Private protected areas look like they may become one of the "flavours of
the decade" in biodiversity conservation, so I will try to make a few
postings on it in the next few weeks.

We will start with A, for Australia and the Earth Sanctuaries "story".

Below, I am pasting three pieces which appeared (chronologically) in the
same order as I am presenting them over the past few months.  The articles
chart the fortunes of one of the pioneers of free market protected areas,
John Wamsley.

The first is a New Scientist interview from ; the second is from the
Financial Times of London (thanks, Dominic) and the third is from Reuters,
via Planet Ark.

For a more "considered" view of the potential of private protected areas in
Australia using Earth Sanctuaries as a case study, see:

 Aretino, B., Holland, P., Peterson, D. and Schuele, M. (2001) Creating
Markets for
Biodiversity: A Case Study of Earth Sanctuaries Ltd, Productivity
Commission Staff
Research Paper, AusInfo, Canberra.

available as a pdf at:

http://www.pc.gov.au/research/staffres/cmbiod/cmbiod.pdf

I will summarise more of the work of the Government of Australia
Productivity Commission on the role of the private sector in biodiversity
conservation in future postings.

Best wishes

David Duthie
UNEP/GEF
david.duthie@unep.org
*****************************************************************************
1.  New Scientist Magazine Opinion Interview (late 2001):

For over 30 years, John Wamsley has been striving to save Australia's
indigenous wildlife. But his methods, which involve fencing off large areas
of land and eradicating all alien species such as foxes and rabbits, have
made him extremely unpopular. He has received several death threats and
spent time in prison. Not that it's put him off. He has already set aside
tens of thousands of hectares?funded through his publicly listed
company?and wants to increase that to one per cent of Australia by 2025. He
tells Melanie Cooper why his system is the only hope for endangered species

Gone native

Your views on conservation are fairly radical. When did you develop them?
When I was seven my father bought 166 acres in the Central Coast of New
South Wales, in the middle of millions of acres of virgin bush. It was
incredible country that doesn't exist in Australia any more, and it had all
these native animals. We went to live there when I was 10. When I was 12,
the foxes and cats appeared. And by the time I was 14, there were no native
animals left at all.

And when did you first do something about it?
In the 1970s, in my thirties, l set up Warrawong Earth Sanctuary in South
Australia to demonstrate the problem facing Australian wildlife. Even
though Australia was losing wildlife faster than the rest of the world
combined, people were blaming farmers, miners, foresters?everyone but the
moggie in their lounge. And it was the moggie in their lounge that was the
problem. By the early 1980s, we had demonstrated that any native wildlife
would thrive in an area without foxes and cats.

Why South Australia?
It was the only state where it was still legal for me to fence off an area
and put back locally extinct animals. They just hadn't got around to making
it illegal. They attempted to do that as soon as they realised what I was
doing, In 1976, they put me in jail for cutting down some pine trees to
allow me to build the feral-proof fence. To get out of jail I had to sign
an agreement that I wouldn't build the fence, so it was pretty tough stuff.

How did you get around that?
I signed the agreement and just kept building it. I signed under duress, so
I didn't feel bound by it. Warrawong was completed in February 1983 and
opened to the public on 1 January 1985. And within a year, it was overrun
with native animals. The population just exploded. Anybody that came here
could see that something incredible was happening. So we founded another
sanctuary, just down from the Barossa Valley.

How did you fund them?
We raised the money by selling shares. Each sanctuary was a company that
you could invest in. And that worked extremely well. It looked like the
investing public would make it work. We've now got 7000 shareholders.

How much land do you need In order to do what you want to do?
So far we've got 10 blocks of land, three of which are open to the public.
To save Australian wildlife we have to build 80 sanctuaries of an average
of 1000 square kilometres each across Australia. Somebody has to. I don't
mind if we do it or if someone else does it. Someone in Western Australia
is doing it too, so it's catching on. There is no other way to save
Australian wildlife. You can't save a species in a zoo. I mean, why would
you want to?

