BirdLife launched a groundbreaking guide Nov. 12 to help governments and civil society prevent the extinction of Asia’s birds, one in eight of which is under threat. Her Imperial Highness Princess Takamado of Japan unveiled the blueprint, Saving Asia’s Threatened Birds, at a special international event attended by more than 100 people in Tokyo.

BirdLife International produced the guide with financial support from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) to help avoid the extinction of 324 threatened bird species, 12% of Asia’s total. Already 41 Asian bird species teeter on the brink of extinction. Of these, 11 may already be extinct. An important finding is that more than 100 sites critically important for globally threatened birds remain unprotected.

"Now, as environmental issues grow into global concerns, it is imperative that we act with intellectual integrity and I am pleased to be a part of the BirdLife Partnership in its efforts to guide the world in this direction," said HIH Princess Takamado, an honorary patron of BirdLife International’s Rare Bird Club and a keen birdwatcher.

"It is my sincere hope that the publication of this book and the launching of this strategy will give an added impetus to the conservation efforts to maintain the rich biodiversity that is our Asia."

A CEPF delegation of Conservation International, the Global Environment Facility and the World Bank participated in the Tokyo launch as part of an overall mission to Japan, which included a CEPF informational seminar for Japanese civil society organizations and meetings with a variety of government and civil society representatives. The Japanese government, which also participated in the launch, is a partner in the CEPF initiative as well.

"This guide launched today clearly articulates a major suite of key actions required to conserve the rarest bird species and most threatened avian habitats in Asia," CEPF Executive Director Jorgen Thomsen told the audience, which included ambassadors and embassy and other government representatives from across Asia.

Forest loss and degradation due to commercial logging, clear felling for paper production and plantation establishment are the biggest threats to Asia’s birds. Indonesia is home to more globally threatened species than any other Asian country, followed by Mainland China, India and the Philippines.

All organizations receiving support from CEPF for conservation projects in Asia will soon receive a complementary copy of the new guide.

• View the speeches and full press release.
• Learn more in the special BirdLife Web section on the new guide.

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo signed a presidential proclamation in October expanding the Peñablanca Protected Landscape and Seascape (PPLS) from 4,136 hectares to 118,108 hectares.

The expansion of the PPLS, which lies adjacent to the Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park, brings a total of 476,558 ha of forest under conservation management.

"This area will be the largest block of forest under conservation management in the Philippines and provide habitat for most the threatened endemics in Luzon, including the critically endangered Philippine eagle," said Susie Ellis, vice president for Conservation International’s (CI) Indonesia and Philippines programs.

"This landscape is a critical addition to the Sierra Madre Biodiversity Corridor we are working to create and manage with our partners."

The CI Philippines Program worked with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to provide a biological justification for expanding the protected area and develop an initial protected area plan, with CEPF support funding biological surveys and other key activities in the area.

Small-scale illegal logging, wildlife hunting and legal but poorly managed community-based forestry projects were seriously degrading the area's globally significant biodiversity.

Not seen for five years, a pair of Philippines Eagle was spotted in late spring during a survey along the northern boundary of PPLS and the Cagayan block of the corridor. The biological surveys also resulted in the discovery of new species of frog and gekko. Such sightings made a significant contribution to the case for expansion.

The forest cover in the Sierra Madre Corridor is the most extensive in the Philippines—about 1.4 million hectares, accounting for 25 percent of the country’s forest resources, including more than 40 percent of the remaining old growth forests. The corridor is also home to 42 percent of the total threatened species of Philippine flora.

In related news, the Cagayan provincial government recently declared the Cagayan forest block of the corridor as protected seascape and landscape and then allocated P1.8M ($33,000) for this most northernmost block of the corridor. The governor hopes this allocation will attract more conservation investment into the area such as that from CEPF.

“Raising awareness with local government officials about the value of the ecosystem services provided by Penablanca's forests to the agricultural sector of the Cagayan Valley Region brought support from key local officials and the communities that benefit from watershed protection,” Ellis said.

“This success demonstrates the value of the corridor concept in reconciling conservation and development priorities at the regional scale, as well as the importance of combining sound science and economics to achieve results on the ground.”

Illegal logging and hunting in Costa Rica’s Corcovado and Piedras Blanca national parks and the unprotected corridor between them has posed a serious threat, with experts predicting decimation of the forests. Logging, unsustainable agricultural activities and development threaten most of the peninsula.

