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wang dezhi, chief scientist of taohuayuan ecological protection foundation.

in fact, up to now, our patrol and community work are still the same content, and there is nothing innovative. it’s just that we no longer talk about the concepts all the time. instead, we work with the patrollers to do the simplest and most basic things carefully, find small changes that everyone can make, and then supervise everyone to make changes together.

take every step firmly

you can slow down, but you can't stop

keynote speech on "doing good things for a long time, just like every day for ten years"

2024.09.02 beijing

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hello everyone, my name is wang dezhi, and i am from the taohuayuan ecological protection foundation. we are a public welfare organization focusing on nature protection. currently, under the entrustment and supervision of the local government, we manage five nature reserves with a total area of ​​422 square kilometers.

▲ the five protected areas currently under the taohuayuan foundation

when it comes to nature conservation, many people will ask: are you protecting animals or plants? are you going to track, study, and rescue wild giant pandas in the mountains? are you going to plant yew trees? in fact, this is the most common misunderstanding about nature conservation. protecting nature is not the same as protecting a certain type of wild animal or plant.

research can focus on a single species, like the white-headed langur i studied in guangxi more than 20 years ago, a primate unique to china that is even rarer than the giant panda.

▲ the white-headed langur and the karst mountain in chongzuo, guangxi where it lives

even if we want to restore this animal to a healthy population, we must preserve the entire mountain where it lives, rather than feeding it alone and helping it reproduce. can the individuals that reproduce in this way survive in the mountain for a long time? what kind of impact will it have on the mountain? in fact, we have no way of knowing these questions.

so far, human knowledge of nature is extremely limited. scientists estimate that 86% of terrestrial organisms and 91% of marine organisms have yet to be discovered, not to mention the intricate relationships between these organisms. therefore, protection is aimed at a complete ecosystem, to protect a complete ecological network that has the ability to self-repair and withstand stress and can provide survival and reproduction guarantees for all life.

from the perspective of ecosystems, nature reserves are globally recognized as the most effective form of nature conservation: find relatively healthy ecosystems on earth that have not yet been destroyed, use legislation and other means to prevent human activities from continuing to change these areas, let the power of nature restore the vitality of the ecosystem, and gradually expand the area. rare animals and plants are just one type of indicator that reflects the originality and recovery of the ecosystem.

in 2023, china responded to the global conservation goals proposed by cop15 and proposed that by 2030, at least 30% of the country's land, inland waters, coastal areas and oceans should be effectively protected and managed. 2030 is coming soon, and at present, although my country has established nearly 10,000 nature reserves of various types, these reserves only account for 18% of the land area of ​​the country, and these 18% may not be fully effective. therefore, in addition to the main force of the government, it is also important to mobilize the power of the whole society to establish and effectively manage protected areas.

build a protected area with your own hands

more than 10 years ago, i finished my research on white-headed langurs and have been working on nature conservation ever since. however, at that time, i was mainly doing training and planning, using the logical framework and skills for analyzing conservation issues summarized abroad to train staff in nature reserves and conservation agencies.

although we were always praised as "scientific concepts" and "advanced concepts" after the training, we found that these scientific and advanced concepts brought at most a good plan to the protected area, which was placed on the top shelf and collected dust, but rarely brought actual changes to the protected area. so i was unwilling to give up and hoped to have the opportunity to manage a protected area myself.

so in 2011, the predecessor of the peach blossom spring foundation came to laohegou, pingwu county, sichuan province. it used to be a state-owned forest farm, covering 110 square kilometers and with an altitude difference of more than 2,000 meters. after the ban on natural forest logging in 1998, it was only used for fire prevention and artificial forest cultivation.

but the value of this area is far more than that. to the north of laohegou is the tangjiahe national nature reserve, where almost all the animals and plants in the reserve are found, including giant pandas, takins, sichuan golden monkeys and other first-class protected animals. in addition, due to the steep mountains, nearly 85% of the area of ​​laohegou still retains native vegetation or vegetation that has recovered naturally after being cut down. this is a relatively healthy and complete ecosystem that is worth protecting, but unfortunately it has not yet been protected.

so, with the mentality of "bringing our own food to work", we brought the social welfare funds we had raised, hoping to get the government's commission to establish and manage a protected area to help fill this gap in the local area.