Have you saved any species?
Oh yeah. When I started, there were 100 woylie? a small nocturnal
marsupial?left. Now, after we demonstrated the problem and its solution,
there are 20,000. There were 100 numbats when I started and now there are
2000. And we've pro~ ably saved the southern brown bandicoot too. So we've
saved a few species from extinction but we've got a long way to go yet.

How many species of Australian mammal are endangered?
There are about 25, but it depends who you talk to. Because government
departments are government departments, the easiest way they can save
endangered animals is to reclassify them as not being endangered. There's
no standard definition of the word "endangered". I've fought very hard to
establish that the numbers are the important thing, because it's harder to
fiddle numbers. They've moved the numbat off the endangered list even
though there are only 2000 of them. Nowhere else in the world would they
move a species with only 2000 left off the endangered list.

What is so important to you about native species that justifies killing any
number of alien ones?
I don't think there is a logical answer to this. I believe that evolution
gave us a paradise and that we will lose everything unless we understand
about the need for balance. I believe biodiversity is good and worth
maintaining. But really, it is just a belief.

What do you think of the way other conservationists work?
I can give you a good example. The male is a hare wallaby. Twenty years ago
people realised it was in trouble so they formed the male recovery group.
Since then they have had A$10 million in funding, published hundreds of
research papers and travelled Australia talking about the problem. They
probably got thousands of people involved. The only thing that went wrong
was that they lost the male. Other than that, it was a perfect programme.
The people involved still say it was a good programme and that it was
successful. This is where I totally disagree with them. I would say the
success of the male programme is measured by how many male are out there,
not how many research papers you published or how much funding you got?and
the male is still listed as vulnerable. Unfortunately today we measure
success in science not by results but by how much funding you get.

What is your view on the National Parks and Wildlife Service run by each
state?
The National Parks system has failed to conserve wildlife. That's pretty
obvious from the fact that up until very recently, there wasn't one success
story. All the conservation successes we've had with mammals in Australia
really started from what happened at Warrawong. In 1990, a representative
of the National Parks called and spoke to my wife Proo and 1, and he said
he was talking on behalf of all the National Parks of Australia. He said
there was no way in the world they would ever allow us to reintroduce any
native animals in our sanctuaries and that we may as well pack it in now.
So the opposition was massive from the National Parks for what we were
doing.

Surely you're all on the same side.
I think that's a dangerous statement. That's like saying that all
politicians are on the same side and therefore they should all agree with
each other. I mean, the goal is to save wildlife. But I think others
believed very strongly that they were saving wildlife by stopping me from
doing what I was doing. I don't think there's any doubt about that.

You have a lot of enemies. How do you deal with that?
I'll give you an example. In 1990 it was illegal for us to interfere with
feral cats, even though they were destroying wildlife. We weren't even
allowed to throw a rock at them. A group of animal liberationists turned up
and said they were going to watch us and report us if we did anything
untoward to feral cats. So I decided to take them on. At the 1991 South
Australia Tourism Awards, where we won a prize, I wore a feral-cat hat. It
made the front page of every newspaper. I got hundreds of death threats. I
had people throwing cats over the fence here and all sorts of things.

Many people would say you brought that on yourself . . .
Maybe, but we helped to change the law that protected feral cats. We can
now shoot any cat in our sanctuaries, even if it's got a collar. We made
people realise that cats were a problem in Australia. And now you hear
people say they are "responsible" cat owners, which you never heard 10
years ago.

Is anyone on your side?
Well, we've got 7000 shareholders, so at least that many are. I think a lot
of people are. A lot of people oppose us until they find out what we do. I
think the concept of commercialising the environment doesn't sit easy with
a lot of people. It doesn't sit easy with me, in a way.

