Conservation news 205 Where are their staging areas in Morocco? Is Morocco act- increasing slowly, with nearly individuals recorded. ing as a sink for the Spanish population? Could these disper- Five adults have flowered and died since the last census in sal movements be the start of new breeding colonies in , but another five juvenile individuals have grown suf- northern Morocco? Most importantly, could these birds ficiently to be classed as adults. The local community have contact the unique and isolated wild colonies in southern been protecting the site, with a wide firebreak maintained Morocco and interbreed with them? Considering the pre- around the population, and fences built to keep grazing carious conservation status of the northern bald ibis, and zebu from trampling young plants. At a site nearby, the the severe environmental impacts northern Morocco is suf- team found seedlings, and the local community has fering, it is time to commence cross-border collaboration agreed to monitor and protect this site as well. Income and conservation action for this Critically Endangered from seed sales has been managed by VERAMA, and has species. funded several infrastructure projects, including the con- struction of a school and the digging of a well for the village, ANTONIO-ROMÁN MUÑOZ and JUAN RAMÍREZ Departamento de and provided ongoing annual funding for the maintenance Botànica, Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad de Valencia, of the firebreak and fences. Valencia, Spain. E-mail [email protected] After visiting the original type location of Tahina, the Kew expedition investigated reports of another population Discovery of a second population of the Critically of T. spectabilis further inland, just km from ’ Endangered Madagascan suicide palm Tahina Madagascar s Route National that connects the capital spectabilis Antananarivo with Ambanja in the north. With the help of local people a small, but unmistakable, group of indi- Researchers from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Parc viduals was discovered in a remote fragment of forest, in- Botanique et Zoologique de Tsimbazaza, and the University cluding five adults, the largest being a medium-sized adult of the Sunshine Coast, Australia, have discovered a new site c. m in height. Initial discussions with the local commu- for the Critically Endangered palm Tahina spectabilis. With nity about the importance of the species’ conservation went its nearest living relatives in Asia and the Middle East, the well. A follow-up trip in October by another Kew team re- discovery and publication of Tahina (Dransfield et al., inforced and continued these initial discussions, and inves- , Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, , –), tigated the needs of the community and how conservation a new monotypic fan palm genus in Madagascar, stunned and development work could be brought together at this the international palm community and intrigued the new site. It is hoped that funding will soon be secured to media (the latter dubbing the species ‘the Madagascan sui- help with the early stages of this work. cide palm’ as a result of the plant’s hapaxanthic life history, A demographic and genetic study across the two popula- whereby adults die after flowering). tions and a species conservation management plan are now Tahina spectabilis can reach up to m in height, with being prepared. Species distribution models will be run leaves up to m across, and the crown of the palm is so using the currently known geographical range of T. spect- large that individuals can be seen in images on Google abilis, and the results used to identify and explore other Earth. With fewer than trunked individuals recorded in sites where the species could potentially grow. Although it the wild, at a geographically restricted and vulnerable site on is highly significant that a second Tahina population exists, a remote peninsula in north-west Madagascar, T. spectabilis it is unlikely that the Red List status of T. spectabilis will is categorized as Critically Endangered on the IUCN change as a result of this new discovery. Even with a Red List. It is not understood what triggers the species’ much larger Extent of Occurrence for the species, the num- rare flowering events, but when the palm does flower, it ber of mature individuals known in the wild still remains has the capacity to produce enormous numbers of propa- extremely low at only , and therefore T. spectabilis remains gules. Kew worked with the local cashew plantation com- Critically Endangered according to the IUCN Red List pany VERAMA and the local community to collect seed Criterion D. from a successful fruiting event in and these were sold internationally, with the funds returning to the com- LAUREN M. GARDINER Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, munity to fund conservation and development activities at Richmond, Surrey, UK. E-mail [email protected] the site. Ten years on, a Kew expedition set off in September , DAVID RABEHEVITRA Kew Madagascar Conservation Centre, with the support of the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Ivandry, Antananarivo, Madagascar Conservation Fund, to re-census the known T. spectabilis population and check on the progress of the conservation ROKIMAN LETSARA Parc Botanique et Zoologique de work. The team found that, although the population at Tsimbazaza / California Academy of Sciences–Madagascar, the original site is still small, it is stable and probably Antananarivo, Madagascar Oryx, 2017, 51(2), 203–207 © 2017 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S003060531700014X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.58, on 02 Oct 2021 at 23:08:05, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003060531700014X 206 Conservation news ALISON SHAPCOTT University of the Sunshine Coast, conservation as an issue fundamentally framed by econom- Queensland, Australia ics and governance. Paradoxically, none of these discussions focused on lion ecology but all were critically relevant to lion survival in an increasingly crowded African continent. Outbreeding ideas for conservation success Although stimulating novel ideas is a far cry from imple- menting them, the success of the first Oxford Format sum- It is increasingly recognized that interdisciplinarity is mit in generating outbred ideas convinces us that the prize needed to tackle global challenges (Ledford, , Nature, will be won by forcing, rather than by simply urging, inter- , –), a daunting example being the problems of disciplinarity to address conservation issues. There is no ex- conserving biodiversity. However, walls between disciplines cuse left for inbred conservation thinking. have proven no less difficult to tear down than those be- tween nations (Reagan, , Remarks at Brandenburg Gate, DAVID W. MACDONALD WildCRU, Department of Zoology, Berlin, Germany, //. www.archives.gov/historical- University of Oxford, The Recanati-Kaplan Centre, docs/todays-doc/index.html?dod-date=). Interdisciplinary Tubney, Abingdon, UK research suffers consistently low funding success (Bromham E-mail [email protected] et al., , Nature, , –) and there are still philis- ő tines who perceive it as the province of researchers ‘who GUILLAUME CHAPRON Department of Ecology, Grims Wildlife aren’t good enough to make it in their own field’ Research Station, Swedish University of Agricultural (Ledford, , Nature, , –). Sciences, Riddarhyttan, Sweden Challenging this stubborn disciplinary cartography remains, unfortunately, the exception in applied conserva- Singapore hosts international efforts for tion research. As an illustration, the three international conserving migratory waterbirds in the Asia-Pacific conferences that the University of Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) organized during Two major international meetings targeted at the region’s the past years on canid, felid and mustelid conservation migratory birds have recently been hosted in Singapore, a hosted, despite our best efforts, only a handful of delegates country that has a key role in conserving waterbirds migrat- (out of nearly ,) with backgrounds genuinely beyond ing from as far north as Siberia to as far south as Tasmania. the biological sciences. Conservation scientists are sowing What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic, and the seeds of inbred ideas that are decreasingly likely to ger- the other way around, is the mantra underpinning the con- minate in today’s complex world. servation of Arctic breeding birds under the Conservation Emboldened by urgency and the prospect of gridlock of Arctic Flora and Fauna working group, part of the (Hale et al., , Gridlock: Why Global Cooperation is Arctic Council, to which Singapore is an observer. This Failing when We Need It Most. Polity Press), WildCRU goal is being pursued through the Arctic Migratory Bird and the international NGO Panthera recently experimented Initiative, which met on – January to discuss pressing is- with an alternative meeting format in an attempt to break sues in the East Asian–Australasian Flyway. Hunting of mi- the mould and identify innovative conservation strategies gratory waterbirds was reported from multiple countries to prevent the extinction of lions Panthera leo in Africa across the flyway, raising concerns about their survival. (Bauer et al., , Proceedings of the National Academy Addressing unsustainable hunting is one of the key objec- of Sciences of the United States of America, , – tives of this Initiative, and a recommendation