Archive for category: Current News

The government of Cameroon announced last Friday the creation of its first marine and terrestrial national park, an effort that was made possible by Rainforest Trust and local partner Cameroon Wildlife Conservation Society (CWCS).

The declaration upgraded the Douala-Edea Wildlife Reserve, first created in 1932, to national park status, and it approved a nearly 350,000-acre expansion that includes mangrove forests, rivers, wetlands and marine habitats. Collectively, this expansion and conversion actively safeguard a total of 741,000 acres, almost the size of Yosemite National Park.

“This critical Key Biodiversity Area was at grave risk from growing pressure to deforest and destroy its megadiverse rainforests,” said Rainforest Trust CEO Dr. Paul Salaman. “The designation of this huge National Park is a vital step towards permanently protecting the precious natural resources of Cameroon hand-in-hand with local communities and the government.”

The Douala-Edea Wildlife Reserve, recently identified as one of the most important conservation landscapes in Central Africa, had unprotected land parcels, mangrove forests and freshwater and marine habitats that are integral to the overall health and sustainability of this coastal land and seascape. With this new designation level and expanded area, the Douala-Edea National Park will protect both the integrity and connectivity of this amazing ecosystem, which includes habitats as diverse as the species that live within them.

“There is no doubt this major conservation breakthrough could not have been achieved without resolute engagement and financial support from Rainforest Trust,” National Coordinator of CWCS Dr. Gordon Ajonina said. “We are proud to say Rainforest Trust funding helped speedily move the gazettement process forward, including improvements in infrastructure, purchasing equipment for game rangers and motorcycles and engine boats for marine patrols.”

There are the Endangered Green Turtle and the Central African Chimpanzee, one of West Africa’s most imperiled primates, as well as other increasingly rare primate species such as the Vulnerable Gabon Black Colobus Monkey. Numerous species of forest antelope and small populations of Vulnerable West African Manatees, Leatherback Turtles, Olive Ridley turtles and African Forest Elephants also live in the area. There are more than 70 waterbird species documented, in addition to many migrant species that use the rivers and rich wetlands as important stops on annual migrations.

This protected area was made possible by the Conservation Action Fund. All gifts to the Conservation Action Fund are matched through the SAVES Challenge and used 100 percent in support of our programs.

This year, Rainforest Trust has helped purchase two additional land parcels for a total of 225 acres — twice the size of the Vatican City — in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro’s Lagoinha Valley. The area contains high-quality Atlantic rainforest and the Guapiaçu watershed, which offers verdant scenery with abundant streams of fresh water. The international conservation organization teamed up with its long-time Brazilian partner REGUA, from whom the protected area gets its name, to complete these purchases that are now under the local partner’s conservation management portfolio.

“We are very pleased to have been able to work with REGUA since 2007 to protect critical habitats in Brazil,” said Rainforest Trust CEO Dr. Paul Salaman. “These latest purchases fill in and protect a mosaic of important areas for conservation.”

The first property purchased, called Armênio, was completed in February 2018. Of its 52 acres, half is naturally forested and the other 26 acres have been cleared for cattle pastureland. Our local partner has already completed fencing around the property and has plans to implement its proven reforestation methodology on the cleared portion. The second parcel — the 173-acre Vidal property — contains high-quality Atlantic rainforest adjacent to an existing REGUA property and was purchased just last month. These properties were at risk of being purchased by developers and cleared for homes.

Together, these two new acquisitions will expand protections for numerous endemic and threatened species in the REGUA protected area, including the Endangered Crowned Solitary Eagle, which has a very small, fragmented population within South America, and the Endangered Southern Muriqui, the continent’s largest and rarest primate. The two properties will also function as a buffer to contiguous primary forest found at the higher altitudes of REGUA.

This protected area was made possible by donations in support of our work with REGUA and in particular the Michael Louis Charitable Trust and the Felburn Foundation. All gifts to support our projects are matched through the SAVES Challenge and used 100 percent in support of our conservation action.

This August, Rainforest Trust helped purchase a 36.7-acre parcel to expand a unique orchid reserve in northwestern Ecuador. The Dracula Reserve was created in 2014 and is part of the global Chocó-Tumbes biodiversity hotspot that is restricted to a narrow swath of land from the Andes to the Pacific along western Colombia and Ecuador.

“With less than 10 percent of Ecuador’s precious Chocó rainforests left standing, Rainforest Trust has focused significant effort on purchasing the most threatened private names to expand and consolidate protected areas in this region of tremendous conservation importance,” said Rainforest Trust CEO Dr. Paul Salaman.

“Sadly, fourteen Dracula species have already gone extinct due to deforestation in the region, so every acre we can add to these spectacular orchids’ habitat is vital.”

As its name suggests, this reserve is one of three locations that safeguards approximately 90 percent of the Dracula orchid genus, while also offering protection to other threatened orchids such as the Endangered slipper orchid called Hirtz’s Phragmipedium. While the reserve was founded with an orchid conservation focus, many other types of flora and iconic fauna are also protected by the reserve, including the Critically Endangered Brown-headed Spider Monkey, one of the rarest primates in the world.

Rainforest Trust is continuing to work with local partner Fundación EcoMinga to expand the Dracula Reserve, with efforts underway to purchase several more properties that will add 1,475 acres, more than doubling its current size to 2,616 acres by 2019. This will help create a corridor of protection that not only connects the different units of the existing Dracula Reserve, but also connects Dracula to the Awa Ethnic and Nature Reserve, spanning 284,986 acres across the Ecuador-Colombian border.

