Helping farmers can be good news for Paddington, says STUART WINTER
PERSUADING an upset grandchild that the sight of Paddington Bear peering out from behind prison bars would all end happily was proving tricky. How do you tell a five-year-old the film scenes are make-believe when the cute bear from Darkest Peru seems so realistic and his screen enemy, Hugh Grant’s Phoenix Buchanan, so cruel?
GETTY
Cuddles and popcorn saved the day. Paddington was freed. Placating distraught children is always an effort.
Convincing a few curmudgeonly acquaintances of the need to spend taxpayers’ cash helping save the real-life South American relatives of Paddington, has been a Herculean task of late.
In an age of austerity, should the Government be funding wildlife schemes in other nations? But showing photographs of endearing Andean bears, knowing eyes framed by quaint spectacle markings, followed by the hard sell of how this iconic but vulnerable species is being edged towards oblivion, won the day.
These are troubled times for both bears and people living on the dry slopes of Bolivia’s uplands. A perfect storm of forests felled for development and climate change forcing farmers to give up growing crops for livestock is bad for bears.
GETTY
GETTY
Through the support from the Darwin Initiative, we will be able to facilitate human-bear coexistence in the southern Bolivian Andes
With fewer places to forage, the bears are going to pastures where they make bad bedfellows with cattle. Tolerance is low among people eking out a life in harsh conditions.
Livestock attacks fester anger and retaliation. To the north, a bear was killed recently and its paw nailed to the door of a Colombian national park office in protest over efforts to save animals perceived as a threat.
Easing tensions and cultivating harmony requires expertise and this is why funding from Defra’s flagship Darwin Initiative is such a boon.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove has just announced a £266,000 grant towards Andean bear research.
GETTY
Over the next three years Defra will provide a total of £10.6million to fund 52 projects as diverse as the global flora and fauna that are being safeguarded.
Each project sees support for organisations with the scientific and practical know-how on reaping benefits for nature as well as the communities who depend on the natural world for their livelihoods.
A shining example is the project developed by Chester Zoo in partnership with the University of Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit and South American conservation group Prometa. Not only is this zoo home to a family of three Andean bears – its scientists are helping 3,000 wild counterparts in Bolivia by improving the wellbeing of the local human communities.
Chester Zoo is using expertise from Darwin Initiative-funded projects in India, Indonesia and Nepal to trial new incomegenerating schemes for the Andean bear project such as cheese-making and bee-keeping.
As Dr Alexandra Zimmermann, head of conservation science at Chester Zoo, says: “Through the support from the Darwin Initiative, we will be able to facilitate human-bear coexistence in the southern Bolivian Andes.”