The Corcovado Foundation, a local non-profit organization, aims to reverse the trend and establish a sustainable future for the area’s richly diverse wildlife.

“We are already having an impact but there’s a lot more to do. Incredible treasures could be lost,” said Alejandra Monge, executive director of the Foundation. “Corcovado’s beauty is inspiring. We must ensure that it’s protected.”

Now with support from CEPF, the Foundation is working in partnership with the government ministries of environment and security to enable patrols of the national parks to reduce the incidence of illegal hunting, logging and fishing.

Illegal loggers in Peru’s Alto Purus Reserved Zone will find their activities much harder with the arrival of three new control posts.

Asociación para la Conservacion del Patrimonio de Cutivireni (ACPC), a Peruvian nongovernmental organization, is establishing the control posts alongside the Reserved Zone as part of a debt-for-nature swap between the U.S. and the Peruvian governments to guarantee long-term funding for forested protected areas in Peru.

"The forest control posts represent an important step towards achieving the protection of the forest resources and biodiversity richness of the zone,” ACPC Director Ivan Brehaut says. “The pursuit of sustainable forest management together with the control of illegal activities is indispensable for the development of the Amazon region.”

As part of the debt-for-nature swap, CEPF is supporting a two-year WWF project to improve protection of Manu National Park, Amarakaeri Communal Reserve and Alto Purus Reserved Zone. All three areas are inside the Vilcabamba-Amboró biodiversity conservation corridor—CEPF’s geographic focus in the Tropical Andes hotspot.

In total, the funding is expected to leverage $3.5 million in local currency over the next 12 years for Peruvian organizations such as ACPC to carry out activities related to effective management of these protected areas, providing the long-term support needed to ensure sustainability.

The ACPC project—one of the first to be supported by WWF with the new funds—includes establishing two control posts along the Inuya and Sepahua rivers and a mobile control post that will patrol the rivers and serve as a rapid response unit. Trained guards and police will staff each of the posts.

“The largest threat to the Alto Purus Reserved Zone stems from the search for the highly valuable broad or big leaf mahogany, Swietenia macrophylla, an activity that drives illegal loggers deeper and deeper into the area,” says Linda Norgrove of WWF Peru. “The advance of the cutting frontier of illegal logging goes hand in hand with environmental degradation and negative social impacts.

“While mahogany populations are threatened with commercial extinction, local communities are being exploited and the health implications for indigenous communities living in voluntary isolation are often severe. The Reserved Zone is presently poorly equipped with only one office, located in the town of Puerto Esperanza, a one to two day boat trip from the boundary of the area.”

The locations of these new control posts on the key river junctions outside the Reserved Zone means that post staff will be able to control two of the primary access routes for illegal loggers as well as the transport routes for their illegally harvested timber. Additionally, they will enable monitoring of the logging activities of forest concessions and the impact on indigenous communities located within the zone.

The Alto Purus Reserved Zone is an area of high biodiversity in the Peruvian Amazon covering some 2.7 million hectares. Peru is home to more species of bird and butterflies than any other country. Scientists are continually finding plant species with significant medicinal properties.

However, it has been estimated that approximately 12.5 percent of the original Amazonian forest cover found in southeastern Peru, or 500,000 square km, has been deforested or burned.

Logging companies along with miners in search of gold and other valuable metals and agricultural occupation are the main culprits. Although the destruction rates have decreased lately, it still continues at a worrying pace.

The wood the loggers send down the river goes into the hands of a broker who in turn sells it to industrial timber companies who are able to sell the logs on the international market.

Conservationists estimate that for a single foot of mahogany extracted from the Amazon, a logger may get paid just $1.2. That same timber on the international market can reap nearly 1,000 times that amount. With such a lucrative market place, it’s not hard to see why illegal logging is posing such a huge threat.

Key stakeholders met for the first time in October to discuss the need for a range-wide conservation strategy to help save the endangered Yunnan snub-nosed monkey. The workshop was held in the Baimaxueshan National Nature Reserve in Zongdian (Shangri-La County) of China’s Yunnan Province.

The Yunnan snub-nosed monkey, which lives in alpine forest at an elevation of 3,000 to 4,700 meters, is probably the highest-living primate species in the world. Experts estimate only 1,500–2,000 individuals remain in the wild in the northwest Yunnan Province and southern corner of Tibet Autonomous Region of the Mountains of Southwest China hotspot.

