Chloe Phalp · Grade Seven · Canada · World Speech Day 2022
Chloe was in grade seven when she chose, for her World Speech Day talk, one of the least famous endangered animals on earth. There are thought to be around two dozen Gobi bears left, surviving in a desert that swings between 45 degrees and minus 40, and she uses them to test an idea: if humans and wildlife can share space anywhere, surely it should be somewhere this empty. What makes the talk unusual is that she refuses the ending her audience is waiting for. She tells them plainly that after a century of effort the numbers have barely moved, and then asks them to keep going anyway.
Chloe was in grade seven when she chose, for her World Speech Day talk, one of the least famous endangered animals on earth. There are thought to be around two dozen Gobi bears left, surviving in a desert that swings between 45 degrees and minus 40, and she uses them to test an idea: if humans and wildlife can share space anywhere, surely it should be somewhere this empty. What makes the talk unusual is that she refuses the ending her audience is waiting for. She tells them plainly that after a century of effort the numbers have barely moved, and then asks them to keep going anyway.
Transcript
Hi, my name is Chloe. I’m in grade seven, and this is my speech on Gobi bears.
The need to live in harmony with nature is urgent. The 2019 Global Assessment Report estimated that there are one million animal and plant species that are currently threatened with extinction. Elizabeth Kolbert’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Sixth Extinction provides strong evidence that humans are largely to blame for the most animal extinctions since a meteor wiped out dinosaurs 66 million years ago. In 2015, the UN chose halting biodiversity loss as one of its sustainable development goals.
As a whole, this problem can seem overwhelming. The only way that we can save our planet is to learn how to live in more sustainable ways with the environment around us. That is why I am here today to share one specific journey, the Mongolian people living alongside the Gobi bears. This has not been an easy journey and it still has a long way to go. I’ll discuss what these unique creatures are like, why they are endangered, and what the Mongolian people did about it, and what we can learn and apply to our actions so that we can protect the other amazing species that live around the globe.
Gobi bears look a little bit like grizzlies, but are a lot smaller and weighing roughly six times less. They are remarkable creatures that have adapted to one of Earth’s most hostile environments. They survive on an almost completely plant-based diet in a desert with temperatures that range from as high as 45 degrees Celsius, but that can drop as low as negative 40 degrees Celsius. That is a range of about 85 degrees Celsius. Gobi bears can survive the harsh winter because they have a much thicker fur undercoat than grizzlies.
If harmony is possible anywhere, it should be here. The Gobi Desert is about the size of Ontario, but only with a population of 50,000 humans. So you would think that the bears and the people living there could manage to share the space with everyone and they would be happy, right? Well, unfortunately, this is definitely not the case.
Since the 1900s, humans were breeding goats and camels, and then the animals started competing with the bears for the limited amount of food. Herders would sometimes shoot the bears they mistakenly thought would eat their animals. Luckily, the government acted quick to ban hunting in 1953, but the number of bears just kept dropping, so the government gave them a protected area of 46,000 square kilometres.
The government was determined to do something about the declining number of Gobi bears, but still struggled to find a way to do enough to help. In 1990, they started feeding, placing feeding stations for the bears near oases. And in 2005, they formed a team of international experts and local scientists to try and understand what was going on. Then the scientists used GPS trackers to follow the bears. By weighing the females in the late summer, they saw that the bears didn’t have enough fat for them to have babies in the winter. By getting to know the bears better, the team was able to make a difference by providing additional food during the fall feeding months.
The team knew that the number of bears was critically low. But DNA testing revealed that their chances could be way worse. Of the 22 adults, there were only eight females. For some species, zoo breeding programs have been helpful. But with only eight females, this would be way too risky. It can take many years, many years for zookeepers to be able to create a habitat where animals feel comfortable enough to have babies. And the Gobi bears just didn’t have that amount of time.
Just as this team was starting to make a little progress, gold mining started in the protected area. The government has so far resisted the temptation of making much needed cash by permitting these large mining companies from invading the area. But obviously some poor locals will risk prison to be able to feed their families. So they are participating in this harmful practice. If the bears see miners at an oasis, they will choose to instead walk up to 100 kilometres to the next one, risking dehydration and consuming precious calories that they need to make it through the winter.
Mongolia has continued to work hard to raise awareness by declaring 2013 as the year of saving the Gobi bears. They especially look towards the local children, almost all of whom had never actually seen the bears living near them. I asked myself, what could the local children do?
The scientists saw that the bear’s desert environment was one of the regions of Earth’s most impacted by global warming. Waters in the oases started slowly decreasing. At small oases, herd animals are trampling the small amount of water and making it undrinkable mud. By simply building concrete drinking troughs, the locals were able to make a lot more water available.
Conservationists have realized that one of the best ways to protect endangered animals is to protect their habitat. In 2017, Great Green Partners started working with a local group called Food for Mazaalai to plant the Gobi bear’s favourite food on a large scale.
It would definitely be nice to end on a happy note, but even with all of this determined effort, Gobi bear numbers have barely increased. Over the past 100 years, we have seen selfish and short-sighted human actions such as hunting and mining, but being balanced by such a concerted human reaction such as banning hunting and creating protected zones. Without this help, there may not have been any bears at all. In 2022, this journey towards harmony still requires persistent intervention by caring Mongolians and scientists to help the bears reach the numbers they will need to look after themselves.
Gobi bears are only one of the 200 mammal species identified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN, as potentially going extinct within three generations. Endangered mammals are the most visible, but other animals and plants are still disappearing before humans recognize they’re even in danger, or maybe before they’re even discovered. Accelerating global warming means the bears and the hundreds of other species will need even more aggressive support in the coming years.
With so much going on in the world, it is easy, honestly, easy to set the animals’ needs aside for just a while longer. This will definitely not work for the Gobi bears and it won’t work for the other critically endangered species. While we learn how to live more sustainably ourselves, we need to support the scientists and the local people who are trying to help our fellow species make it to the next generation.
The future of humanity, and indeed all life on earth, depends on us. Thank you.
Recorded at World Speech Day, Brain Power, Canada, 2022.
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