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  Today Online 16 Mar 07
What a lifesaver! Chinese explorer taps Singapore expertise in animal care

 Being a wildlife lover is not enough to make one a conservationist. One has to be a manager, study business models and think of ways to add economic value to projects where possible, says Mr Wong How Man (picture), who was dubbed China's most accomplished living explorer by Time magazine.

Currently in Singapore for the region's first wildlife and environmental film festival, organised by Wildlife Asia, the journalist-turned-conservationist talks to GRACIA CHIANG (gracia@mediacorp.com.sg) about his explorations and why non-profit organisations need more than passion to succeed.

How did you go into conservation work?

When I worked as a journalist with National Geographic, my role included being an explorer, writer and photographer specialising in remote areas of China. I documented the culture and geographic biodiversity of China and noticed that a lot of them were vanishing.

So at some point, I decided it was not good enough to just be someone who documents a dying culture and species, and that's how I started my organisation.

You give lectures on using innovative approaches in conservation. What's that about?

I'm not interested in just saying, "Here's the problem, here's the money, go solve it". I want to add value to what we save. I want to release more by-products.

For example, we funded a Tibetan musicologist who goes out and documents dying, vanishing music on a first-rate recorder. That's important for academics, music and the integrity of the Tibetans.

But at the same time you can do a parallel project to classify this music into user-friendly segments by its mood, be it drums or string music or opera, so that people can say, "Hey if I'm looking for a certain mood of music to feature in my film for 30 or 60 seconds", it's there for them.

Idealists only want to use it with the full integrity of what it was originally for. But for someone who is in the market to realise some economic value from it, they have to think more creatively. It's not something we hear often from conservationists.

Unfortunately, it's very competitive out there. If there are a number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that start taking the same route as you, eventually your donor will start looking at other people.

Many non-profit organisations are started by people who are passionate about a good cause, but they are not necessarily good managers?

They all think they just need to be passionate and they have the problem fixed. That was good enough in the past but that's not good enough in the future. I think NGOs need to look at business models in terms of yielding a return so that they don't always have to face fund-raising. Corporate sponsors only account for 9 per cent of our income.

Can you tell us one experience you fondly remember from your explorations?

We were the ones to first discover the calving ground of the Tibetan antelope in 1998. It had evaded science for over a hundred years. You're talking about several thousand females converging at a very remote area and very high altitude of over 5,000 metres.

One of our colleagues in Western China ran into a newborn calf in 1992 when he went looking for gold mines. We followed the tracks and found this calving ground that had about 8,000 females converging. One-third of them gave birth over a two-week period. So, everyday you looked around you and everywhere they were giving birth. Can you imagine the sight?

What is your latest project?

Last year, the Chinese nature reserve asked if we could help put together a rescue centre because every year they had several cases of snub-nosed monkeys being injured through mating battles, illnesses or snares. The rangers did not have any means of saving them because by the time they sent them down to Kunming after several days, usually it would be too late.

So, we looked around and felt that the Singapore Zoo had such expertise. It also had an advanced animal hospital. So, we invited the zoo officials over. Their involvement is mainly in the training of future vets for the rescue centre. We will send them to Singapore for two to three-month stints. The centre will be at Weixi County, in northwestern Yunnan province. Hopefully, by the last quarter of this year, we can see it up and running.
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