Conservation International Lands Giant Bolivian Parks Deal
10/1/99
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Title: Conservation International Lands Giant Bolivian Parks Deal
Source: Environment News Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: October 1, 1999
WASHINGTON, DC, October 1, 1999 (ENS) - Conservation International
has brokered a land deal between a logging company and the government
of Bolivia that will protect 700,000 acres of rainforest in Bolivia's
Tropical Andes, one of the most biologically rich regions in the
world.
The Washington, DC conservation organization has negotiated the
protection of a 111,200-acre privately owned logging concession and
convinced Bolivia's government to convert an adjacent 588,802 acres
of multiple-use park land into permanent protection within the Madidi
National Park.
The combined land area is roughly the size of the state of Rhode
Island. It forms a conservation corridor that links protected areas
of the national park that were previously divided by the concession
and the multiple-use zone.
Conservation corridors allow wildlife to migrate freely and are
important in maintaining the biological integrity of an ecosystem.
Conservatioon International is working to link Madidi to a larger
corridor that will stretch from Bolivia to Venezuela.
The timber concession was originally granted in 1992 to Fatima, Ltd.
in the multiple-use zone of the park. Earlier this year, just as
timber extraction was about to begin, Bolivia's National Park Service
(SERNAP) approached Conservation International to help prevent the
logging.
Conservation International negotiated with the company, which agreed
to turn over the concession to the park in exchange for $100,000 to
cover operations costs.
The arrangement was made possible by a new fund created by
Conservation International to respond to urgent threats to globally
valuable ecosystems. "The Tropical Wilderness Protection Fund allows
us to respond immediately and decisively when threats erupt in the
most critical biodiversity strongholds," said Peter Seligmann, CEO
and chairman of Conservation International. "This success sends the
important message that conservation can compete with threats such as
logging and other development."
The fund was first used in 1998 to protect nearly four million acres
of Suriname's pristine wilderness that was about to be logged.
The Bolivian government created Madidi National Park in 1995 after
Conservation International's Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) surveyed
the previously undocumented region to determine its ecological
importance. The analysis revealed a high level of diversity in plants
and animals, including more than 400 bird species, and large
populations of tapirs and spider monkeys.
The park covers nearly 4.46 million acres and was originally
separated into two sections by a multiple-use zone. The multiple-use
zone will remain, but the conservation corridor reduces its size by
over a half a million acres. Madidi National Park shares its
boundaries with three other Bolivian protected areas and two
protected areas along the Peruvian border.
While the conversion of the concession ends all legal logging in
Madidi National Park, threats to the park still include illegal
logging, oil extraction, mining, and colonization.