Ronald Hoff Strange-tailed Tyrant: an emblematic species of Paraguay's southern grasslands Zoom In

Protecting Paraguay's birds in perpetuity

25-01-2008

Paraguay is a country of just six million people in an area the size of the US state of California. On the map it may be dwarfed by giant neighbours like Brazil and Argentina, but it marks the confluence of five major ecoregions: the woodland-savannah of the Cerrado, the seasonal wetlands of the Pantanal, the thorn forests of the Dry and Humid Chaco, the northern limit of the Southern Pampas, and the Upper Parana Atlantic Forest. Paraguay’s share of the Atlantic Forest, once 80,000 km², has been reduced to 11,000 km², and until three years ago the country was destroying what was left faster than any of its neighbours. Thirty-five percent of the original area was logged or converted for agriculture between 1989 and 2003 alone.

In 2004, however, the rate of forest loss dropped by a dramatic 94%, as a result of the government’s Zero Deforestation law, which made it a punishable crime to damage any part of what was left. In part, we owe the Zero Deforestation law to the work of BirdLife Partner Designate Guyra Paraguay, which lobbied the government tirelessly until the law was passed. Guyra faced violent opposition from logging and landowning interests: staff had their lives threatened, their offices were bombed, and one of their vehicles was burned. We know that the figures for the reduction in forest loss are reliable, because the source is also Guyra Paraguay, which carries out an independent audit using satellite-based remote sensing, in partnership with NASA, Conservation International and the University of Maryland.

The government has now asked Guyra Paraguay to monitor all land use change in the country. The Paraguayan government has few resources to spare for conservation, and faces problems implementing environmental policies in a country where 96% of the land is in private hands. Guyra Paraguay assists the Ministry of the Environment, advises the Attorney General on matters of environmental law, and joins the government’s delegations to meetings of the Convention on Migratory Species, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, and the Conventions on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Climate Change. Guyra set up and operates Paraguay’s CBD clearing house echanism, and has collated and digitized biological data for all Paraguay’s protected areas. Between 2002 and 2005, Guyra identified and mapped Paraguay’s 57 Important Bird Areas (IBAs), and devised a remote sensing-based IBA monitoring protocol. Fundraising work with partners like the World Land Trust enable Guyra to purchase core areas of the two priority IBAs—one at the heart of Paraguay’s most important remaining tract of Atlantic Forest (San Rafael, one of the first IBAs declared in South America), and one in the vast seasonal wetlands of the Pantanal—and put them under real, rather than paper protection.

"We’re helping provide economic opportunities through ecotourism that will enable young people to stay in the area—before, they had to leave to find work.” —Alberto Yanosky, CEO of Guyra Paraguay

Guyra has also developed species recovery plans for all the country’s 26 globally threatened birds, and for others of national conservation concern. All this— and a lot more—has been achieved in just ten years. Back in 1997, Guyra Paraguay had no offices, no full-time salaried staff, and a first-year budget of $5,000. The original BirdLife Partner, Fundación Moisés Bertoni (FMB), felt that its broad remit covering the environment, democracy and sustainable development did not allow sufficient focus on bird conservation.

“The FMB directors thought, ‘why not set up a dedicated NGO that would follow BirdLife’s guidelines?’,” says Guyra’s CEO Alberto Yanosky. “So in 1997, they brought together all the ornithologists in Paraguay, and created Guyra Paraguay.” At first, they assumed that Guyra would automatically become the BirdLife Partner. “But there were fears in BirdLife that an organisation with no budget and few resources would not represent BirdLife very well,” Alberto recalls. “So between 1997 and 1999, we went through a transition period, during which another organisation could have been chosen as the Partner, before FMB quit and we were accepted as a BirdLife Affiliate.” The new organisation may have been short of resources, but had no shortage of friends. For the first six months, FMB paid the salary of Guyra’s first director, the Spanish ornithologist Alberto Madroño Nieto, who had previously worked at the BirdLife International Secretariat in Cambridge, UK. BirdLife International provided support, and more came from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the American Bird Conservancy.

