PROJECT SUMMARY
This project aims to investigate the conservation status of the lowland tapir population in a selected field site of the Brazilian Pantanal. The four tapir species are under threat of becoming locally or globally extinct as their numbers decrease in their areas of occurrence in Central and South America, and Southeast Asia. The lowland tapir - Tapirus terrestris - occurs through a wide geographic range from North-Central Colombia and East of the Andes throughout most of tropical South America, and the species’ survival is threatened primarily by habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. The Pantanal is one of the largest continuous wetlands on the planet, covering approximately 160,000 km² of low elevation floodplain of the upper Rio Paraguay and its tributaries, in the center of the South American continent. Although species diversity is not particularly high and endemism is practically absent, the region is notable for its extraordinary concentration and abundance of wildlife. During the past few decades, economic and political changes have increased the pressure on the Pantanal, which has been leading to large scale, irreversible wetland degradation. For the past eleven years, the Brazilian Non-Governmental-Organization IPÊ - Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas (Institute for Ecological Research) has been carrying out a long-term lowland tapir conservation project in the Atlantic Forests of the Pontal do Paranapanema Region, São Paulo State, Brazil. As a next step in terms of promoting tapir conservation in Brazil, we will be establishing a second “arm” of the project, a lowland tapir long-term conservation initiative in the Pantanal, where virtually no tapir research has ever occurred, and where the threats and conservation issues are very different. Specifically, population demography, habitat use and animal movement, genetic status, and health status will be evaluated in the perspective of establishing a long-term monitoring program. The main goals of this project are to use the data collected to assess the conservation status and viability of the lowland tapir populations in the Brazilian Pantanal, to design a specific set of recommendations for the conservation of lowland tapirs in the region, and to compare the data collected in the Pantanal with results obtained from the Atlantic Forest.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The Lowland Tapir (Tapirus terrestris)
The Family Tapiridae along with Equidae and Rhinocerotidae are within the mammalian order Perissodactyla. There are four living tapir species found in Central and South America (T. terrestris, T. bairdii, T. pinchaque), and Southeast Asia (T. indicus). The lowland tapir has been classified as Vulnerable in the 2005 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (A1cd+2c+3c). Furthermore, the species is included on CITES Appendix II, and is also listed as Endangered by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Tapirus terrestris occurs through a wide geographic range from North-Central Colombia and East of the Andes throughout most of tropical South America, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela. It occurs mostly in tropical lowland rainforest but can also be found in seasonally dry habitats such as the Chaco of Bolivia and Paraguay.
Tapirs play a critical role in shaping and maintaining biological diversity, and function as an indicator species of the health of various tropical ecosystems, and are critical species to key ecological processes, for example, seed predation and dispersal, as well as nutrient recycling. Additionally, the tapir has been widely recognized as a landscape species and can help us investigate and interpret the landscape interrelatedness, and demonstrate the importance of protecting this mosaic of different habitat types found in a given ecosystem.
The IUCN/SSC Tapir Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan (Brooks et al. 1997) along with previous results from field projects suggest that lowland tapirs are threatened, primarily, by habitat degradation, and hunting. Both these factors work in synergy to reduce and isolate tapir populations. The small size of populations, associated with isolation, exposes them to increased demographic, genetic, and environmental pressure, dramatically increasing the probabilities of local extinctions. Population decreases and local extinctions can trigger adverse effects in the ecosystem, causing disruptions of ecological processes, and eventually compromising the long-term integrity and biodiversity of the ecosystem.
Tapir populations occur, mostly, outside of protected areas, where the more severe effects of habitat degradation are being felt. As such, the tapir is in particular danger, because the effects of isolation and the small population size are exacerbated by the tapir’s intrinsically low reproductive rate (inter-birth interval of two years; generally only one young per pregnancy; start breeding at an age of three years), making it harder for populations to recover.
Due to tapirs important role in shaping and maintaining biological diversity, their recognition as an important landscape species, and their threatened status, there is an urgent need to establish conservation projects aiming at developing and implementing long-term, integrated conservation and management plans for tapir populations in all ecosystems and countries of occurrence.