"bring your own food to work", i thought i would be warmly welcomed, but in reality, facing such a new thing, i was more skeptical: you come here just to protect? what do you want to get?

thanks to the local government, they finally decided to give us this opportunity and entrusted us with the management of laohegou for 50 years. this is the first nature reserve in china that is entrusted and supervised by the government and managed by private forces.

the first thing laohegou did was to form a local protection team. we recruited a group of full-time rangers from villages, towns and original forest farms around the reserve to implement all protection actions.

what are these conservation actions? we believe that the core of nature reserves is to "return nature to nature" and constantly discover, prevent and eliminate human interference that damages the reserves. in laohegou, the behaviors that have the greatest impact are poaching and mining.

in the 1980s and 1990s, most of the young and middle-aged people in a village on the northwest border of laohegou were imprisoned for hunting and selling first-class protected animals such as giant pandas, takins, and musk deer. although there are fewer experienced hunters now, the hunting tools are cheaper, more widely used, and more difficult to track. this photo shows the two most common hunting tools in laohegou: snares and traps.

both tools are cheap and easy to use, so hunters can place dozens of them at a time, and even if they are discovered, they cannot be traced. they are very lethal, and only select the size of the prey, not the type. the tools used to hunt wild boars can also hunt black bears and pandas.

in this 110 square kilometer mountain, two people can be completely blocked even if they are 5 meters apart. searching for these traps under the five or six centimeters thick fallen leaves is like looking for a needle in a haystack for an inexperienced person. although there are only two entrances to laohegou that can be entered by car, for the locals, walking over the mountain to enter laohegou was a shortcut back then. in addition to hunting, they can also collect medicinal herbs, dig orchids, and dig yams. it is impossible for us to install a fence that can really block people and enclose the entire 110 square kilometers.

in fact, this problem is very common in most mountainous nature reserves in china and is difficult to manage. rangers can only rely on daily patrols to find and remove snares and traps as much as possible, increase deterrence, and do more publicity in the communities around the reserves.

▲ rangers are patrolling

the root cause is people

at this point, you may have a question: is it useful to do this alone?

indeed, if we don’t change the destructive use of the mountains by local people, the problem cannot be solved. so from the beginning, we included the villages around the protected area in our work scope and tried to help everyone find a new development path.

we invited a well-known international company that designed the bird's nest to make an overall protection and development plan for laohegou according to our ideas. this plan won a british award in 2016. however, this design and plan, which fully reflected our confidence, could not be implemented just in the year when it won the award.

for example, the development of the community around laohegou is an important part of the plan, and the initial design is to develop ecological agricultural products. we call on the surrounding villagers to plant and raise agricultural products according to the standards for their own children, and we help them sell them at double or even triple the price.

although this project seemed very successful at one point, with more than 160 farmers participating in the production of agricultural products, and each earning several thousand to tens of thousands of yuan per year, it became increasingly difficult for us to sell our products since 2016, and the conflicts between us and these farmers quickly intensified.

on the one hand, all products that are not ecologically grown and raised are high-quality and delicious, which is not worth the two or three times higher price. on the other hand, farmers are increasingly resistant to the increasingly high standards of breeding and raising. in the year when we encountered african swine fever and pork could not be sold at all, everyone was unwilling to share any losses with us, and only said, "you asked me to raise the pigs."

what went wrong?

although there are design reasons, there is a more important reason: people.

many of our patrol officers have only junior high school or high school education. although they have completed the patrol or community publicity tasks assigned to them, what is the effect? ​​for example, this interview record sheet written by our patrol officers after visiting a villager in december 2016, except for the location and number of people in the household, all other information is blank.

we may have promoted fire prevention and hunting bans to villagers, but do we have the ability to judge whether the villagers really listened? we may have consulted villagers about their willingness to participate in the production of ecological agricultural products, but do we really know the reasons for their participation and the changes in their thinking during the process?

we have no idea about the effectiveness of front-line rangers and basic work, and the more fundamental problem lies with us managers ourselves.

we managers have been busy with "big things" such as meetings, project design, and partner communication. we are not able to do enough of the tasks assigned to the rangers, and of course there is no way for us to supervise these seemingly "simple" basic tasks.

at that time, i was at a low point myself. the pandemic started in 2020 and many meetings could not be held. ok, we put aside all the upper-level design matters, and almost everyone in the foundation went to the front line and became rangers.

now, among the 54 people in the taohuayuan team, 51 of them are stationed in the reserve all year round. the finance, publicity, and myself are all in the reserve. of course, working in the reserve is not just about changing places like this:

we spend more time not sitting at our desks, but patrolling with the rangers, doing community interviews, and cleaning toilets together. this is what we often say, "going up the mountains, going to the countryside, and cleaning toilets."

go to the front line, go to the mountains, go to the countryside, and clean toilets

the first is to patrol the mountains. in addition to installing and maintaining infrared cameras to photograph wild animals as before, and trying to find signs of human damage such as snares and traps, the more basic thing is to be familiar with the mountains we manage, and be more familiar with this area than any poacher or herbalist.

we divided the protected area into 1 km square grids, and each ranger had to walk through each grid again and again to get familiar with every ditch and bump. we had to walk along any route that outsiders might take, only in this way could we try to find human interference or traces in a timely manner.

