The area where the project is being developed is home to endemic species of this country, such as the yellow-tailed woolly monkey and the yellow-browed toucanet, animals in critical danger of extinction. This area is known as the Peruvian yungas, one of the most important ecoregions in the world for its exceptional levels of biodiversity, expressed in a high richness of species and animal records not found anywhere else in the world.
Conexión Jaguar, the sustainability program that ISA, its affiliates, and technical allies South Pole and Panthera are developing to contribute to biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and the connectivity of the jaguar’s natural habitats in Latin America, began to develop its first project outside Colombia. This is a REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) type project, called “Concesión para la Conservación del Alto Huayabamba (CCAH)”, located in the department of San Martin, Peru and managed by the Asociación Amazónicos por la Amazonia (AMPA). It conserves nearly 144.000 hectares and benefits the families of the area through community participation and the implementation of actions that help improve their living conditions.
The importance of this project lies in the conservation of the “montane forests”, known as Peruvian yungas[1], which are part of the 15 ecoregions of Peru, ensuring the protection of their biodiversity, forests, and water, represented by the source of the Huayabamba River, which is of vital importance for the supply of the community of San Martin. “Specifically in the area where the project is being developed, the presence of 15 endemic species of fauna has been confirmed, including eight birds, four amphibians, one reptile and two mammals. As for mammals, the yellow-tailed woolly monkey (Oreonax flavicauda) and the Peruvian night monkey (Aotus miconax), species catalogued as critically endangered (CR) and vulnerable (VU), respectively, according to the IUCN. There are also other species in a vulnerable state at the national level, such as the spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus), the pacarana (Dinomys branickii) and the northern pudu (Pudu mephistophiles). In addition, this region constitutes a fundamental part of two corridors for the conservation of Peru’s fauna,” explains Juan Fernando Patiño Díez, technical leader of the Conexión Jaguar Program.
In the initial stage of the project, a local consultation led by South Pole was held to raise community awareness on three key issues: the importance of the project for biodiversity protection and climate change mitigation through the conservation of carbon stored in the forests; socialization of the project’s validation and verification process with the international standards Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) for the certification of emissions reductions and the associated social and environmental co-benefits, respectively.
The community also learned about the process of installing camera traps that will allow the study and monitoring of the biodiversity present in the area. During this exercise, tracks of four mammal species were recorded: spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus), puma (Puma concolor), ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) and collared peccary (Pecari tajacu). “The field recording of traces gives us very promising signals for the results of the biodiversity inventory. Finding tracks, feces and rips in the trees indicate that these animals are present in the territory and with the installation of camera traps, we increase the probability of recording cryptic animals that are difficult to observe directly in the field,” says Ricardo Ortiz, Panthera researcher.
By the year 2030, the Program has set a goal of conserving 400 thousand hectares in Latin America, through 20 prioritized projects and the reduction of 9 million tons of CO2. With this objective, Conexión Jaguar opens, once a year, a call for forestry projects in Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Chile, and Bolivia. This year the second edition will be open until October 21. Registration and more information at: conexionjaguar.org [1] The yungas of the eastern slopes of the Peruvian Andes have an important ecological value, hosting a high biodiversity with 39 of the 65 endemic species of the country, that is, about 60%.