The Pantanal Project: Using the Experience of the Atlantic Forest to Bring New Insight into Tapir Conservation
Since 1996, the Brazilian Non-Governmental-Organization IPÊ - Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas (Institute for Ecological Research) - has been carrying out a long-term lowland tapir conservation project in the Atlantic Forests of the Pontal do Paranapanema Region, São Paulo State, Brazil. This region includes Morro do Diabo State Park (35,000 ha), one of the last remnants of Atlantic Forest of significant size, and surrounding forest fragments (12,000 ha). The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is one of the most threatened ecosystems on the planet. The original area covered by the Atlantic Forest when European colonization began in 1500 was ca 1,300,000 km² (12% of the Brazilian territory), stretching from Rio Grande do Norte state at the easternmost tip of South America to as far as Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost Brazilian state. Since that period, the Atlantic Forest has been cleared for timber, firewood, charcoal, agriculture, cattle ranching, and construction of cities reducing it to roughly 7.6% of its original extent, leading to the fragmentation of the entire ecosystem and creating a completely different landscape. These remaining “islands” are under severe anthropogenic pressure, but still harbor enormous levels of biodiversity, containing nearly 7% of the world’s species, many of which are endemic and/or threatened with extinction.
During the past eleven years, IPÊ’s lowland tapir project in the Atlantic Forest has successfully captured, radio-collared and monitored twenty-five (25) tapirs (13 females and 12 males), and has collected hundreds of samples of biological materials, which allowed us to gather a considerable amount of new information about tapir ranging behavior, demography, dispersal patterns, genetics, epidemiology, and feeding ecology. This was the first long-term tapir conservation initiative carried out in Brazil and has provided IPÊ with a detailed database of information about the conservation status and needs of tapirs in the fragmented landscape of the Pontal do Paranapanema Region. The main approach of this project has been to investigate tapirs under the landscape context, using these animals as landscape detectives in the process of identifying and mapping their principal dispersal routes and pathways in the landscape, and therefore the potential areas to be restored and conserved as wildlife corridors or stepping-stones. As a consequence, this project has allowed IPÊ to have a significant institutional impact in the process of restoring tapir habitat and reinforcing the public protection of existing protected areas and creating new protected areas in the region. Information obtained through this project was used to rank the priority forest fragments for tapir conservation in the region and, as a result, in June 2002, the Secretary of the Environment for the São Paulo State created the “Black-Lion-Tamarin Ecological Station” including four (4) forest fragments in the surroundings of Morro do Diabo State Park. Most importantly, this project generated the necessary pieces of information needed for the design of a Regional Action Plan for the conservation and management of lowland tapirs in the region. The development of this plan is under way and its implementation will be carried out over the next few years. This project has also contributed data for two Ph.D. Dissertations, two M.Sc. Dissertations, and two B.Sc. theses.
The next step IPÊ will be taking in terms of continuing to promote the conservation of lowland tapirs in Brazil is, therefore, to expand our research and conservation initiatives to other regions of the country, more specifically to other types of ecosystems. Lowland tapir research has expanded significantly over the past few years, and today, additional information continues to arrive from several field researchers and organizations carrying out a wide variety of research on and conservation initiatives for lowland tapirs. However, the information obtained about the ecology of the species in different countries and types of habitat demonstrate that tapirs in different areas present diverse ecological and management requirements.
Through the establishment of new lowland tapir research initiatives in different regions of Brazil, IPÊ aims to create a comprehensive, comparative perspective for the conservation of this species and investigate its ecology in ecosystems different from the Atlantic Forest. Results coming from other ecosystems will help us to better frame our results obtained in the Atlantic Forest, and likewise, using our previous experience and knowledge from the Atlantic Forest we will be much better equipped to interpret and make useful conclusions from our new data obtained in new field sites. Additionally, by comparing the information gathered about tapirs throughout different Brazilian ecosystems we will have a clear understanding about how tapirs behave in different ecosystems, and under different levels of disturbance and landscape matrices. Likewise, we will have a better understanding of tapir ecology and conservation needs, and we will be able to evaluate the importance and magnitude of the ecological factors affecting tapir populations throughout the country. Ultimately, we will then be able to promote the development and effective implementation of conservation and management strategies for specific tapir populations throughout their entire range.
With all these different aspects in mind, IPÊ has selected the Brazilian Pantanal as the next field site to be established. Firstly because are extreme differences between the Pantanal and the Atlantic Forest ecosystems in terms of ecological and landscape aspects, threats and conservation issues, as well as in terms of land use and social aspects create an exciting opportunity to compare results between both areas, and pose new and different conservation and management challenges. Secondly because virtually no tapir research has ever been carried out in the Pantanal.
This project aims to investigate the conservation status of the lowland tapir population in a selected field site of the Brazilian Pantanal. The four tapir species are under threat of becoming locally or globally extinct as their numbers decrease in their areas of occurrence in Central and South America, and Southeast Asia. The lowland tapir - Tapirus terrestris - occurs through a wide geographic range from North-Central Colombia and East of the Andes throughout most of tropical South America, and the species’ survival is threatened primarily by habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. The Pantanal is one of the largest continuous wetlands on the planet, covering approximately 160,000 km² of low elevation floodplain of the upper Rio Paraguay and its tributaries, in the center of the South American continent. Although species diversity is not particularly high and endemism is practically absent, the region is notable for its extraordinary concentration and abundance of wildlife. During the past few decades, economic and political changes have increased the pressure on the Pantanal, which has been leading to large scale, irreversible wetland degradation. For the past eleven years, the Brazilian Non-Governmental-Organization IPÊ - Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas (Institute for Ecological Research) has been carrying out a long-term lowland tapir conservation project in the Atlantic Forests of the Pontal do Paranapanema Region, São Paulo State, Brazil. As a next step in terms of promoting tapir conservation in Brazil, we will be establishing a second “arm” of the project, a lowland tapir long-term conservation initiative in the Pantanal, where virtually no tapir research has ever occurred, and where the threats and conservation issues are very different. Specifically, population demography, habitat use and animal movement, genetic status, and health status will be evaluated in the perspective of establishing a long-term monitoring program. The main goals of this project are to use the data collected to assess the conservation status and viability of the lowland tapir populations in the Brazilian Pantanal, to design a specific set of recommendations for the conservation of lowland tapirs in the region, and to compare the data collected in the Pantanal with results obtained from the Atlantic Forest.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The Lowland Tapir (Tapirus terrestris)
The Family Tapiridae along with Equidae and Rhinocerotidae are within the mammalian order Perissodactyla. There are four living tapir species found in Central and South America (T. terrestris, T. bairdii, T. pinchaque), and Southeast Asia (T. indicus). The lowland tapir has been classified as Vulnerable in the 2005 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (A1cd+2c+3c). Furthermore, the species is included on CITES Appendix II, and is also listed as Endangered by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Tapirus terrestris occurs through a wide geographic range from North-Central Colombia and East of the Andes throughout most of tropical South America, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela. It occurs mostly in tropical lowland rainforest but can also be found in seasonally dry habitats such as the Chaco of Bolivia and Paraguay.
Tapirs play a critical role in shaping and maintaining biological diversity, and function as an indicator species of the health of various tropical ecosystems, and are critical species to key ecological processes, for example, seed predation and dispersal, as well as nutrient recycling. Additionally, the tapir has been widely recognized as a landscape species and can help us investigate and interpret the landscape interrelatedness, and demonstrate the importance of protecting this mosaic of different habitat types found in a given ecosystem.
The IUCN/SSC Tapir Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan (Brooks et al. 1997) along with previous results from field projects suggest that lowland tapirs are threatened, primarily, by habitat degradation, and hunting. Both these factors work in synergy to reduce and isolate tapir populations. The small size of populations, associated with isolation, exposes them to increased demographic, genetic, and environmental pressure, dramatically increasing the probabilities of local extinctions. Population decreases and local extinctions can trigger adverse effects in the ecosystem, causing disruptions of ecological processes, and eventually compromising the long-term integrity and biodiversity of the ecosystem.
Tapir populations occur, mostly, outside of protected areas, where the more severe effects of habitat degradation are being felt. As such, the tapir is in particular danger, because the effects of isolation and the small population size are exacerbated by the tapir’s intrinsically low reproductive rate (inter-birth interval of two years; generally only one young per pregnancy; start breeding at an age of three years), making it harder for populations to recover.
Due to tapirs important role in shaping and maintaining biological diversity, their recognition as an important landscape species, and their threatened status, there is an urgent need to establish conservation projects aiming at developing and implementing long-term, integrated conservation and management plans for tapir populations in all ecosystems and countries of occurrence.
