News
FCT's Don Oso Program wins
second award from Rainforest
Alliance's Eco-Index
09 February 2012 - Fundación Cordillera Tropical's Don Oso Program has won a second award from Rainforest Alliance's Eco-Index for "Best monitoring & evaluation methodology" for the month of February 2012. The Don Oso program uses a combination of state-of-the-art camera traps, satellite imagery and local interviews to monitor the Andean bear and its habitat. The program was named ¨Eco-Initiative of the Month¨ in December 2010 for its focus on capacity building, wildlife research, and payments for environmental services.
FCT publishes
innovative educational curriculum
09 January 2012 - Fundación Cordillera Tropical announces the publication of a 130-page Spanish-language curriculum and activity guide that uses the Andean bear to teach elementary students about endangered species conservation. The guide's seven units include hands-on classroom and take-home activities for use with 4th to 7th graders. Download the publication here.
The Andean Bear Gets a Helping Hand from Disney
18 October 2011 -The Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund (DWCF) announced that Fundación Cordillera Tropical and the Carnivore Coexistence Lab at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, are one of nearly 100 organizations worldwide that have been awarded an annual grant to support their project: Conservation of the Andean bear in Ecuador. Read more about the project and recent award here.
New Frog Species Discovered in Sangay National Park, Ecuador
7 July 2011 - Fundación Cordillera Tropical reports the discovery of a new frog species, the bamboo rain-peeper (Pristimantis bambu), in Sangay National Park, Ecuador. Catholic University biology student, Alejandro Arteaga, discovered this thumb-sized frog within the privately managed Mazar Wildlife Reserve, in the Park’s southern region. The bamboo rain-peeper is the second new frog species identified on the reserve in recent years, and its discovery, undoubtedly, merits an increase in efforts to catalogue and protect this region’s unique biodiversity.
Participatory monitoring protocol developed to study Andean bears
28 April 2011 - Fundación Cordillera Tropical and University of Wisconsin-Madison research scientists recently published an article about our community-based Andean bear monitoring program in the May 2011 issue of International Bear News. Over the past 8 months, researchers trained local community para-biologists, FCT staff, and local university students to use camera-trap to study the Andean bear. From September 2010 through January 2011, we photographed bears during 182 individual visits to our 10 trap stations (100%) during 1,321 trap nights. We believe that training local land stewards as para-biologists may be one way to assure the long-term conservation of Andean bears.
FCT's Don Oso Program recognized by the Rainforest Alliance's Eco-Index
8 December 2010 – Fundación Cordillera Tropical's Don Oso program has been named Project of the Month for December 2010 by the Rainforest Alliance's Eco-Index. The Eco-Index lauds the program as an Innovative Eco-Initiative for its work in capacity building, environmental services payments, parks and protected areas, and wildlife research. See the Eco-Index listing here.
'Don Oso' program aims to reduce retaliatory killing of the endangered Andean bear to zero in southern Sangay National Park
6 August 2010 – Fundación Cordillera Tropical announces a new program to mitigate conflicts between private property owners and the Andean bear (Tremarctos ornatus) in southern Sangay National Park. In Ecuador, the Andean bear is endangered due to habitat loss and hunting, often as a result of human/bear conflicts. Retaliatory killing of bears following attacks on cattle is considered one of the primary threats to long-term conservation of the species.
FCT biologist Lucas Achig consulted about Andean bear habitat conservation in Ecuador
22 May 2010 - Fundación Cordillera Tropical's Scientific Research and Monitoring Coordinator, Lucas Achig, was interviewed for a special article in the "Proyecto Páramo Andino" Series on Páramo Biodiversity. According to Achig, "[The Andean bear's] habitat includes so much area and so many other threatened species that conserving the bear implies conserving entire forests and páramos; these ecosystems are very biodiverse, and regulate and protect water sources for human populations." Read more at the link above (Spanish only).
15 March 2010 - Fundación Cordillera Tropical reports that in January of 2010 an ongoing research project by Alejandro Arteaga, a biology student at the Catholic University in Quito, identified two additional individuals of a critically endangered Andean poison dart frog, Hyloxalus anthracinus, in the montane forests of southern Sangay National Park.
Scientists discover Andean poison dart frog believed extinct since 1995
23 September 2009 – Fundación Cordillera Tropical announces that during a recent inventory scientists discovered a high-altitude Andean poison dart frog, believed to have been extinct, in southern Sangay National Park, Ecuador. Alejandro Arteaga, a biology student at the Catholic University of Quito, recorded an individual of the species Hyloxalus anthracinus (common name Andean poison dart frog or high altitude rocket frog) during a recent inventory of reptiles and amphibians. According to Eduardo Toral and Manuel Morales, biologists at the Catholic University of Quito, this species was last recorded on June 11, 1995, in the Mazan Protected Forest of Cajas National Park.
Payment for environmental services in Ecuador
August 2009 – Dr. Stuart White, Fundación Cordillera Tropical's founder and General Coordinator, was interviewed for an article by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), which has partnered with FCT for many years in Payment for Environmental Services (PES) research. The article, "Payments for environmental services: A matter of scale in Ecuador and Colombia," investigates the effectiveness of large versus small-scale PES schemes. White commented "Socio Bosque [the Ecuadorian government's new national PES scheme] was an important policy, given the lack of economic incentive to conserve forests; however, we do not yet know how this programme will affect local PES initiatives, which in several cases have also been efficient in conserving Ecuadorian forests."
Photos capture images of elusive Andean bear
March 2009 – Becky Zug, candidate for a Master's of Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has used remote-sensored cameras to investigate how Andean bears use páramo and montane forest habitats. For 5 months, she monitored 17 cameras that were placed in a 1,000 hectare area in the Mazar watershed within southern Sangay National Park. Camera traps have only recently been used to study Andean bears. The cameras also captured photos of pumas, white-tailed deer, red brocket deer, and margays.