this picture shows the grid covered by the patrol officers of laohegou last year. the redder the area, the more times it has been covered.

also in 2020, i walked to more than 70 grids in laohegou. i climbed up those hills that i had seen many times on the map before, but had never been to before, one by one this time.

although i walked slowly and often delayed the patrol until dark, i was praised by everyone as the "night walker"; although i often walked from the rain to the snow and then walked from the snow back to the rain in the same day; although everyone was unfamiliar with the route at the beginning and was forced to stay on the top of the 3,100-meter mountain to count the stars all night, we couldn't sleep at all because we didn't bring a sleeping bag.

but in my memory, there are more things like the old river flowing over the mountain ridges, the red sun jumping out of the sea of ​​clouds when i opened the tent in the morning, and the sudden presence of nearly a hundred golden monkeys around me during lunch, chirping and chattering. at that time, i felt that this was the most real protection.

compared with patrols, interviews in rural areas are even more bleak. from the villagers’ perspective, the people in the reserve catch villagers for poaching and prevent them from digging medicinal herbs, which seems to be a way to prevent them from making money, so it is normal to resist at the beginning.

in our five reserves, there have been incidents of several villagers lifting motorcycles through the iron gates and forcing their way into the reserves, cutting up the reserve director's clothes that were hung out to dry, and claiming that their farmland had been destroyed by "our" wild boars and asking us for compensation. it was even more common for them to be turned away or to speak only our own ethnic language when they saw us.

therefore, our interview is to get to know the community and the villagers, and at the same time, we must start with the villagers being able to accept us. the interview should also follow the standard process. the first time, we should be introduced by acquaintances, so that we can talk easily. then, we should clearly introduce ourselves and the purpose of our visit. after we sit down, we should chat about family matters and create a chat atmosphere, and then gradually ask for the information we want to know. we should also give the other party the opportunity to ask questions, so that the communication is equal. finally, we should leave a foreshadowing for the next visit.

it was through these exchanges that we heard more and more truths, and we were able to truly understand the villagers’ difficulties and ideas, and they began to accept us and what we did. later, we discovered that this process also allowed our older male rangers to communicate smoothly during blind dates.

the third thing is to clean the toilets. every morning, everyone in our protected area will go to clean up and clean the toilets. this is because public toilets are a public resource that is most easily overlooked. everyone will complain when they are dirty, but few people will take the initiative to clean them.

this is something that can be done without any technical threshold, and it is something that can hone the work attitude of our entire team. only in this way can we have a proper attitude when we go to the mountains and the countryside.

in fact, up to now, our patrol and community work are still the same content as before, and there is nothing innovative. it’s just that we no longer talk about the concepts all the time, but work with the patrollers to do the simplest and most basic things carefully, find small changes that everyone can do, and then supervise everyone to make changes together. in this way, slowly, our overall level of work has begun to improve significantly.

let’s use the community interview example again. in addition to standardizing the interview process, our second change is to build and enhance everyone’s ability to write interview logs.

many of our older rangers have never used a computer and can only type with one finger. however, in less than two years, all the rangers in laohegou have been able to write a log of nearly 1,800 words, from preparation to process, to the analysis of important information, followed by cross-examination and review by the protection center.

▲ an interview log written by the laohegou patrolman

with this foundation, our management has seen room for improvement. we can also improve the efficiency of the entire community interview process, strengthen the accumulation and retrieval of information, and more keenly discover problems and arrange forces more reasonably. therefore, in may 2023, we built and began to use an online community interview platform.

on this platform, you can track ongoing logs; view all recent follow-ups, files and logs for each natural village and household; and check the time, number, score, number of audits and other work data of each patrol team member's community interviews. the essence of this platform is to supervise every link of each interview in management, from pre-trip preparation, to summary and review, to audit, and all of them must be completed carefully and recorded.

▲ use the community interview platform to record and manage every aspect of the interview

it took us ten years to grow from 0 to 1,800 words, but the changes actually happened in the last two years. it took us one year to go from simple words to systematic management, and we made the community work that we had no way to supervise and improve become controllable and can continue to improve.

now no one deliberately speaks their own ethnic language to us anymore. the leading villager who broke into the protected area has become our convener to encourage villagers to participate in the co-management of the protected area. we are almost never turned away, but are often forced to eat. although there are times when conflicts escalate, it is gratifying that our rangers can always slowly resolve them through community interviews.

similarly, in terms of patrolling, after we walked through every grid in the protected area several times, we found that the paths in the mountains can more sensitively reflect human interference. for example, the path on the left in the photo is clearer, indicating that people and animals walk on it more often, while the path on the right is blurry, indicating that people and animals walk on it less often.

