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Project Justification

 

Other Birds Conservation in Latin America areas:

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   High rates of habitat destruction in the Neotropics (Skole and Tucker 1993) and the consequent large numbers of birds at risk leave no doubt that conservation strategies to reduce this risk should be prioritized. We should, however, pre-empt two potential criticisms of the project from the outset. These are: How does the project differ from previous conservation priority-setting exercises in the continent? and Does such priority-setting risk diverting attention and funding away from local priorities?

   There are a number of other recent priority-setting studies for Latin America. ICBP (1992)and Stattersfield et al. (1997) defined ‘Endemic Bird Areas’ (EBAs) of importance for the conservation of species with ‘restricted-ranges’ of less than 50,000 sq. km. Wege and Long (1995) mapped point localities where threatened birds occur as Key Areas for Threatened Birds in the Neotropics. Gaston and Blackburn (1996) and Collar et al. (1997) mapped concentrations of threatened birds on a 1-degree square grid. Fjeldså and Rahbek (1997,1998) systematically prioritized 1-degree grid squares for the conservation of all species within particular families. Biodiversity Support Program et al. (1995) prioritized ecoregions for conservation based on a qualitative assessment. Finally, there are numerous national scale analyses of priority areas for conservation: that carried out for Mexico by CONABIO, for example, can be found at: http://www.conabio.gob.mx/ .

   Three obvious responses justify why there is a need for the current project over and above these studies. First, our coverage of species, especially those at risk (for the precise definition of "at risk", see section 2.1) is far broader than has been attempted (~1,300 total): ICBP (1992) and Stattersfield et al. (1997) only consider species with tiny ranges, irrespctive of endangerment (822 total); Wege and Long (1995), Gaston and Blackburn (1996) and Collar et al. (1997) only consider globally threatened species (327 total); Fjeldså and Rahbek (1997, 1998) only consider certain families (respectively, 1,114 and 913 total); and by definition, national level studies consider only their country’s territory as opposed to conservation priorities at a continental level.

   Second, our project is broader in technique—of these seven other international studies, only those of Fjeldså and Rahbek (1997, 1998) mapped priority-setting algorithms beyond numbers of species alone. Further, the results of these two studies, which considered all species within particular families, may well not apply to the urgent question of prioritizing conservation areas for species at risk. This is because in general hotspots for the diversity of all species do not coincide with those for rare species (Prendergast et al. 1993), especially for fine resolutions of study (Curnutt et al. 1994).

   Third, our project is immediate in application: TNC has a grassroots conservation network in place through Latin American partner organizations (e.g., Iremonger and Sayre 1994) which should enable direct action to follow the project’s recommendations (TNC 1997). Having made these distinctions, however, we should stress that they in no way downgrade the recommendations of these other enormously important studies. We fully intend to cross-reference our work to them at all times and (hopefully) provide mutual corrobation.

   The concern that broad scale priorities may distract attention from local areas of importance has been explicitly stated by Dunn et al. (1997) in response to Dobson et al.’s (1997) study of hotspots for Endangered Species in the USA. This concern is best answered by Vane-Wright (1996) "...priorities are relative, not absolute. Doing more of one thing, or doing it with greater urgency, should not mean doing nothing about everything else — only less, or later." In addition, the focus of our project on ecoregional as well as national and continental scales should ensure that local and regional priorities are addressed as well as global ones (TNC 1997).