The Pantanal Project: Using the Experience of the Atlantic Forest to Bring New Insight into Tapir Conservation
Since 1996, the Brazilian Non-Governmental-Organization IPÊ - Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas (Institute for Ecological Research) - has been carrying out a long-term lowland tapir conservation project in the Atlantic Forests of the Pontal do Paranapanema Region, São Paulo State, Brazil. This region includes Morro do Diabo State Park (35,000 ha), one of the last remnants of Atlantic Forest of significant size, and surrounding forest fragments (12,000 ha). The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is one of the most threatened ecosystems on the planet. The original area covered by the Atlantic Forest when European colonization began in 1500 was ca 1,300,000 km² (12% of the Brazilian territory), stretching from Rio Grande do Norte state at the easternmost tip of South America to as far as Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost Brazilian state. Since that period, the Atlantic Forest has been cleared for timber, firewood, charcoal, agriculture, cattle ranching, and construction of cities reducing it to roughly 7.6% of its original extent, leading to the fragmentation of the entire ecosystem and creating a completely different landscape. These remaining “islands” are under severe anthropogenic pressure, but still harbor enormous levels of biodiversity, containing nearly 7% of the world’s species, many of which are endemic and/or threatened with extinction.
During the past eleven years, IPÊ’s lowland tapir project in the Atlantic Forest has successfully captured, radio-collared and monitored twenty-five (25) tapirs (13 females and 12 males), and has collected hundreds of samples of biological materials, which allowed us to gather a considerable amount of new information about tapir ranging behavior, demography, dispersal patterns, genetics, epidemiology, and feeding ecology. This was the first long-term tapir conservation initiative carried out in Brazil and has provided IPÊ with a detailed database of information about the conservation status and needs of tapirs in the fragmented landscape of the Pontal do Paranapanema Region. The main approach of this project has been to investigate tapirs under the landscape context, using these animals as landscape detectives in the process of identifying and mapping their principal dispersal routes and pathways in the landscape, and therefore the potential areas to be restored and conserved as wildlife corridors or stepping-stones. As a consequence, this project has allowed IPÊ to have a significant institutional impact in the process of restoring tapir habitat and reinforcing the public protection of existing protected areas and creating new protected areas in the region. Information obtained through this project was used to rank the priority forest fragments for tapir conservation in the region and, as a result, in June 2002, the Secretary of the Environment for the São Paulo State created the “Black-Lion-Tamarin Ecological Station” including four (4) forest fragments in the surroundings of Morro do Diabo State Park. Most importantly, this project generated the necessary pieces of information needed for the design of a Regional Action Plan for the conservation and management of lowland tapirs in the region. The development of this plan is under way and its implementation will be carried out over the next few years. This project has also contributed data for two Ph.D. Dissertations, two M.Sc. Dissertations, and two B.Sc. theses.
The next step IPÊ will be taking in terms of continuing to promote the conservation of lowland tapirs in Brazil is, therefore, to expand our research and conservation initiatives to other regions of the country, more specifically to other types of ecosystems. Lowland tapir research has expanded significantly over the past few years, and today, additional information continues to arrive from several field researchers and organizations carrying out a wide variety of research on and conservation initiatives for lowland tapirs. However, the information obtained about the ecology of the species in different countries and types of habitat demonstrate that tapirs in different areas present diverse ecological and management requirements.
Through the establishment of new lowland tapir research initiatives in different regions of Brazil, IPÊ aims to create a comprehensive, comparative perspective for the conservation of this species and investigate its ecology in ecosystems different from the Atlantic Forest. Results coming from other ecosystems will help us to better frame our results obtained in the Atlantic Forest, and likewise, using our previous experience and knowledge from the Atlantic Forest we will be much better equipped to interpret and make useful conclusions from our new data obtained in new field sites. Additionally, by comparing the information gathered about tapirs throughout different Brazilian ecosystems we will have a clear understanding about how tapirs behave in different ecosystems, and under different levels of disturbance and landscape matrices. Likewise, we will have a better understanding of tapir ecology and conservation needs, and we will be able to evaluate the importance and magnitude of the ecological factors affecting tapir populations throughout the country. Ultimately, we will then be able to promote the development and effective implementation of conservation and management strategies for specific tapir populations throughout their entire range.
With all these different aspects in mind, IPÊ has selected the Brazilian Pantanal as the next field site to be established. Firstly because are extreme differences between the Pantanal and the Atlantic Forest ecosystems in terms of ecological and landscape aspects, threats and conservation issues, as well as in terms of land use and social aspects create an exciting opportunity to compare results between both areas, and pose new and different conservation and management challenges. Secondly because virtually no tapir research has ever been carried out in the Pantanal.
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