Do your sanctuaries help local businesses?
I don't know because I tend to be a loner. A lot of people do networking
and things. I've never done that. I suppose I have an inherent dislike of
people. I can't handle a crowd. I'm a natural recluse and I don't
communicate. People are all right individually, but en masse they're pretty
strange.

How did you prepare for your career in conservation?
I left home at 16 to earn money to build Warrawong. It would be wrong to
say this is what I had in mind at the time, but I realised that if I was
going to do anything, I would need money. I used to work continuously. It's
hard work to make money. By the time I was 23, I'd made a million dollars.
And then I realised that if I spent all that money on Warrawong, I wouldn't
have any left to run it. By the time I was about 25, I looked around for
the easiest job in the world that paid the most amount of money, and
decided to be an academic. So at 25, I went to university and by the time I
was 29, I had a PhD in mathematics.

That was quick!
Well, pure mathematics is very easy.

That's not how I remember It. Have you used your mathematics in
conservation?
Oh yeah. I can do mathematics because I'm an extremely logical person.
That's how I save wildlife?with logic. I basically say, "This is the
outcome I want. Now how do I get that outcome?" Whereas most people spend
their whole life doing a process without any idea what the outcome will be.
 

You've been quoted as saying you would burn in hell to save a species.
Isn't that a bit extreme?
If I could save a species and it meant that I'd burn in hell forever, then
I'd burn in hell. I've got hundreds of letters from people telling me I've
already sold my soul to the devil. But of course, I don't believe there is
a devil. I believe in biodiversity and evolution, I suppose, is my God.

Death threats haven't stopped you. Will anything stop you?
Old age, I suppose. When they bury me. But I'll always do what's best for
wildlife.

*****************************************************************************
2.  CONSERVATION: A protector of endangered species has been fighting for
its own
survival, says Shawn Donnan:

Financial Times; Mar 1, 2002

                     When Earth Sanctuaries listed on the Australian Stock
Exchange in May 2000, it offered a new twist to conservationists: here
was the world's first company with both a stock market listing and a core
business of saving endangered species.

                     It was a tiny company - the initial public offering
raised just ADollars 12.1m.But the idea was new. No longer did people have to
donate money if they wanted to save endangered species; instead, by funding
private reserves open to paying visitors they could invest it to the
same end.
                     But less than two years later things do not look so
rosy. In January, all of  the company's assets - including 2,885 animals valued
at more than ADollars 5m (Pounds 1.8m) - were put up for sale. John
Wamsley, Earth Sanctuaries' founder and, until early February, its
managing director, admits the aim of the sale is to prevent a slide into
liquidation. The company's cash flow shows an annual shortfall of ADollars 2.5m.

                     Fortunately, privately funded conservation has become
a fashionable cause and Earth Sanctuaries' listing puts it at the
forefront. By the second week in February it had received 25 expressions of interest in
the assets, whose book value is about ADollars 20m, making a sale
possible soon. The chances are the company will survive in one form or
another. But its troubles have raised questions not only about its
business model but also about whether equity markets can have a role in
conservation.

                     Mr Wamsley thinks they can. At best, he argues, most
conservation projects manage only to delay the extinction of
endangered species. The only way to ensure that threatened animals thrive in
the long term, he says, is to make projects profitable.

                     On a small scale, Mr Wamsley has shown that his
reserves can work. Earth Sanctuaries' Warrawong sanctuary in South
Australia, for example, is profitable and has been credited with saving a number
of endangered species.

                     But although the company has some wealthy backers, a
survey of  shareholders before the IPO found that most had
invested more out of altruism than a quest for profit.

                     Support from institutional investors, meanwhile, has
been elusive. Critics argued that the charitable motives of Earth
Sanctuaries' existing shareholders made it hard for institutions to take it
seriously as a business.Doubts were compounded by an aggressive expansion plan
in which Earth Sanctuaries bought a great deal of land in remote
areas. The collapse of technology stocks in 2000 also made it harder for
small companies to secure institutional capital.