While listed as a Class I protected species under China’s wildlife protection law and banned from international commercial trade under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey faces a range of current threats and the persistent effects of past threats, including habitat loss and poaching. Current distribution is fragmented in 15-18 populations, leaving the species particularly vulnerable to environmental change and ecological disturbance.

The extremes of the monkey’s habitat—high elevation, steep terrain, dense vegetation and brutal winter climate—have helped protect the monkeys to some extent. However, at the same time, the extreme topography and climate conditions have greatly hindered needed research and conservation work. At present, coordinated research and conservation efforts and an integrated master plan are lacking.

The China programs of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Conservation International (CI), along with the Baimaxueshan Nature Reserve Management Office, co-hosted the workshop to collect information and build consensus and partnership among key government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, nature reserve managers and stakeholder from local communities.

The workshop was held in conjunction with the 20th anniversary celebration of the Baimaxueshan Nature Reserve. In the workshop, participants exchanged information on the existing monkey populations in different counties and estimated the threats and the challenges in conservation efforts. The workshop participants concluded that collaborative efforts are needed across the monkey’s whole range, especially where the largest populations remain adjacent to each other in Baimaxueshan Nature Reserve in Yunnan and Mangkang Nature Reserve in Tibet.

(Leer esta historia en Español).

Now it is easier than ever to find detailed information about conservation projects in Latin America through the Eco-Index, an Internet resource managed by the Rainforest Alliance. The Alliance launched the completely redesigned and expanded site earlier this month to help busy conservationists more speedily discover what their colleagues are doing in the region.

The Eco-Index has information about more than 550 projects of 400 nongovernmental organizations and government ministries throughout the Neotropics. The site is in English and Spanish, while profiles of Brazil-based projects are also available in Portuguese. The database is searchable by keyword, country, organization, funders and/or by 70 different categories.

Each project profile holds a wealth of well-organized information, such as objectives, accomplishments, budget, donors and lessons learned. Details about available reports or studies are included, with many available in PDF format for immediate downloading. Reports are downloaded from the site some 6,000 times each month, so if you want to ensure that your studies are reaching the people who can truly learn from them, the Eco-Index is the best choice for low-cost distribution.

The Eco-Index’s “What’s New?” page is an online environmental magazine, updated each month. Read interviews with foundation officers and researchers in the field, highlights of exceptional new projects, a newsletter featuring articles about Neotropical conservation projects and more.

According to Diane Jukofsky, director of Neotropics Communications at the Rainforest Alliance, there are more than 20 CEPF-funded projects already in the Eco-Index database, with more added each month.

“We have chosen some of the most innovative CEPF-funded projects to receive our special monthly awards,” she explained. “For example, “Creation and Effective Management of Forest Protected Areas in Peru” (see related story above) was recently recognized for its use of a particularly helpful monitoring and evaluation methodology.

Project directors submit information on the Eco-Index via a template questionnaire, available on-site or upon request by sending an e-mail to eco-index@ra.org. To ensure the quality of information, Eco-Index staff members, based in New York and Costa Rica, carefully edit, fact check and translate each questionnaire.

Jukofsky noted that the popularity of the Eco-Index continues to grow, with more than 16,000 visitors each month. “Through the Eco-Index the conservation community is establishing a permanent record of innovative efforts to safeguard biodiversity in the Neotropics,” she said. She urged directors of the many conservation projects supported by CEPF in the region to submit their completed questionnaires and share their knowledge and experiences.

Related features:

• Press release: Rainforest Alliance Launches Updated Online Encyclopedia of Conservation Projects in Neotropics (PDF)
• From the news archive: Rainforest Alliance to Expand Virtual Conservation Resource in Neotropics

Eighty percent of the world's 20 poorest countries have suffered a major civil war in the past 15 years, according to the World Bank, one of five CEPF partners. During the period 1990-2002 alone, there were 56 major armed conflicts in 44 different locations in the world, exacerbating poverty and disrupting development efforts.

Over the past year, civil conflict has erupted in multiple biodiversity hotspots where CEPF is supporting conservation projects, from Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia in the Guinean Forests of West Africa hotspot to Bolivia in the Tropical Andes hotspot.

How do organizations keep their projects going during difficult times? The CEPF communications team would like to develop a story and select case studies to help others learn about both the challenges and successes in managing external adversity and associated risks to project implementation.