Christoph Schwitzer

Bristol Zoological Society’s Field Conservation Projects

On Wednesday the 15th March I went to a guest lecture at Newton Park campus arranged by the Research Centre for Environmental Humanities. The guest lecturer was Conservationist Christoph Schwitzer. I wanted to go along to the lecture as this would help with my university project Common Ground about people interact and preserve the environment.

Christoph currently works at Bristol Zoo. Bristol Zoo is the fifth oldest zoo in the country, it also has a ‘sub’ zoo in South Gloucestershire, where there is a giraffe house. The zoo oversees many departments including vets and education.

Bristol Zoo has a very important conservation programme. The oldest conservation task is breeding, however this is a last resort. Field conservation comes before this as it’s more current. Field conservation is quite recent, Christoph started this is 1998. There are two different schools within wildlife conservation, community based and protected. They usually try to work with the community.

The main conservation projects Bristol Zoo work on take place in Cameroon, Philippines, Costa Rica, Comoros, South Africa, Tanzania, the UK and Madagascar. In Cameroon there are the gorillas, the Philippines are the bleed heart doves, South Africa are the penguins and Christoph’s favourite is Madagascar as they work with the Lemurs, Christoph’s speciality.

Cameroon is the longest project, starting in 1998. It is called Ape Action Africa and they take in orphaned apes. Education groups visit the project.

In the Comoros Islands, they work to protect the livingstone fruit bat. The forest management strategy is where they set up strategies but try to leave them to be independent so they can start other project. Bristol Zoo still support them and students go out to supervise them. It is a very community based project, the most people focused project out of all the projects. Bristol Zoo is one of very few zoos to have a bat enclosure.

Bristol Zoo set up the project in South Africa to help the penguins after there was a very steep decline in population. There were a lot of threats which wiped them out very quickly. The penguins were on the cusp of being critically endangered. A lot of fishing and overfishing took place in the area and climate change also affected the sea. There was a major cold current moving into the area which moved an entire eco-system. However, the penguins like to stay in the same location so did not move to find the fish, causing them to starve. The adult penguins swim 20km to find food but the distance was becoming further than this. Closures have had a positive effect on the population but these measures aren't enough to save the species. More research and work groups/management plans will help.

Ape Action Africa is not the only project taking place in Cameroon. Bristol Zoo have also taken part in a giraffe Project in Kordofan. The Giraffe house in South Gloucestershire will help this project. They have spent two and a half years researching to help the organisation helping the giraffes. There was quite a rapid decline, making the giraffes vulnerable. 4 species of giraffe and a few sub species are part of the project. As they were already working in Cameroon they knew people in the country and had a prior understanding of the way the country worked.

They looked at the giraffes in the country to learn more about the giraffes on a whole. Giraffes need a large habitat and that was being compromised. Humans were cutting down trees, which are a food source, to make room for cattle. The new project had started but it is quite a challenging one as it is very dangerous. The national park director is very good and is working very hard to protect the remaining 80,000 giraffes. A lot of zoos were taking in babies but this is problematic; they are looking for money not supporting conservation. Drone technology is helping to record the numbers. They need to get an estimate of population size, they are using a spot pattern database and looking to expand the area of the park.

In Costa Rica they are helping the Lemur leaf frog. There has been an 80% decline of their population in 10 years.

Christoph Schwitzer’s speciality when it comes to conservation, are Lemurs. In Madagascar, Bristol Zoo are helping the Lemur populations. They are helping to run a national park. A chocolate company in Madagascar heard about the work they were doing wanted to help the lemurs they had found in their plantation. The staff were keen to help and partnered with the company. They found at least 3 species in the plantation. They are now making a plan to help the lemurs. This led to another project on a vanilla plantation. 2 species were found on the plantation. They are working towards a plan to help the inhibitor.

In our country, Bristol Zoo are helping conservation as much as possible. In 2013 they started a project they replicated from an Australian Zoo. They are working with FSC and want to encourage guests to use FSC certified kitchen roll. They are wildlife friendly products. The toilet roll is mostly ok, with 90% of the products used are FSC certified. However, charcoal is different. Only 50% of charcoal in the UK is FSC approved. They started Kuki’s kitchen to help spread the work. There were 12,007 visits to Kuki’s kitchen over a couple of months. 3785 of these visitors made pledges to buy FSC certified products.

There was also the Big Bug Wildlife friendly area. Bristol Zoo wanted to help spread the word about bug friendly areas. 23,066 people visited, 5,273 pledges were made. 70% learnt something new, 60% promised to help bugs at home.

Knot your Net was a project which encouraged guests to tie knots in discarded netting before binning it. Netting can blow away and animals can get trapped inside. Knotting the nets weighs the area down. 64% of guests intended to knot after this, whereas only 18% actually knew and did this before.

What is next for Bristol Zoo? The Zoo wants to campaign to have 100% palm oil sustainably produced. They are working with consumers, companies and policy makers.