SIUC effort helps Peru's poor, rain forests
by K.C. Jaehnig
 CARBONDALE,
Ill - Picture a fish that likes nothing better
than to root through a flooded forest for fallen fruits and nuts - a
healthy, fast-growing fish that will settle for kitchen scraps if
that's all that's on offer. A fish that does well in captivity and
makes mighty good eating - in short, a fish much like a pig minus
the stink and the squeal.
Such fish, members of a tropical species native to the Peruvian
Amazon, could provide a means not only to feed that region's poor
but to save its rain forests, too, a Southern Illinois University
Carbondale zoologist believes.
"The destruction of the rain forest has been shown to have a
tremendous effect on global climate change," said Christopher
C. Kohler, director of SIUC's Fisheries and Illinois Aquaculture
Center, which has worked in the Amazon for the last 10 years.
"A lot of that destruction has occurred as a result of
agriculture - people have to make a living. But agriculture isn't a
sustainable practice there. Aquaculture is."
Aquaculture - the rearing of watery critters as food - has become
the main focus of SIUC research and outreach efforts in the Amazon.
Working with several species of native fish, some of them
endangered, University scientists are devising ways to help Peru's
traditionally nomadic peoples feed themselves.
"This is small-scale aquaculture - family size," Kohler
said. "It's a much better way of producing what is really their
preferred food.
"Since we have been involved with this project, we have gone
from a handful of people raising fish to several hundred doing it.
Although many of them were hunters and gatherers in the past, they
have been adapting to this kind of activity readily, and it's good
for the region - it leaves the trees."
It's a long way from Southern Illinois to South America, from hybrid
striped bass to a fish that can forage on a flooded forest floor.
The journey began, as all trips do, with a single step.
"It really all started with a student coming to us,"
Kohler said. "It's interesting how things work out."
The student, a Peruvian named Luis Campos Baca, had come to SIUC
from the National University of the Peruvian Amazon in Iquitos,
where he taught, to work on a master's degree. Soon after he
arrived, he went to Kohler asking if the two faculties could join
forces to help his homeland.
"My first response was, 'I've never been to the Amazon, I know
nothing about the Amazon, and anyway, we could never get any kind of
funding for this,'" Kohler recalled.
But in 1993, the U.S. Information Agency, which operated a grant
program intended to foster links between American and foreign
universities, decided to emphasize conservation, with the Amazon a
priority. Kohler learned of the program's existence three weeks
before grant proposals were due.
"We had nothing, but we did have this student," Kohler
said. "He was going back there, and he promised to get us
letters of support.
"And then it occurred to me that I could use my ignorance to my
advantage. The Mississippi and the Amazon are the two largest river
systems in these hemispheres. While we
didn't know anything about the Amazon, the Peruvians didn't know
anything about the Mississippi. Learning about the commonalities and
differences might help us all."
Armed with that proposal, the SIUC team managed to land a three-year
grant.
"We got as many faculty involved as we could, and it worked
exactly like USIA wants these projects to work, with friendships and
collaborations developing that would keep everything going after the
grant ended," Kohler said.
Much of the early work, led by SIUC zoologist Brooks M. Burr,
centered on identifying fish species and collecting research
samples; SIUC now houses examples of roughly 70 percent of the
region's 800 species.
"The Amazon River is home to the largest diversity of
freshwater fish in the world," Kohler said. "For people
who work in fish, it doesn't get much better than that."
As they worked, the SIUC researchers talked with local fishermen and
discovered some troubling facts.
"The fishermen were fishing the river fairly intensively but
had to go farther and farther to get their catch, and the fish
coming in were getting smaller - classic signs of
over-fishing," Kohler said.
"Fish is an important part of the diet there - 60 percent of
their protein comes from fish - so that raised some concerns. We
felt it was something that we needed to address."
While sampling continued, researchers began to study the catch and
to look at fish populations and came to a conclusion.
"If they were going to continue their consumption of fish,
aquaculture would have to make up the difference," Kohler said.
And then the SIUC scientists got another lucky break. While USIA
support was coming to an end, Oregon State University had won a grant from the U.S. Agency
for International
Development to put together an aquaculture venture. Its
Collaborative Research Support Program linked American researchers
with hosts in developing countries. It had no members in South
America.
"We've been funded through that program ever since, and ours
has become one of their prime sites," Kohler said.
While much of SIUC's work in the Amazon focuses on adding to the
general store of knowledge about fish and their ways, the program
also has what Kohler described as "a huge outreach
component."
"This might be where we have been most successful," he
said. "Assisted by Sue Kohler from the University's Office of
Economic and Regional Development, we offer training, workshops,
manuals. We try to work with as many individuals as possible to turn
them into 'master aquaculturists,' somewhat like 'master gardeners'
here, so that other people can visit and learn from them.
"We've also hired workers who go out to the 'hinterwaters' far
and wide - places where there are no roads - to spread the
word."
By helping them, we help ourselves - both in the near term and the
big picture, Kohler believes.
"Several of the fish species we're working with have better
attributes for aquaculture than species we currently use in this
country," he said. "These are fish we might want to be
producing ourselves someday.
"But it's more than that. Everything is interconnected.
Sometimes you don't know what those connections are until you lose
them, but once you lose a species, it's gone for good. Things that
happen in the Amazon will affect all of us. That's something for
mankind to keep in mind."
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