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What's being done to protect the hotspot

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What's being done to protect the hotspot

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1. Development of environmental protection organizations
2. Government Investment into preserving hotspot

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CEPF's investment in the Tropical Andes Biodiversity Hotspot is guided by the following strategic directions as outlined in the ecosystem profile.

1. Improve protection and management of 36 priority Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) to create and maintain local support for conservation and to mitigate key threats.

1.1 Support preparation and implementation of participatory management plans that promote stakeholder collaboration in managing protected KBAs.

1.2 Facilitate the establishment and/or expansion of indigenous, private, and subnational reserves and multi-stakeholder governance frameworks for conserving unprotected and partially protected KBAs.

1.3 Strengthen land tenure, management, and governance of indigenous and Afro-descent territories.

1.4 Catalyze conservation incentives schemes for biodiversity conservation for local communities.

2. Mainstream biodiversity conservation into public policies and development plans in seven corridors to support sustainable development, with a focus on sub-national governments.

2.1 Support land-use planning and multi-stakeholder governance frameworks that create shared visions for integrating biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services into the corridor-level development.

2.2 Integrate biodiversity objectives into development policies, programs, and projects that impact resource use, including climate change, agricultural development, and water resources.

2.3 Promote traditional and innovative financial mechanisms for conservation, including payments for ecosystem services, leveraging of rural and microcredit, mainstreaming biodiversity into climate change programs, and compensation mechanisms to mobilize new conservation finance.

3. Promote local stakeholder engagement and the integration of social and environmental safeguards into infrastructure, mining and agriculture projects to mitigate potential threats to the KBAs in the seven priority corridors.

3.1 Build local capacity and facilitate public consultation and alliance building in the assessment, avoidance, mitigation, and monitoring of environmental impacts of large development projects that pose a direct or indirect risk to the KBAs.

3.2 Encourage constructive approaches to promote environmental and social sustainability of infrastructure, mining, and agriculture projects through partnerships between civil society groups, the private sector, and international investors.

3.3 Integrate biodiversity objectives into development policies, programs, and projects related to mining, infrastructure, and agriculture.

4. Promote and scale up opportunities to foster private sector approaches for biodiversity conservation to benefit priority KBAs in the seven corridors.

4.1 Promote the adoption and scaling up of conservation best practices in those enterprises compatible with conservation to promote connectivity and ecosystem services in the corridors.

4.2 Encourage private sector partners and their associations to integrate conservation their business practices and implement corporate social responsibility policies and voluntary commitments.

4.3 Leverage of private-sector financing schemes, such as carbon projects and green bonds that benefit the conservation outcomes.

5. Safeguard globally threatened species.

5.1 Prepare, help implement, and mainstream conservation action plans for the priority Critically Endangered and Endangered species and their taxonomic groups.

5.2 Update KBA analysis for mainstreaming to incorporate new Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE) sites and Red Listing of reptiles, freshwater species and plants, based on addressing several high-priority information gaps.

6. Strengthen civil society capacity, stakeholder alliances and communications to achieve CEPF conservation outcomes, focusing on indigenous, Afro-descendent and mestizo groups.

6.1 Strengthen the administrative, financial and project management, and fundraising capacity of civil society organizations and indigenous and Afro-descendent authorities to promote biodiversity conservation in their territories.

6.2 Enhance stakeholder cooperation, alliance building and sharing of lessons learned to achieve CEPF's conservation outcomes, including efforts to foster hotspot-wide information sharing.

6.3 Strengthen capacity in communications of CEPF partners to build public awareness of the importance of the conservation outcomes.

6.4 Pilot and scale up promising approaches for the long-term financing of local and national civil society organizations and their conservation missions.

7. Provide strategic leadership and effective coordination of CEPF investment through a regional implementation team.

7.1 Operationalize and coordinate CEPF's grant-making processes and procedures to ensure effective implementation of the investment strategy throughout the hotspot.

7.2 Build a broad constituency of civil society groups working across institutional and political boundaries towards achieving the shared conservation goals described in the ecosystem profile.

7.3 Engage governments and the private sector to mainstream biodiversity into policies and business practices.

7.4 Monitor the status of biogeographic and sectoral priorities in relation to the long-term sustainability of conservation in the hotspot.

7.5 Implement a system for communication and disseminating information on conservation of biodiversity in the hotspot.

Read more about CEPF's strategy in the hotspot in chapter 12 of our ecosystem profile (PDF - 7.2 MB), also available in (PDF - 6.4 MB).