The RSPB (BirdLife in the UK) helped with the development of the first strategic plan. As part of the federation of NGOs created by FMB, Guyra Paraguay works naturally and easily with other partners within Paraguay. Back in the mid-1990s FMB came together with Mennonite and indigenous

organisations to form the Foundation for the Sustainable Development of the Chaco (Fundación para el Desarrollo Sustentable del Chaco). In 2002, this organisation joined Guyra Paraguay, FMB and IDEA, the legal NGO, in setting up the National Land Trust, dedicated to promoting and creating private conservation initiatives adapted to Paraguay’s land ownership pattern. In some Latin American countries, private nature reserves are owned and operated by foreign donor organisations. Establishing the National Land Trust was one way of ensuring that control remained in Paraguayan hands, and Guyra has followed the same principle when creating private protected areas in Paraguay’s IBAs. In 2001, Guyra realised that if it didn’t move quickly, the country’s most important remnant of Atlantic Forest, 20,000 hectares at San Rafael, would soon be lost. San Rafael had been designated a national park after the Rio summit in 1992, but remained a park on paper only, under the ownership of 55 different private landlords, and suffered heavy encroachment every year.

World Land Trust 15,000 hectares have been protected in the important transboundary IBA of the Pantanal Zoom In

Although studies had hardly begun, it was known to be the most important Paraguayan site for endemic Atlantic Forest birds, and to hold populations of 11 globally threatened and 17 Near Threatened bird species. With the help of the World Land Trust, Nature Canada and other partners, Guyra has raised the money to buy 6,200 ha of the forest so far. Almost all the money has come from international donors. But one condition of accepting funds was that the land would be owned and controlled by Guyra Paraguay, not by the donor. “The land is dedicated for conservation in perpetuity, and if Guyra Paraguay ever folds, it will pass to the government,” Alberto explains. The same applies to the 9,500 ha of seasonal wetland in the Pantanal which Guyra Paraguay bought in 2006 to form the Sid Templer Reserve and the Finch Reserve (named after major donors) and Holland Reserve, again in partnership with the World Land Trust and the Nederlands’ IUCN Committee. Partnerships are key to the management of these two reserves. At San Rafael, Guyra is working with the National Land Trust, IDEA, the sustainable development organisation Fundación Enlace, and the private conservation group Procosara (Associación Pro Cordillera San Rafael).

Guyra contributes staff time to Procosara, and works closely with the local municipal government and plays an increasingly important role in development and land use planning and management. In the Pantanal, Guyra Paraguay was able to build on the work of the EcoClub Pantanal Paraguay, a group formed by young people from the neighbouring community of Bahía Negra. With Guyra’s help, the EcoClub obtained $10,000 from the World Bank to set up the area’s first radio station, staffed and run entirely by local conservationists, and broadcasting in Guarani. “When we first got here, there was no government presence, and no communications, except radio stations broadcasting from Brazil,” Alberto explains. “There was no access to the Pantanal: we brought the first boat to the area. Now we’re helping provide economic opportunities  through ecotourism that will enable young people to stay in the area—before, they had to leave to find work.” In the first week of July 2007, The Biological Station and Ecolodge of the Three Giants opened its doors to paying guests—the name comes from the Giant Anteater, the Giant Otter and the Giant Armadillo, which are all found in the Pantanal. With just 300 voting members, Guyra Paraguay continues to be dependent on international help. Ninety-five percent of its revenues come from foreign sources. One of Alberto’s goals is to create a self-sustaining organisation, broadening the membership by making it free, and increasing the income from voluntary contributions.

In the meantime, Guyra is continuing to create partnerships at a continental and international level. In 2006, they began to provide services—such as IBA monitoring—to other Latin American Partners. Alberto, chair of the Americas Partnership, is a current member of BirdLife International’s Global Council. But he is also  helping to build direct links between Partners, particularly through the South-South initiative with members of the Council for the Africa Partnership. And as he points out, offering its IBA monitoring protocols as just one example, Guyra Paraguay may be one of the youngest Partners, but it has plenty to give to the rest of the Partnership.

by Nick Langley

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