Center for Species Survival Brazil: a new hub to boost conservation efforts for the world’s most biodiverse country
By Carmel Croukamp and Fabiana Rocha, Parque Das Aves.
Under Reverse the Red’s umbrella, the Center for Species Survival Brazil was founded as part of a wave of launches of hubs to become a regional resource to capitalize on the expertise of the IUCN Species Survival Commission network to assist governments, local NGOs and communities to scale up conservation targets and meet them.
When Onnie Byers (IUCN SSC Conservation Planning Specialist Group, CPSG), Kira Milehan (IUCN Species Survival Commission, IUCN SSC) and Carmel Croukamp (Parque das Aves) talked across the last conferences of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums in Berlin and Bangkok, it was clear the huge significance such center would represent for Brazil. Quickly, a three-way partnership was formed and an agreement was signed in July 2019 to create the center, with its roots in the presence of CPSG in Brazil since 2004, as well as the strong actions of IUCN SSC Specialist Groups in Brazil. Examples such as the Golden Lion Tamarin have, over the last decades, become important emblems of what can be done when we know that a species is threatened, what threatens it, join people together to make a solid, science and people-based plan, and then act on it. This is the assess-plan-act triangle. Over a million species are considered threatened with extinction globally, and many thousands of these are native to Brazil.
Center for Species Survival Brazil, a three-party partnership.
Reverse the Red is about being systematic, and about bringing global standards and global connectivity to regional efforts to prevent extinctions and improve biodiversity status. It’s about bringing people together: assess-plan-act shines a light on forgotten species, identifies those who need help, and aims for every species that needs a conservation plan to have a plan. This is what Brazil needs, and also what the world needs in order to actively preserve what Brazilian biodiversity contributes to the planet.
The Center for Species Survival Brazil (CSS Brazil) represents a US$ 2 million investment over ten years by Parque das Aves with additional funding from CPSG, to cover basic costs and salaries. The IUCN SSC and CPSG support networks, training networks, and infrastructure are the crucial components to make this investment work. “Brazil gets a world-class conservation assessment and planning, and we get the most cost-effective conservation investment we’ve ever made. We warmly invite others to join us to continue expanding the impact of the Center in this huge and important country for biodiversity”, says Carmel Croukamp, CEO of Parque das Aves.
A key aspect of Reverse the Red is to combine grassroots and country or region-specific approaches with global connectivity. CSS Brazil is no exception: Brazil has an existing national red listing infrastructure, but it doesn’t converse with Global Red Listing, and vice versa. To get an idea of the impact, there are over 4,400 Brazilian native species that were assessed nationally but are not yet listed globally. Besides, a recent analysis by CSS Brazil indicates that there are 37% of category mismatches of the 1,355 endemic species of Brazil that were assessed both nationally and globally. This may have serious implications for the prioritization and planning to save species, as well as for the development of conservation policies.
By integrating conservation planning into the regional resource center as well as global Red Listing, it’s possible to identify which species most need help, and then convene facilitated, multi-stakeholder workshops within Brazil to make a strategic plan to save the species. CPSG provides training in key skill sets, analysis workshops, and, over the last years, has provided facilitators to mediate the creation of plans to save many dozens of species. The new assess-to-plan (A2P) framework designed by CPSG incorporates the identification of the most efficient groupings of species according to their needs, together with the most urgent demands. It’s one thing to think about these things in theory and in the abstract, but the whole assess, plan, and act scenario needs to function in a fluid and practical way.
The Center for Species Survival Brazil took up as a flagship project the conservation crisis of the Birds of the Atlantic Rainforest: this is currently the largest continental avian extinction crisis on the planet, with many species with 100 or fewer individuals remaining in total distribution. As a result of the last three years’ work, CPSG workshop results are officially incorporated into Brazilian government National Action Plans to save species, clearing the way for effective action involving everyone working on the ground to save a species, to create protected areas, or to require strategic federal, state or local government cooperation in combating animal trafficking or creating new legislation, for example.
Parque das Aves and partners carry this forward by creating and executing fieldwork initiatives and projects which follow CPSG’s strategic, multi-stakeholder plans to save species. The flagship project is a kind of arena to test out forms of cooperation for Brazil and to feel what can be achieved through different formats; what CSS Brazil achieves here can be followed through for many different species groups.
CSS Brazil has three Officers to work across Red Listing and CPSG Conservation Planning. Fabiana Rocha heads the team with key support from Eugenia Cordero and Rosana Subira who was for many years the coordinator of the Brazilian government’s conservation strategies. CSS counts on an additional network of six CPSG Members who each head up internationally recognized conservation projects and initiatives. They work in partnership with Universities such as the University of Oxford (WildCRU), Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB), São Paulo University (ESALQ), and others. A huge network of collaborators, as well as masters and Ph.D. students supervised by members, provide key services. There are eight additional support staff whose time is donated by Parque das Aves. They are joined by CPSG Headquarters and CPSG Europe staff who fly out many times a year to provide training and facilitation.
“Conservation works! Across IUCN and many other organizations, there is a lot of expertise and technical solutions, but we need to share and apply them, and above all, we need to help people engage positively so that we can Reverse the Red and build a healthier planet for us all,” says Fabiana Rocha - CSS Brazil coordinator. Brazil is a challenging environment for nature conservation. Joining together global and national partners and expertise are key at this point. The task is big. We can only do this if we do it together.
For further information contact: admin@cssbrazil.org
(11/13/2020)