                     The few mainstream institutions that did invest in
Earth Sanctuaries did not stay for long. Rothschild Australia began selling down
its stake soon after the IPO and smaller fund managers followed suit.
Australian Ethical Investments, an independent fund manager, began
selling its stake last year.The upshot was that Earth Sanctuaries was unable to
raise the capital needed to open potentially lucrative sanctuaries near
Sydney and Melbourne. There was also unease among potential investors about
the way Earth Sanctuaries reflects its conservation successes in its
books. Using a quirk of Australian accounting standards, it assigns a value
to its animals based on rarity. A single "endangered" platypus is valued at
ADollars 5,500, while a "vulnerable" long-nosed potoroo is worth ADollars
2,750 and a "rare" southern brown bandicoot just ADollars 1,375.

                     As the company breeds the animals successfully, it can
claim the growth in its animal stock as part of its revenues. But, in some
cases, that alters the company's financial profile considerably, even though
the gains are unrealisable because there is no legal market for the
threatened species.

                     Former executives say the company had begun
campaigning for a change in the law that would have allowed it to export
animals to zoos. In the long term that could have meant big profits for investors
and justified the valuations put on the animals. But without such a
market, the animals' book value is contentious.

  Earth Sanctuaries' difficulties have been exacerbated
by its strategy of offering free options to anyone who chooses to
exercise them immediately at the action price of ADollars 2.50 a share. This has
attracted many of the company's charitably minded individual shareholders
because the money from the options - which buys them shares at a price
more than 10 times the current market - goes straight to Earth
Sanctuaries rather than to other investors. But the scheme has removed much of the
demand for the listed shares.

   Mr Wamsley remains convinced of the validity of his big idea. Bureaucrats and institutional investors may have sunk his invention for now, he says, but one day the world will be ready for a conservation company with a stock market listing. "I'm probably just 20 years early with the idea," he says.

                     Copyright: The Financial Times Limited 1995-2002

************************************************************************
3.  Bidders line up to rescue rare Australian animals

AUSTRALIA: March 12, 2002

SYDNEY - Floundering conservation group Earth Sanctuaries Ltd said last
week it may have found a saviour for its collection of threatened animals,
such as quolls and woylies, with 12 groups putting forward final rescue
bids.

The cash-strapped group, which was forced to put itself up for sale in
January, is starting to sift through the offers for all or part of the
company, and hopes to make a decision next week.

"There's no overall good, higher bid that would have sorted out all our
problems and made it lovely," said colourful conservationist John Wamsley,
who founded the group over 30 years ago.

"There are bids in for all of it, and there are bids in for all the bits,"
he added.

Floated at the tail-end of the dot.com boom in May 2000, Earth Sanctuaries
raised A$12.1 million ($6.28 million) with the aim of buying up to one
percent of Australia's land, restocking it with endangered native animals
and raising cash from eco-tourism.

But the group has struggled to generate enough income to keep impatient
investors happy and needs at least A$10 million to ensure its own survival.

Managing 90,000 hectares (220,000 acres) divided into 10 sanctuaries, the
group values its collection of boodies, bandicoots and other animals on its
balance sheet and says its assets are worth around A$15 million.

"The present net tangible asset per share is 40 cents and we would expect
to get something around that," Wamsley said.

"(The bids) fit in pretty well with what the value is." Greg Follent,
director of corporate finance, at Earth Sanctuary's corporate adviser
Challenger, said all bidders were Australian, but declined to give further
details.

Shares in Earth Sanctuaries, which issued stock at A$2.50 when it listed,
were trading at 23 cents last week.

Frequently outraging cat lovers by wearing a feral feline pelt on his head,
Wamsley remains cautiously optimistic Earth Sanctuaries' collection of
weird and wonderful wildlife will be saved.

"It would seem the animals will be alright, but you never know," Wamsley
said.

"People can be having you on when they tell you they want to buy this and
look after the animals," he said.

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

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