Wildlife Research & Monitoring

wildlife research &

monitoring PROGRAM

Peruvian lowland Amazon rainforest and Andean cloud forest and lakes are megadiverse ecosystems. They are very productive and generate a plethora of benefits for millions of people, including forest products like Brazil nuts, medicinal plants, and bushmeat; as well as clean air and water; carbon storage and climate stability; and unique high-value nature-based ecotourism opportunities.

The challenge of today is managing and conserving these ecosystems in such a way that we maximise the private and social benefits that accrue to people, bringing locals out of poverty in the process, while maintaining balanced, healthy, and well-functioning ecosystems.

This is best achieved with evidence-based decision-making systems that feed on an understanding of the changing state of nature and the benefits and impacts of human activities in ecosystems such as the Amazon rainforest. This requires quality longitudinal and cross-sectional data of multiple species and socio-economic indicators and abiotic environmental variables over large geographical areas and long periods of time.

The nuts-and-bolts of ecosystems are the species, community assemblages, and ultimately the food webs that they contain. Themes and terms such as species diversity, population density and abundance, trophic levels, age structures of populations, and impact assessment are commonly the subject of intense research in an effort to understand how ecosystems work. How these respond to natural and human-mediated changes in the environment is also key for modelling the future states of wild nature and whether these states are desirable or not.

Aims and Objectives

To map the species diversity of key wildlife groups across the Peruvian Amazon landscape in the Madre de Dios, Cusco and Puno regions, particularly in relation to habitat and land-use classes, and to understand how many species one would expect at a particular site and what the diversity shortfall may be, if any;

To map the population density of species and guilds (groups of species with a similar diet) across the landscape, how this density changes on a yearly and decadal level within and between sites, and what factors may explain the changes observed;

To use our density data alongside those of collaborating organisations and published studies to estimate the population size of keystone species in the landscape regions of interest;

To determine the home-range size and shape of raptor, primate, caiman, and large amphibian species at selected sites across the Peruvian Amazon;

To assess the effectiveness of private and state-managed protected areas with respect to multiple conservation parameters, including wildlife and ecosystem services variables;

To assess the conservation value of Peruvian forests used for Brazil nut extraction, tropical timber extraction, bushmeat hunting, ecotourism, and agroforestry, as compared with intact forests with no human activities, such as protected areas;

To provide national and local government, native communities, ecolodge managers, private landowners, and the general public with information useful for the long-term conservation of wildlife and ecosystem services in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest.