South America Banks on Regional Strategy to Safeguard Quarter of Earth’s Biodiversity

In an effort to safeguard almost a quarter of Earth’s biological diversity, Conservation International (CI) and South America’s five Andean nations are working together to build one of the most comprehensive and integrated networks of protected areas in the world.

Collaborating with local communities, partner NGOs and the governments of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, CI has helped develop six Conservation Corridors – five terrestrial and one coastal-marine. Conservation Corridors are patchworks of reserves, indigenous lands, multi-use and managed areas that stretch across international boundaries to link core protected areas.

“It has been known for decades that landscape connectivity is absolutely vital for the long-term survival of species and the health of ecosystems,” said Robert Bensted-Smith, the director of CI’s Center for Biodiversity Conservation – Andes. “These five countries have embraced the concept wholeheartedly. Nowhere else on Earth are nations this rich in biodiversity taking such a comprehensive and integrated approach to managing their protected areas.”

Since launching the Conservation Corridor concept in 2000, CI has helped develop about 1-million km² (approx. 404,370 square miles) of terrestrial conservation corridors in the Andes. Covering an area just under the size of South Africa, the corridors link hundreds of national parks and private reserves. From snow-covered Andean peaks, to the dense jungles of Colombia’s Chocó, the corridors contain some of the most varied and beautiful terrain in the hemisphere. They are dynamic, evolving landscapes that are home to hundreds of communities and ethnic groups that actively participate in conservation activities.

These five Andean nations are home to 24 percent of the Earth’s total biodiversity and all are among the 17 most “megadiverse” countries on the planet. But the region’s biological wealth is increasingly under threat. Population has almost quadrupled in the last 50 years to an estimated 110 million today. Deforestation, extraction activities, natural resource depletion and unbridled agricultural are also taking their toll. According to The World Conservation Union (IUCN) 2000 Red List, 266 terrestrial vertebrates in the Andes are threatened.

CI’s flagship effort is the Vilcabamba-Amboró Conservation Corridor (approx. 297,962 km²), which stretches from the Vilcabamba Mountain Range in northern Peru to Amboró National Park in Bolivia. Linking 16 protected areas and their buffer zones, the corridor safeguards part of the Tropical Andes Hotspot.

“The Tropical Andes Hotspot is the richest and most diverse of all that Hotspots on the planet – it is simply unmatched,” says CI President Russell Mittermeier. “In just over a million square kilometers it holds 15 to 17 percent of the world’s entire plant life; it’s an awe-inspiring place that has been aptly described as the epicenter of global biodiversity.”

Ultimately, the Vilcabamba-Amboró Conservation Corridor will be linked with others to form a single contiguous backbone of managed areas following the Andes mountain range in a sweeping arc up through Ecuador and across Colombia and Venezuela. Parallel efforts will safeguard Pacific marine reserves, the forests of Venezuela and the Chocó-Darién Western Ecuador Hotspot, which runs south from the Panama Canal through Colombia, Ecuador and into northern Peru.

“The reason Conservation Corridors are working is that we have involved governments, local communities, indigenous leaders, the private sector and stakeholders at every level,” explained CI Vice President of the Andes Regional Program Roberto Roca. “We are adamant about creating a system of protected areas that focuses on biodiversity conservation but doesn’t lose sight of community participation, local traditions and historical land rights.”

CI has gone to great lengths to consolidate the corridors. Early this year, CI worked with indigenous communities and the Peruvian government to create the Otishi National Park and the Ashaninka and Machiguenga Community Reserves inside the Vilcabamba-Amboró Conservation Corridor. And in June, CI reached an important agreement with the general secretariat of the Andean Community trading bloc to implement that organization’s regional biodiversity conservation strategy.

Also for the first time, CI is taking the corridor approach to the seas. In 2002 it inaugurated the Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascape Corridor, which includes the world-renowned Galapagos Islands, where Charles Darwin visited during his pioneering voyage on the HMS Beagle in 1831. The corridor sweeps northward all the way to the Cocos Islands in Costa Rica. Built around island reserves and no-take zones, the strategy incorporates lessons learned from decades of terrestrial experience to create the world’s first Marine Conservation Corridor.