▲ a clear path (left) and a blurred path (right)

if a path suddenly becomes clear in a short period of time, and we don't walk on it often, what does it mean? it is very likely that there are outsiders entering the area that we have not discovered. we should increase patrols on this path and the connected paths to find any missed traces of human intervention.

therefore, we added the content of observing the changes in the clarity of the trails to our patrols. after the patrols are completed, we record the length of each trail, the difficulty of hiking, the important plants and animals that can be seen, and the points that need to be paid attention to during the next patrol. at present, there are 258 trails recorded in the laohegou section, and we use the professional software of the geographic information system to make maps with these data every quarter. now most of our patrolmen, including the former "yang finger", can do it through continuous practice.

38 more years

after twelve years of exploration in laohegou, we finally have some experience in protected area management, and changes have begun both inside and outside the protected area.

when we were investigating animals in the mountains in 2012, we only saw medium-sized and large wild animals three times in a week of field work. but now, any visitor to the reserve can basically see wild animals within a day, and laohegou has become one of the easiest places to see wild animals in the area.

the first-class protected animal, the takin, was able to stay at our base for more than a month, spending a thrilling spring festival with us. this is the most dangerous animal in this area:

less than a year after the takin left, a second-class protected species, the tufted deer, became a regular visitor to the base and has continued to do so to this day:

the stealthiest hunter in china's forests, the asiatic golden cat, can be found hunting and eating right beside our forest roads:

as for the wild giant pandas that all rangers want to see the most, we only saw them once in the 10 years since laohegou was established. we saw them three times in the whole year of last year, and this year we saw them four times in the 26 days of giant panda survey. we also have a clearer understanding of where the pandas often move around.

new entry points have also emerged for development projects in communities surrounding protected areas.

being able to see wild animals and even have the chance to see giant pandas makes laohegou particularly attractive to some tourists. in the second half of 2022, we will begin to select villagers who are willing to be trained as eco-guides, and let them take tourists into laohegou and walk along designated routes.

although the villagers' introductions to the flora and fauna along the way contained some scientific errors, they were mixed with a lot of local knowledge, and they would also take tourists to check out infrared cameras that photographed animals. of course, the most attractive thing was the occasional encounter with real wild animals, and they took tourists to see giant pandas twice.

during the whole guided tour, they will restrain the tourists' behavior and ensure their safety. however, there is still room for improvement in what to do when encountering threatening wild animals. on may 1 this year, a group of tourists saw a black bear on a tree next to the cement road in the reserve. the guide immediately told everyone to run, but no one ran. everyone stood there and took out their phones to take pictures, and the bear ran down the tree. in fact, when encountering a black bear in the wild, you should stop and observe first, instead of turning around and running immediately.

a tour guide can lead a team of up to ten people at a time, and each team is charged 150 yuan for the tour. we are responsible for training, assessing and managing the tour guides, and we do not charge any fees, so that the results of the protection can be fully realized by the villagers.

from september 2022 to date, we have trained and assessed a total of 138 eco-tour guides, who have led more than 18,000 tourists into laohegou, with a total tour guide income of more than 250,000 yuan, most of which were created by women who had no source of income before. such tour guide activities have brought greater benefits to the village's homestays, restaurants, and agricultural products. this is a new way for villagers to make money that they would never have thought of before.

tour guide chen xiaoyin said in an interview: "we used to think that protecting animals and plants would cut off our source of income, but now we realize that we are protecting our wallets."

i am very happy that the villagers have such an understanding, because nature conservation has made them earn money, and because our interviews are also influencing their thinking. although this change has just begun, we still have time. the old river ditch has been entrusted to us for 50 years, and we still have 38 years to continue to create and change with the villagers, and we also have 5 other protected areas.

from a nature conservation planner and trainer, to a protected area manager, to a ranger who works with everyone to polish basic work, our focus has gradually shifted from external things to people, and finally to ourselves. we gradually improve and perfect our abilities and behaviors, slowly accumulate small positive adjustments, and in this process, we find that the external environment has begun to change as we wish.

sometimes you don't need to pursue shortcuts. when there is no good way, it is easiest to improve by constantly polishing the foundation with a stupid way. as the backbone of our reserve recently gathered together to summarize the mountain spirit of taohuayuan: take every step firmly, you can be slow, but you can't stop. this is what our 54 taohuayuan people have gained from cleaning toilets in the nature reserve and doing basic work with the attitude of cleaning toilets.

finally, my eldest daughter will be 18 soon. i am sorry that i cannot often accompany her in the city, but she has come to our reserve to clean toilets and do basic work with us. she now hopes to study ecology, and maybe one day she will become my fellow traveler in nature conservation. i hope this summary can serve as a message to her as she grows up, and we can encourage each other.

thank you everyone!

the content is compiled based on on-site speeches, lecture notes, and trial lectures.

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