Shepherding Nature

Abstract

The toads were there, just where the people in the village had told them they would be. The scientists and their guide struggled up a muddy trail to a ridgeline. And then they saw them. First one, then a few, then hundreds, shining like amber amid the dark humus of the forest floor. Golden toads. A species new to science. This was in 1964. It turned out that the golden toad occurred only in a tiny, high-elevation area in the Monteverde cloud forest in Costa Rica. A reserve was established to protect the species within its known range. Surveys over the following years indicated a stable population of 1,000-2,000 toads. Then, suddenly, there were fewer than a dozen in 1988, and only one solitary male a year later. The species has not been seen since.Why did the toad disappear so suddenly? Perhaps it was a drying of breeding sites accompanying El Niño, or a shift of the cloud layer to higher elevations (both perhaps related to climate change), or fatal fungal infections. Regardless of the cause, the golden toad was extinct. 1 It didn't have to be that way. Conservation's agenda is to avoid such extinctions, to reverse the trends that bring plants and animals to the brink of extinction and return them to secure self-reliance.In this book, we will share stories and case studies to demonstrate how such outcomes can be achieved and the consequences if they are not. 1 The saga of the golden toad and the controversy over what led to its disappearance are recounted in McMenamin and Hannah (2012). The golden toad is shown in Figure 1.1.

Reducción poblacional del cóndor andino (Vultur gryphus) en los Andes Centrales de Colombia: un llamado urgente para evitar su extinción local

“…El núcleo de repoblación en Los Nevados es sobre el que se tiene el conocimiento más detallado y en el que se logró un mayor avance en la ejecución de acciones de conservación y monitoreo (e.g., confirmar reproducción local). Paradójicamente, también se encuentra en la situación más crítica, ya que es una población dependiente de acciones de conservación (i.e., nuevas reintroducciones o translocaciones) para evitar la extinción local de la especie (Scott et al 2020). Teniendo en cuenta la evidencia presentada en este estudio sobre la reducción del tamaño poblacional de los cóndores en Los Nevados, y las posibles amenazas para su conservación, hacemos un llamado a tomar acciones urgentes para evitar su extinción local.…”