Ecoregions of the Guianas

Ecoregions are relatively large areas of land or water that harbor a characteristic set of species, communities, dynamics and environmental conditions.

WWF is working with partners to develop and implement a new integrated approach to conservation at the ecoregional scale. These projects begin with the common recognition that the cumulative pressure of human activities requires action on a much larger scale than ever before if we are to conserve biodiversity while also meeting human needs. Ecoregion-based conservation aims to achieve results that work socially and economically as well as ecologically.

Global 200

WWF has identified 200 ecoregions worldwide, the Global 200, which are crucial to the conservation of global biodiversity. The great majority of the world's countries and territories have one or more Global 200 ecoregion partly or entirely within their borders.

WWF hopes that the Global 200 approach will help focus not only our own actions but also those of others to ensure the long-term future of these globally significant regions.

The Global 200 also assists in presenting the "big picture", encouraging partnerships and cooperative action to meet the challenge of increasing environmental destruction. Ecoregion-based conservation enables WWF to take a more comprehensive approach to biodiversity conservation, without sacrificing sensitivity to local biodiversity issues and socioeconomic conditions.

This larger-scale, more integrated approach will enable WWF to better assess both the proximate and root causes of biodiversity loss and to design policy and management interventions at appropriate levels, from international trade policies to site-specific park management or community development projects.

Moreover, it allows WWF to connect what it does at the local level with what needs to be done at national and international levels, to better link field with policy work, and to build new partnerships in carrying out this work.

The Guianan Ecoregion Complex

The Guianan Ecoregion Complex encompasses the following ecoregions:

Guayanan Highland Moist Forests
Guianan Moist Forests
Upper Amazon Rivers and Streams
Guianan Freshwater
Guayanan Highlands Forests
Guianan-Amazon Mangroves (Amazon-Orinoco Southern Caribbean Mangroves)

This ecoregion complex has international recognition for its conservation importance and has been included in WWF's Global 200 Campaign to conserve critical ecoregions worldwide. It is characterized by vast areas of pristine and undisturbed tropical rainforests, mountain ridges and savannas, and by extremely high level of endemism.

The forests of the Guianas, together with similar forests in Brazil and Venezuela, form one of the largest continuous tracts of pristine tropical rainforest left in the world. A combination of rich diversity of plants and animals (many unique to the region) and intact ecological processes make these forests critically important worldwide.

The forests of the Guianas were, until the last decade, under low pressure compared with other tropical forests. However, economic problems, especially in Suriname and Guyana, have created pressure on governments to increase logging and mining activities which threaten the forests. The freshwater rivers and streams of the Guianas, like the Amazon River, hold the greatest concentration of freshwater biodiversity in the world.

Until recently, they were in good condition. However, ill-planned and inappropriate logging and mining activities, over-hunting, over-fishing and increasing use of the rivers for transportation are threatening these fragile ecosystems. For example, siltation and mercury contamination caused by goldmining activities pose severe threats to the watersheds of the region, affecting both humans and wildlife.

The Guianas' coasts are also exceptionally diverse. The mangrove forests of the Guianas are among the most important and least degraded in the world, although they are increasingly threatened. Millions of migratory birds from North America winter along the coasts, while the beaches serve as nesting ground to four species of endangered marine turtles.

The largest and last remaining population of leatherback turtles in the world nests on the Guianas beaches. Given the worldwide decline in marine turtles, the Guianas coast has become one of the most important nesting areas for marine turtles in the world and the last refuge for the leatherback. Unfortunately, turtles nesting in the Guianas are increasingly under threat from over-harvesting of turtle eggs and incidental catch by near shore fishermen and shrimp trawlers.

Biodiversity vision

A key feature of ecoregion conservation (ERC) is a biodiversity vision. Biological visions are long-term strategic plans for biodiversity conservation, based on the best biodiversity information and biological insights available and clearly map how natural habitat must be distributed, and what conservation landscapes will be required to maintain them over the long-term.

"The aim of the biodiversity vision is to determine, from a conservation perspective, what the ecoregion should look like in the long term (>50 years) to conserve biodiversity and ecological processes in perpetuity, and how much and which combination of conservation options will be needed to achieve that goal." (Dinerstein et al. 2000).

The biodiversity vision serves as a reference point to ensure that the biologically and ecologically important features remain the core conservation targets throughout the ERC process, and serves as a framework for conservation action. Thus the promotion of sites for protection, restoration, low-impact resource extraction, ecotourism, and other conservation-oriented activities can then be determined by each site's role in the biodiversity vision, in a purposeful rather than a haphazard fashion.

Even in response to local emergencies in the course of developing an ERC program, a biodiversity vision "provides a useful framework for interpreting threats to the integrity of the entire ecoregion as well as to individual sites. Without a vision, we lose sight of the overarching conservation targets, we have difficulty establishing priorities, and we waste scarce resources." (Dinerstein, et al. 2000).

WWF Guianas is currently finalizing its bioviersity vision for the region.
The vision can be divided into 3 main parts:

the draft, or conceptual vision, which defines the vision goals and quantifies what needs to be accomplished to protect biodiversity in the ecoregion;
the final vision, which applies the conceptual vision to a map, specifying where habitat must be conserved to achieve the vision goals and combined ecoregion-scale biological and socio-economic data to identify a set of priority areas for conservation action; and
the action plan, which uses finer-scale socio-economic data to specify the management actions needed to minimize threats to focal biological elements that represent the ecoregion's biodiversity.

The Guianas:
- The Countries,
- The Ecoregions.
About WWF Guianas:
- Our staff.
Our Work:
Newsroom:
- Projects,
- Publications.
Jobs:
- Biodiversity Officer, Suriname.
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