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ENVIRONMENT: Bamboo Needs Begin to Stick Out

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, May 12 2004 (IPS) - In this whole debate about forests and deforestations, you would have thought bamboos might stand out. But neglect in discussion has matched neglect of bamboos on the ground, a new report points out.

Now urgent action is needed to protect "one of the world’s most ancient life forms and the species that depend on it," says a study by the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) and the United Nations Environment Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP- WCMC). Rattan is a climbing palm.

The new study ‘Bamboo Biodiversity’ estimates that as many as half of the world’s 1,200 woody bamboo species may be in danger of extinction as a result of massive forest destruction.

The study offers a reminder just what bamboos do. Some of more than 1,500 documented uses of bamboos include housing, food, paper and handicrafts. Here are some reasons it says bamboos matter:

– In Asia bamboo shoots are used by millions of people as a meal base like rice.

– Worldwide, over 2.5 billion people trade in or use bamboo. Global domestic trade and subsistence use of bamboo are estimated to be worth 4.5 billion dollars per year, and export of bamboo generates another 2.7 billion dollars.

– Indigenous people worldwide use woody bamboos to make handicrafts and musical instruments. Baskets, fans, utensils, toys, furniture, irrigation systems and agricultural supports are all made from bamboos of different types.

"International trade in bamboo products, mostly from cultivated sources, is worth more than two billion dollars annually," the report says.

Bamboos matter also for an extraordinary range of wildlife that depends on them. "Consequently, many extraordinary and vulnerable species such as lemurs, giant pandas and mountain gorillas that depend almost entirely on bamboo for food and shelter face an even greater struggle for survival," the report says.

Why then has such a significant species been neglected?

"The principal reason that bamboos have not been spoken of as a conservation issue is that people do not recognise that there are so many bamboo species," co-author of the report Valerie Kapos told IPS.

"Of more than a thousand species, humans use only about 50 to 100, and no one has looked at the areas people do not know much about," she said.

The new bamboo report is just a start. "For one, it should help raise awareness," Kapos said. "And then when we look at the 400 to 600 species believed to be under threat, we need to look closely at which of these are under immediate threat."

The report is only an overview, Kapos said. "We need to get to work with national experts and begin collaboration on the ground."

Bamboo conservation presents difficulties of a very different order from forest conservation primarily because of the unique growing patterns of bamboos. A species in a certain area will all flower at the same time, and then die.

This means that there will naturally be full bamboo crops over a period, and then periods where there are no crops at all. This cycle ranges from 20 to 100 years, though there are freak species like on in Japan that grows 1.5 metres a day.

"What this means for conservation policies we do not yet know," Kapos said. "We’re still only touching the surface of management issues here."

The study shows that many bamboo species, including relatives of those cultivated commercially, have tiny amounts of forest remaining within their native ranges. Some 250 woody bamboo species have less than 2000 square kilometres of forest (an area the size of London, Britain) remaining within their ranges.

Klaus Toepfer, UNEP executive director says in a statement: "Trade in these plants is worth as much as bananas or American beef. Yet until now, their status and condition have been largely ignored with many species taken for granted."

Governments at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) two years ago agreed to reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity, he said. "This new report makes it clear that conserving bamboo, for the sake of people and for the sake of wildlife, should have a high priority in this global effort"

INBAR director-general Ian Hunter said the report is the first step towards quantifying existing resources of bamboo. The report reveals that bamboos are found not just in Asia as commonly thought but also in the forests of the Amazon and the Andes and in African cloud forests.

The report identifies unique and endangered species, whose fates are intimately linked with those of bamboos, in every region where bamboos occur.

In Asia these include the giant panda. In Africa it says mountain gorillas depend on bamboos for up to 90 percent of their diet in some seasons.

In Madagascar, the critically endangered greater and golden bamboo lemurs depend on bamboo for much of their diet. The rarest tortoise in the world, the ploughshare tortoise, is also intimately connected with bamboos.

In Latin America, the report says, the spectacled bear, the mountain tapir and many endangered bird species are connected with bamboo in the Andes, Amazon and Atlantic forests. In the Amazon, up to 180,000 square kilometres of forest is entirely dominated by bamboo.