ML161687
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Subject: (Interview). Subtitle: Alan Rabinowitz. Timecode In: 00:01:22. Timecode out: 00:53:42. Notes: Myanmar; Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve. Equipment Notes: Stereo=1; Split Track. NPRINGS RADIO EXPEDITIONS Myanmar Tiger Refuge: Hukaung Valley Reporter: Renee Montagne Engineer: ALAN RABINOWITZ Interview: 6:16 A-This is an interesting exercise in conservation, it's a microcosm of what conservation is about all over the world. It's not a difficult thing to identify incredibly special areas that should be made into parks or sanctuaries, but it is a very difficult thing to try to make protected area ...(sound stopped) Renee speaks about where she wants interview to go, what they're doing. 7:36 R-Welcome. A-Welcome, thank you, it's a pleasure to be here. R-You say this is the biggest challenge of your life. Tell us what's at stake here. A-There's a lot at stake. It is the largest challenge which I've ever undertaken. A lot of people say that can't be possible given all of the other things which I've done and that I'm doing, but every time I take on a new challenge it seems it gets only larger. What's at stake here is that the creation of what will be the largest tiger preserve in the world and clearly one of the largest protected areas in the world. An area nearly the size of Vermont at 8000 sq miles, that will protect not only one of the regions most important remaining population of tigers, but a whole host of other wildlife that's increasingly becoming endangered throughout Asia, such as Asian elephants, and clouded leopards and Asiatic leopards, and wild dogs. This area has the potential to be the nucleus for seeding other areas throughout both Myanmar and the Indo-China region if we get other pieces of protected areas around this large landscape site to also be protected. R-You know I just...go ahead. 9:19 A-Most of the forest remaining in both Myanmar and Indo-China are what we call empty forests. They look beautiful on the surface, but most of their larger wildlife, their tigers, their leopards, even their elephants, are long gone because of hunting pressures. We could bring them back in these areas, but in order to do that we need some really good protected areas, which are the homes of these remaining tiger populations. 9:49 R-Let me just ask you to give us a sense of how big this area is that the government of Myanmar is looking to set aside. A-The area's huge. Now there are two areas we are actually talking about. One area will actually be increased. When I first went into this area I asked the government to designate a core site which had nobody living in it in this Hukaung Valley of2500 sq miles. Still a huge area by anybody's measurements. The government did that. The government designated 2500 sq miles in the Hukaung Valley as a wildlife sanctuary for tigers and their prey species. But then the government themselves turned around in response to surveys we were doing about tigers, showing that tigers had nearly disappeared from the rest of Myanmar, saying why don't we expand that area to the entire valley. Now I never would have imagined that any government would be suggesting to protect 8000 sq miles, but they did, and I readily agree. The only problem now is that within this 8000 sq miles, not only do we have massive areas of forest with tigers and elephants, but we also have several tens of thousands of people living in certain parts of this valley that will remain there that we also somehow have to incorporate within this protected landscape. 11 :38 R-I'm going to just say one thing to make sure that it's in here that the size that sort of sq mileage we're talking about something the size of Vermont. A-This is 8000 sq miles, which is almost the size of VT. Right. R-Now back to where you ended, you said there were lots of people living in this valley. Among them are some powerful political forcer... (Notes truncated)
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- 18 Aug 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 18 Aug 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Edited
- 18 Aug 2010 - Ben Brotman