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November 2003

Leakey raises tough conservation questions

By Amy Parmelee
Staff Writer

Richard Leakey speaks with President Delaney before he begins his presentation to an Introduction to Anthropology class.

Richard Leakey brought many questions about wildlife conservation to UNF during his November visit as part of the Distinguished Voices Lecture Series. What the noted paleoanthropologist did not bring were all of the answers.

“Extinction is much more common than not,” Leakey said, adding that unless we manage the world’s ecosystems better, many species will be lost.

Leakey, the son of Louis B. and Mary Leakey, is credited with some of the most significant fossil discoveries of the 20th century. He also has been a senior government official in Kenya, an opposition political activist, a conservationist, a museum director and a scientific researcher.

He drew upon many of these experiences in relating why biodiversity is important. Leakey said his role in conservation is to stress the importance of natural ecosystems, to increase government awareness of such things as carbon emissions and poor practices, and to urge ways of measuring ecosystems.

Leakey said it is a paradox that humans try to balance nature knowing we can’t and we shouldn’t do so.

While he said that national parks are too small to keep up levels of biodiversity, he questioned whether protections of certain species should be maintained. Would humans suffer, he asked, if certain symbolic species, such as the black rhino, were to disappear?

“I don’t have an answer to that,” he said.

He also questioned the use of government money for conservation efforts in countries where education and public health are in dire need of funding. He urged efforts to raise private money to create endowments that would be professionally managed in the United States to create a regular funding source for national parks.

Leakey, who recently joined Stony Brook University in New York as a visiting professor of anthropology, is working to develop a $500 million endowment for wildlife preservation for the National Parks of East Africa.

Part of the problem of funding national parks, he said, is that humans have not recognized the worth of natural wonders.

“We have failed during the 20th century to put a dollar value to natural beauty,” he said.

Tourism, a huge industry in Kenya, can help, but it is not a “safe bet,” he said, noting the cyclical nature of tourism and travel fears.

Leakey’s concern for biodiversity and reverence for wildlife were evident in his stories, but he also showed that hard choices must be made about conservation.

Leakey’s lecture was co-sponsored by the World Affairs Council and Water Street Capital.