Alumni, faculty, staff and students keep the environment and sustainability close to their hearts. Read how they are striving to make our planet a better place to live. A juvenile nile monitor lizard (Varanus niloticus) nips at Jackson’s hand during the 2010 Zanaga expedition. Photos by Kate Jackson Jackson paddles a pirogue, a dugout canoe, to check her nets in the Likouala aux herbes river in northern republic of Congo in 2008. The Jackson was the first person in the world to photograph Günther’s dead snake in the pirogue is a water cobra (Naja annulata). Black Snake (Bothrolycus ater), an extremely rare African snake. “I went to the Congo to try and protect world’s largest diversified mining compa- “our study might force the mining the amphibians and reptiles from the min- nies, plans to develop the Massif du Chail- companies to take mitigating measures ing,” she said. lu region in order to harvest the mineral like buying up an area of habitat and cre- The Wildlife Conservation Society in- deposits buried within the reddened soil. ating a national park along the border be- vited Jackson back to the Congo to explore “We documented the myriad species tween the Congo and Gabon. the Massif du Chaillu region, which thriving in this virgin wilderness, not as a “They try to get national parks on bor- stretches from western Congo along the means to stop all development, but to in- ders so if one country has a civil war, the Gabon border, because large swaths of stead bargain for a land swap,” Jackson elephants can run to the other side,” Jack- this land are scheduled to be mined. said. son said jokingly. “It was a chance to hopefully do some once iron ore, diamonds or other natu- Jackson’s research has proved the good by documenting the reptiles that live ral resources are discovered, bulldozing Congo is full of rare and endangered spe- in the region,” she said. “The plan is to untouched wilderness becomes inevitable, cies. one such species living in the mine this area, so I needed to show what but by revealing the varied ecosystem, the swamps scheduled to be deforested is species live there” to convince the mining WCS hopes to force ZIoC and xstrata to Günther’s Black Snake(Bothrolycus ater), companies that certain areas needed to be preserve part of it. an obscure African snake unique in that it protected. If the mining companies want develop- has the presence of unusual openings on ment loans from the World Bank Group, the side of the face, just in front of the M o N S T E R - S I Z E D B u l l D o Z E R S the companies will take Jackson’s biodi- eyes. The snake is so rare that it had never driven remotely by satellite GPS systems versity study seriously. The WBG is the been photographed alive, until Jackson will soon be carving giant roads through largest biodiversity funder in the world. captured the 23-inch-long serpent on her about 1,850 square miles of Congolese Between 1988 and 2009, the bank’s biodi- Canon camera. jungle where Jackson conducted much of versity investment portfolio exceeded $6.3 “I was very excited, of course, once I her field work. billion, and the WBG has worked directly realized what the snake had to be,” she The multinational Zanaga Iron ore with 122 developing countries to protect said. Company, along withxstrata, one of the and manage wildlife. Continued on page 20 July 2012 19
Whitman Magazine July 2012
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