiny amounts of capital, the villagers’ lives began to improve. The CHNR staff saw that guiding and assisting villagers in economic development was a successful way to heal the damaged land while improving family incomes. The villagers, who had always been the chief custodians of the area, now gained the knowledge and the means to utilize their land in an environmentally sustainable way. They became increasingly involved in decision making and, as their situation improved, began coming up with ideas for innovative projects—including ecotourism, taking Chinese tourists to see the birds.
Finally, a situation of harmony has developed between the reserve staff and the villagers, and between the villagers and their land. People have better lives, the birds are safe, and countless people can enjoy the peaceful scenes of the migration—yet another example of a successful partnership between people and nature. This collaboration has been so successful that it has received national recognition, and the Cao Hai Nature Reserve has become a training ground for conservation managers from all over China.