This land purchase was made possible through the support of the Orchid Conservation Alliance and the Conservation Action Fund. All gifts to projects and the Conservation Action Fund are matched through the SAVES Challenge and used 100 percent in support of our conservation activities.

Malaysia’s Terrenganu state government announced today that it has designated 25,664 acres of land formerly slated for logging as a new protected area for wildlife. This new Lawit-Cenana State Park in the Kenyir region of Terrenganu is phase one of a much larger conservation project that will encompass nearly 250,000 acres that lie within a globally important Tiger Conservation Landscape and critical wildlife corridor.

The creation and management of this new protected area is a collaborative effort involving the Terengganu state government and the local nonprofit organization Rimba, in partnership with Rainforest Trust and Panthera.

“This new protected area not only brings more key wildlife habitat under protection, but also protects vital forested watersheds that provide important ecosystem services to the people of Terengganu,” said Dr. Sheema Abdul Aziz, President of Rimba.

Estimated at more than 130 million years old, the dipterocarp forest in the Lawit-Cenana State Park is now permanently protected from logging and secured from further development. Over a dozen Critically Endangered Malayan Tigers have been recorded in the area, while the global population is established at fewer than 250 mature individuals in the wild.

“The importance of this area simply cannot be underestimated,” said Rainforest Trust Chief Executive Officer Dr. Paul Salaman. “The creation of the new park is a rare and unparalleled opportunity to protect a spectacular and imperiled tropical forest harboring what is certainly one of the planet’s most awe-inspiring predators – the Malayan Tiger.”

The forests of the new park contain some of the highest biodiversity in Asia and are home to 18 highly threatened mammal species, including the Asian Elephant, Sunda Pangolin, Malay Tapir, Dhole and White-handed Gibbon. Six of Malaysia’s eight wild cat species prowl these forests.

“These apex predators face tremendous pressure from poaching, fuelled by the illegal trade in their body parts for traditional Chinese medicine,” said Dr. Gopalasamy Reuben Clements, lead investigator of Rimba’s Project Harimau Selamanya and Associate Professor at Sunway University.

More than 290 bird species have been documented in this area, 66 of which are considered threatened or near threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. This includes nine hornbill species, making this area one of the richest places in Southeast Asia for these magnificent birds.

Future phases will expand on the new state park and connect the previously unprotected forests to the 1,073,280 Taman Negara National Park, creating a vast protected landscape for the wide-ranging tigers. The project will also create a vast network of protected forests as recommended in the Malaysian Central Forest Spine Master Plan for Ecological Linkages, with the 1,073,280-acre Taman Negara National Park at the core and the new Lawit-Cenana State Park as a vital corridor.

The next steps will involve the establishment of ranger teams to patrol the state park and the development of sustainable funding mechanisms such as ecotourism and payments for ecosystem services to help support wildlife protection efforts.

With the support of our generous friends around the world, our partner Rimba and the SAVES Challenge, this project is a success. A special thank you to Geoffrey Chen and Angela Huang, Joan Hero and William Baumgardt, Katherine Hansen, Panthera, Stanley Watt, Tapir Apps GmbH, and Whitney and Elise DeCamp for their leadership support.

Today, Rainforest Trust has helped establish an important new reserve at the eastern gateway to Podocarpus National Park, which holds the greatest concentration of biodiversity in Ecuador. Rainforest Trust teamed up with our local partner Fundación Jocotoco to purchase the 370-acre private property that houses ecotourism facilities with the objective of helping protect the threatened tropical forests beside the national park.

The Copalinga Nature Reserve is an area half the size of Central Park and is an excellent site for ecotourism with its spectacular biodiversity, landscapes and an established eco-lodge that is already incorporated into the itinerary of tour groups visiting the region.

“This strategic land purchase is critical not only for the protection it provides to an imperiled national park, but because it offers high-quality accommodation facilities for ecotourism and thus an income stream to sustain conservation activities in this biodiverse region,”

Rainforest Trust CEO Paul Salaman said. “On a personal note, this reserve is a special one for our Rainforest Trust family, who came together and donated towards this project in memory of Beverly Ridgely, a long-time conservationist and father to Rainforest Trust President Bob Ridgely.”

Podocarpus National Park lies on the eastern flank of the towering Andes mountain chain and is recognized as one of the most biodiverse places in the world, with some 554 bird species having been recorded. While the Napo Giant Glass Frog is incredibly rare, it has been recently recorded near the Copalinga Reserve. The area also has the highest orchid diversity in Ecuador. Located in the pre-montane tropical forest zone, the newly purchased property has approximately 75 species of trees per acre.

In the tropical Andes, only an estimated 25 percent of the region’s habitat remains intact, with threat levels being particularly severe in the northern range from Venezuela to Ecuador. Although there are several large national parks in Ecuador, they lack adequate protection and at risk from logging. For example, the annual deforestation rate within and around Podocarpus National Park in southeastern Ecuador is up to almost 1 percent per year. This alarming figure, along with the small ranges of many threatened species, shows that additional protection in the buffer zone of the park is desperately needed to prevent the loss of rainforests.

Our vision is to expand Copalinga Nature Reserve further so as to provide a robust barrier to colonization and logging on the eastern flank of Ecuador’s most important National Park.

This purchase was made possible by the support of many friends but especially Jazmyn McDonald, Dale Henderson, the Baltimore Family Foundation and the SAVES Challenge. Thank you for your support!