Forests disappearing slowly
The loss of small patches of forests is visible to the residents of Costa Rica’s southern Caribbean coast.
“My heart breaks every day,” Cliffe says. “Here, two weeks ago they cut all the trees. I was used to seeing sloths in the branches.” She has a tattoo that shows her passion: a sloth with a baby in the tropical trees.
“They cut them illegally, as they do in Costa Rica. It’s not organizations that come and clear the area, it’s done at the individual level. A person cuts the trees so that they can build [on the land] and sell it to an external developer to make more money,” Cliffe says.
“We need to consider that there are no economic incentives for those who keep the rainforest in their territories. That’s why it’s important to build the tree bridges,” Cliffe adds. “This plot of land isn’t connected to anything anymore and the sloths need to go down to the ground to cross it.”
British zoologist Rebecca Cliffe, founder of the Sloth Conservation Foundation, looking for a sloth that lives in the forest next to the organization’s headquarters. Image by Monica Pelliccia.
“People are building very fast here, there are full residential complexes planned,” says Rodríguez, who has worked in environmental conservation in the region for years. “We are in a border area, there’s a lot of illegal [activity] and few controls. We need to press institutions to create a regulation.”
Costa Rica enjoys widespread forest cover thanks to a proliferation of protected areas. But the loss of multiple small patches of forest still registers.
“On the one hand, deforestation in the last seven years has tended to zero, with less than 3,000 hectares [7,400 acres] per year,” says Héctor Arce Benavides, who directs Costa Rica’s REDD+ strategy to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. “On the other hand, in our analyses, we’ve noticed the growth of the activity we call forest degradation: the extraction of biomass without a need of land-use change.
“These are small forest areas that are hard to assess with satellite images [because of] the extraction of big tress in the forest periphery,” Arce says.
Forest degradation in Costa Rica takes the form of loss of small patches of forest, and is one of the threats to sloths’ survival. Image by Monica Pelliccia.
Arce says greenhouse gas emissions as a result of forest degradation doubled in the past decade.
“We went from 1.3 million tons per year [in the period from 1998-2011], to 2.5 million tons in 2018 and 1029,” he says.
Local experts say the loss of forest cover has an economic impact, by making it increasingly difficult for people who own small forest plots to generate an income.
“This risk [of forest degradation] is established by a complex social dynamic: we have the land distributed to small- and medium-sized landowners who see no future in the development of their property,” says Felipe Carazo, manager of forest resources and a member of the Tropical Forest Alliance (TFA).
For these landowners, Carazo says, there are lucrative short-term gains to be made from logging. But the long-term fallout is that this chipping away at the forest “breaks up biological corridors [and is] why landscape management needs to consider these social factors.”
A three-toed sloth with her baby in a tree in front of Ana Baltodano and Michael Chizkov’s house. Image by Monica Pelliccia.
Threading a biological corridor through urban areas
Along Costa Rica’s southern Caribbean coast, the effort to string together the biological corridor threads through bars, restaurants and beachside hostels, where tourists and locals say they see sloths almost daily.
The idea is to continue along the beaches and forests, eventually linking up to the Jairo Mora Sandoval Gandoca-Manzanillo Mixed Wildlife Refuge.
A sloth crosses a rope bridge installed by the Sloth Conservation Foundation as part of its Connecting Gardens program. Image courtesy of the Sloth Conservation Foundation.
“The last bridge that we were going to install was going to pass above the road and the power cables,” Ávila says. “It’s one more danger for the sloths that live close, a mother and her baby that we call Luna and Sol [Moon and Sun], and that are facing possible electrocution on the electric lines.”
But before the Sloth Conservation Foundation team could install the bridge, “the trees were cut and we couldn’t do anything,” she says.
On some the bridges that they’ve already built, the team has installed camera traps, which have helped them verify the presence of 14 species using the bridges. These include mantled howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata), white-faced capuchins (Cebus capucinus), and opossums. The foundation says the challenge is to build bridges in deforested areas all over Costa Rica and across South and Central America, with the support of governments and aided by the strengthening of environmental laws.
A mantled howler monkey is caught on camera trap using a rope bridge installed by the Sloth Conservation Foundation as part of its Connecting Gardens initiative. Image courtesy of the Sloth Conservation Foundation.
Can humans and wildlife coexist?
A young sloth sleeps on a tree branch, hugging a trumpet tree leave. A few steps away, the waves crash on Playa Negra. Dog walkers passing nearby haven’t noticed the sloth, which conservationists have named Mango, thanks to its camouflage. Amelia Symeou, the ecology coordinator at the Sloth Conservation Foundation, spots it, though. She tracks seven individuals daily using their satellite-tagged collars. This monitoring of the population, bridges and camera traps is part of the foundation’s conservation strategy for the species.
In Costa Rica, there’s been little research about sloths, and no data on population estimates. What Rebecca Cliffe and her organization are doing in monitoring the sloths has therefore been a challenge, compounded by other difficulties and stereotypes that they’ve had to overcome.
“When I started working with sloths, I was only 18 years old and I was a woman coming to Costa Rica,” Cliffe says. “They didn’t take me seriously, not only in Costa Rica, also in my country, the United Kingdom.
“I still struggle,” she adds. “People are surprised when I tell them what I’ve done in the past and what I can do. I’m going to go on. The results of my work speak for themselves through the years. That’s what matters.”
Amelia Symeou, ecology coordinator at the Sloth Conservation Foundation, on a routine daily outing to track sloths in Playa Negra. Image by Monica Pelliccia.
Finding a way for wildlife and economic development to coexist in the region is a crucial challenge. “People need to use the land they own and we understand that,” Cliffe says. “But instead of chasing them, we want to work with the communities as a team.
“Sloths are trying to survive next to humans, we need to guarantee access to the trees, their refuge and food. If we do this, I’m sure we’ll still have them around in the future,” Cliffe says. “And also, taking care of biodiversity means more tourists and more revenue. It’s a win-win situation for nature and the local communities.”
A young sloth, named Mango by conservationists, lives in the forest in front of the Sloth Conservation Foundation’s headquarters. Image by Monica Pelliccia.
Banner image of a sloths crossing a rope bridge installed as part of the Connecting Gardens initiative by the Sloth Conservation Foundation.
This story was reported by Mongabay’s Latam team and first published here on our Latam site on Jan. 27, 2022.
Article published by Hayat
Animals, Archive, Conservation, Conservation Solutions, Deforestation, Endangered Species, Featured, Forests, Happy-upbeat Environmental, Mammals, Sloths, Tropical Forests, Wildlife, Wildlife Conservation
Central America, Costa Rica, Latin America
Source link : https://news.mongabay.com/2022/02/bridges-in-the-sky-carry-sloths-to-safety-in-costa-rica/
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Publish date : 2022-02-28 03:00:00
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