Success in conserving the bird diversity in tropical forests through private protected areas in Western Ecuador

Jeronimo Torres-Porras,José Manuel Seoane,Nikolay Aguirre,José Guerrero-Casado

doi:10.3897/neotropical.16.e63414

Abstract

Private protected areas have recently attained more importance at a worldwide level as regards nature conservation. Particularly, the specific region of Western Ecuador receives hardly any protection from the State, and private reserves could, therefore, be a suitable tool to ensure the preservation of its forests and their associated wildlife biodiversity. In this work, we compare the bird species richness between private reserves and public protected areas (managed by the State) located in this region. We also show a checklist of bird species found in the Buenaventura Reserve, a private reserve located in south-western Ecuador. Our comparison shows that smaller private reserves may harbour a similar number of bird species than larger protected areas managed by the state, and they have a higher number of bird species per area. In particular, a total of 233 different bird species were registered in Buenaventura, which were distributed in 16 orders and 42 families. Three species were classified as endangered at an international level: El Oro Parakeet (Pyrrhura orcesi), El Oro Tapaculo (Scytalopus robbinsi), and the Grey-backed Hawk (Pseudastur occidentalis), and another three at a national level: the Long-wattled Umbrellabird (Cephalopterus penduliger), the Slaty-winged Foliage-gleaner (Philydor fuscipenne), and the White-vented Plumeleteer (Chalybura buffonii). Therefore, private reserves can be appreciated as a suitable conservation tool for bird conservation, and they should not be undervalued because of their smaller size. Buenaventura Reserve is a good example of how private reserves are extremely important in fragmented landscapes, as is the case with tropical forests in Western Ecuador.

Highlights

A private protected area is a protected area under private governance, managed by a variety of private actors, such as nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), commercial companies, or researcher entities with the aim to achieve biodiversity conservation objectives (Capano et al 2019; Palfrey et al 2020)
The Heritage of Natural Areas of the Ecuadorian State (Patrimonio de Areas Naturales del Estado, PANE, in Spanish) is another subsystem of the SNAP managed by the State, and comprises 48 units that cover almost 20% of the country (Cuesta et al 2017). This would, appear to be insufficient, since some ecosystems are underrepresented in the national network and the high risk of ecosystem conversion, suggesting the need to detect and create new priority areas for biodiversity conservation (Sierra et al 2002; Lessmann et al 2014; Cuesta et al 2017). This topic is relevant in the western region of Ecuador, because the protected areas managed by the State (PANE) only cover 5% of its surface (Cuesta et al 2017)
According to the Mann-Whitney U-tests, there was no significant difference between the bird species richness in PPAs and PAs (U = 55; p = 0.945), but significant differences were found between PPAs and PAs with respect to bird species richness per 100 ha (U = 18; p = 0.0095)

Summary

Introduction

A private protected area (hereafter PPA) is a protected area under private governance, managed by a variety of private actors, such as nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), commercial companies, or researcher entities with the aim to achieve biodiversity conservation objectives (Capano et al 2019; Palfrey et al 2020). According to the IUCN, private governance comprises protected areas under individual, cooperative, NGO or corporate control and/or ownership, and managed under not-for-profit or for-profit schemes (Dudley 2008). PPAs can be an extremely useful tool to achieve global conservation goals, because public protected areas (PAs) are insufficient to reduce the global biodiversity crisis (Kamal et al 2015). A growing recognition of the conservation benefits of private reserves has favoured the proliferation of PPAs worldwide, and some countries have integrated PPAs into their national protected area systems (Dudley 2008; Pasquini et al 2011; Stolton et al 2014)

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