[Coral-List] Economic valuation and market based conservation.

Rudy Bonn rudy_bonn at yahoo.com
Thu Aug 11 13:26:06 EDT 2011


Thanks for the history lesson Gene, I really enjoyed your post and your optimisim concerning "when the corals bounce back," I certainly hope they do.  I can also tell folks that because of the demise of the corals many divers and others come down here and promise never to return because the reefs seem so sick and lacking of live cover.  As a matter of fact, I just returned from a snorkekling trip to to reef at Eastern Dry Rocks and I was amazed at the amount of palythoa covering the reef-- very little live coral cover.  It is disappointing and to think that matters are going to get worse before they get better, if they ever do.  Natural recovery is a long process so we can help the reef tract through restoration techniques, the same thing with the diadema but that too involves long spatial and temporal scales.
We teach conservation through education and outreach especially to the younger generation because these are the ones who going to inherit these challenges.  I do hope the corals eventually recover, it is my goal in life, we all live on a beautiful planet that should  be considered a gift and not something to continuously exploit.  Pretty soon there is going to be 7 billion of us on this planet and we are the species most responsible for all of its problems-- how are we going to fare in the future?  Good question!

Rudy S Bonn
Director of Marine Projects
Reef Relief
631 Greene Street
Key West, FL 33040
305-294-3100


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