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CEPF's efforts to protect biodiversity in the Tropical Andes Hotspot are guided by seven investment strategies.

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The Tropical Andes has the most species richness and endemism of any of the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots.

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Social-Economic Conditions of the Tropical Andes & Human Impacts

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Social-Economic Conditions of the Tropical Andes & Human Impacts

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1. Countries located on hotspot are in transitional phase of development
2. Large and growing population
3. Increasing Urban development
4. Increasing Infrastructure and transportation(Roads)
5. Hunting and Illegal Trade
6. Overexertion of species

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Human communities, including the great empire of the Incas, have lived in the Tropical Andes for thousands of years. Because the Inter-Andean valleys are the most hospitable to people, they are also the most degraded parts of the hotspot, with less than 10 percent of their original habitat remaining.

At the other end of the spectrum, some of the least degraded parts of the hotspot include isolated regions in Venezuela and Colombia, and the eastern slope of the Andes in Bolivia, Peru and parts of Ecuador. In Peru and Bolivia particularly, time still exists to establish reserves in areas of intact primary forests.

However, the effects of a large and growing population continue to threaten biodiversity throughout the Tropical Andes. Several cities with millions of inhabitants, including Santa Fe de Bogotá, Colombia; and Quito, Ecuador, are located within the hotspot and continue to expand as their populations grow.

Threats to the hotspot include:

Population pressure and migration

Population pressure and migration are deforestation drivers caused by the increasing need for new and greater areas for agricultural production and an increasing demand for food, water and energy by large populations in distant urban centers as well as in Amazonian communities.

Large migrations to towns and cities are a result of shifting economic trends-employment and education opportunities, and housing and urban development-all leading to higher standards of living. Human concentrations in urban areas and associated infrastructure, while occupying smaller percentages of land area than dispersed rural populations, have much wider impacts on the environment as they require increasing amounts of water, energy and natural resources from surrounding landscapes.

Transportation infrastructure

At the national level, some hotspot countries have recently made significant investments in road and river infrastructure in the region-particularly Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru-including the paving and widening of existing roads or the creation of new ones.

Road improvement in the humid montane forests on the eastern slopes of these three countries are expected to experience the most severe impacts on species conservation due to the high levels of endemism associated with cloud forests in this region that previously had few points of human entry. If environmental conditions are severely altered by road projects, extinction of some species may occur, especially those with restricted populations.

Dams for hydroelectric production and irrigation

Due to rising energy demands and abundant untapped potential, the number of hydropower projects is rapidly increasing in the hotspot. This is especially true in the Andean-Amazonian countries, where regional governments are prioritizing new hydroelectric dams to satisfy energy needs. Installation of new hydroelectric projects requires new roads and flooding, both of which lead to deforestation.

Mining

Mining for copper, gold, silver and other minerals affects large areas of the hotspot. This extractive activity occurs both legally and illegally and has a huge impact on habitat loss, degradation and contamination of soils and water courses.

Overexploitation of species

In many remote rural areas of the Tropical Andes Hotspot families still depend on firewood for cooking fuel, and its collection and use can have strong negative impacts on both the local environment due to overharvest of natural forests as well as human health due to smoke and carbon monoxide production, especially among women and children.

Hunting and illegal trade

The growth of human populations has increased demand for some species and increased market prices for commercial species. Today, hunting for food is usually localized and not widespread in the hotspot, while hunting for illegal trade is much more common.

Read more about these and other threats in our ecosystem profile (PDF - 7.2 MB), also available in (PDF - 6.4 MB).

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The effects of a large and growing population threaten biodiversity throughout the Tropical Andes Hotspot.

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1. The Tropical Andes is home to the largest gorge in the world, Canon Del Coca
2. It is also home to the largest navigable lake, Lake Titicaca
3. It houses over 1,700 bird species
4. Over 600 reptiles make their home in the Tropical Andes.
5. Glacial recession is happening up in the Andes mountains.

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Endemic Animal Species - Yunganastes bisignatus

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Endemic Animal Species - Yunganastes bisignatus

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Established in 1964, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has evolved to become the world's most comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of animal, fungi and plant species.

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Queen of the Andes videos, photos and facts - Puya raimondii | Arkive

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Learn more about the Queen of the Andes - with amazing Queen of the Andes videos, photos and facts on Arkive