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For me it started with gospel music.

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A group of African-American
women were singing

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for their children who had asthma

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and for neighbours who had cancer.

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It was a strange picture:
these women

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standing in front of these huge smokestacks

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that were emitting a poisonous gas.

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It was deceiving, because the thin line 
of white smoke looked very innocent

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but at night,
in the cover of dark,

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they'd really let it go 
and it was black and thick.

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These women did something interesting,

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interesting to me as a conservationist:

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they launched this conservation campaing 
through their church.

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They went to traditions that they knew:
gospel music, God and passion,

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and they went up against 
this refinery in Southern Lousiana

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that did not have monitors on their stacks,
and they won.

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The stack emissions
were finally regulated.

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This idea of putting religion
in conservation

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had never really occured to me before.

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I'd been working in conservation
for a number of years

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and this was a new idea.

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Six years after this occurred

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I was going down
to Southern Louisiana again

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and priests were handing out
at that time food vouchers

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and they were overseeing 
some suicide watchers

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of these fishing families
that had been wiped out

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during the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

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It really impacted their industry 
and these families were desperate.

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What they did in a time of crisis,

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was that they returned 
to their traditions, to their faith,

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and to their religious leaders.

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Now --

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conservation cannot be done
by radiocolouring and by tagging alone,

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it cannot be done
through surveys and data sets.

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If conservation is going to be successful,

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there has to be a community

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that's living in and around 
the issue, wildlife, habitat

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that cares about the wildlife 
as a sacred value.

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So, it occurred to me that I needed to go
to the religious leaders

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and begin to talk to them,

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it was when I met the many Gods
of planet Earth.

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I went to Mongolia in 2002 as part of a team
going over to work

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on a fisheries conservation project.

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This was an area on the Siberian border

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and it was inhabited by nomadic people

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who lived on the banks of the Üür river.

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The Üür river was also
home to the taimen,

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which is a fish that gets up to
180 pounds and six foot in length

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making it a huge draw for anglers


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who come over to catch 
and release fly fish.

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There were a number of pressures
being put on this fish at the time

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and we were really tempted
to launch into a full-on

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sort of community-outreach effort,

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we had fisheries biologists over there,

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who were tagging the fish 
and tracking their movements.

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But the first thing
I wanted to do with this team,

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is go and visit families 
and listen to their stories:

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what was it about this culture that --
What did they respect?

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What did they value?

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I learned a few things.

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Number one: Mongolians come from 
a long ago coupling of a wolf and a roe deer.

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Number two: in this valley, 
a long time ago,

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a wicked shaman 
had really terrorised the people,

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but later, converted to Buddhism 
as did the inhabitants of this valley.

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And number three: 
the death of one taimen


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equals the souls
of 999 people suffering.

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So that's what we'd build 
the campaign around.

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It was a circuitous route actually:

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we re-built a Buddhist monastery,

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that became a site for Buddhism
and conservation dialogue,

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we started a summer camp for kids --
a free one --

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where they would learn
about conservation issues,

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they'd learn about 
conservation policy, nature,

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and they also were learning about
water quality and fisheries.

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We went and we were able to,
excuse me --

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we were able to create these festivals

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that incorporated local traditions
and what not.

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And I want to say that, right now,

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the taimen population is stable in this area --

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that was -- we started
the project in 2004,

81
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and that's one of the only places
in the world that can make that claim.

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When I began to look at religions,
and look at cultures

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I discovered that every faith,
every culture has a message about ecology

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and nature and its importance.

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For example in the Bhagavad Gita,
which is a sacred text in Hinduism,

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they have a quote that says,

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"He is dear who practices non-violence
against all living beings."

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And then, on a more rather -- 
condemning note,


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in Revelation,
in the Christian Bible it says,

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"God destroyeth,
he who destroyeth the world."

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So, I thought these were so interesting

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and it was really adding another dimension
to the work,

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and it was also this wonderful
new experience for me

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to be working with religious leaders.

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So I started the organization
"The Tributary Fund"

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and together we go and
unearth traditions,

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or rather discover traditions,

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encourage the traditions
that put value in wildlife

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and really try to bring these traditions
either back,

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or to make them a part of community practice
and replicating or whatnot.

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And I want to give an example of one of the things
that we do, which is the next step:

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we find these traditions,
Buddhism is a good example

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of people who believe
that all sentient beings need to be protected.

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So we brought a group of Buddhist monks
over to the United States

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and this is,
we've done it now for four years,

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and they went and saw a researcher
who was working on Pallas's cats.

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Pallas's cats are cats
indigenous to Mongolia.

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In the work that they were doing:
they were [tranquilizing] the cat,

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colouring the cat
and they were harvesting eggs.

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After the monks saw this,
there was a lot of discussion and --

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obviously it had touched a nerve
and they turned around and said,

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"You know, we do understand that there is harm
being made towards these beings,

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we understand 
that this cannot be comfortable,

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the harvesting of eggs in particular."

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But the scientists said that these eggs
are our insurance policy, essentially.

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"If this animal faces extinction
we have this genetic material," and they said,

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"We think this research is OK

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because there is nothing more profane
than the idea of extinction."

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This is something that really drives us,

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these beliefs, these -- traditions,

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we're really finding them
more and more in Bhutan, Mongolia,

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we're working in the United States
with a variety of different religions.

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Science is important for understanding
conservation boundaries,

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but beliefs and story-telling is important
for local communities involvement.

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Both are essential 
in protecting the Earth.

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Luckily, 
we have many Gods on our side.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)