what you can do . . .
Research and conservation in southeast Asia is far more complex, and at the same time far more simple, than can be readily appreciated by someone unfamiliar with the region. The simple solution is to spend your time and money in southeast Asia on activities that promote research and conservation. The complexity is that this can be very difficult to achieve, even when you are standing right there among tarsiers, and far, far more difficult the further away you are from the region.
Simple solutions: be an ecotourist. There are currently two sites in the world that practice tarsier-based ecotourism, Bohol (Philippines) and Tangkoko (North Sulawesi, Indonesia). Learn all you can about “best practices” for tarsiers and conservation in one or both of these areas, then go there and patronize the businesses that are doing the best job.
Here’s an example of a guided ecotour to Sulawesi that has an excellent reputation. The primary focus of this project is conservation of the maleo (a chicken-sized bird that lays gargantuan eggs in sands that receive natural heat, either from the sun or from geothermal activity, where they incubate without further investment from the parents). There are currently no analogous ecotours for tarsiers, but if you are interested in such a tour, contact us and, if there is enough interest, we can try to organize or facilitate one.
Complex solutions: donate your time or money from afar. There are many organizations that conduct research and conservation in the region, though few of them address tarsiers explicitly. Be aware that the effectiveness, and even the motives, of these organizations varies widely, and your time and money could be used or abused in ways that might surprise and disappoint you. Do your homework!
There are plenty of examples of conservation gone wrong (there are plenty of examples of conservation gone right, too, of course). One particularly well-documented example of the difficulties encountered in conservation in Sulawesi can be found here, one anthropologist’s account of how the Sama (more commonly known as Bajau or Sea Gypsies), a local society with a subsistence economy, were allegedly not served well by conservation activities in the Togian Islands in the 1990’s. Read how author Celia Lowe organizes her analysis into three strata--transnational organizations/persons, national organizations/persons, local people--and the tensions that occur among these strata that contribute to unsatisfactory results. (You might notice a certain tarsier biologist has a role in Chapter 1 . . . ).
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