Jaguar and mammal conservation across agricultural landscapes in Colombia: species ecology and sustainable futures, an interdisciplinary approach

As agriculture continues to expand across the tropics there is an urgent need to assess its effects on biodiversity and understand how to reconcile agricultural expansion with conservation and overall sustainable development. Protected areas are not large enough to sustain viable mammal populations, thus it is important to understand how to integrate agricultural regions into conservation strategies. The aims of this thesis were (1) to improve our understanding of jaguars and other medium-large terrestrial mammals across increasing agricultural landscapes; (2) assess the impact of human land uses such as oil palm cultivation on these species; and (3) inform strategies to reconcile biodiversity conservation with other sustainability aspects and regional development in rural areas in Colombia. The methods included field surveys using camera trapping, ecological analysis (e.g. capture-recapture and occupancy models), and scenario and network analysis combined with sustainability assessment. The findings conclude that there is an effect of agriculture on jaguar populations as densities were lower than in comparable natural areas, however there were resident individuals and breeding, highlighting that modified areas can be important for jaguar long-term survival and connectivity. Wetlands were the only variable explaining jaguar occurrence, while forests impacted puma's occupancy positively and were a predictor of mammal species richness. Conversely, both oil palm and pasture affected several mammal species negatively, and the remaining ones only displayed limited affinity to these land covers, showing that the expansion of oil palm plantations and pastures constitutes a threat for felids and mammals in general. These results suggest that maintaining natural areas such as forests and wetlands across agricultural regions is key to mammal survival, pointing at a land sparing strategy. Further oil palm expansion, when inevitable, should occur on pastures since they displayed limited to no conservation value for jaguars and other mammals. Overall, agriculture impacts mammal communities by decreasing their diversity and evenness, while increasing dominance, comparatively to pristine regions. The effect on species richness was not entirely evident, demonstrating that agricultural regions are not necessarily biological deserts. Data also show that jaguars did not affect the occupancy of other felid species and were a positive predictor of mammal species richness, hence conservation strategies focused on this declining keystone species can benefit the wider mammal community, even in modified regions. This thesis also highlights that rural areas can provide for both people and wildlife if the right conditions are in place. Under the current situation the main agricultural sectors (i.e. cattle ranching and oil palm cultivation) affect wildlife and other aspects of sustainability negatively. Both adopting a stronger regulatory framework with land use planning and applying incentive schemes are improvements, as they would enable to maintain natural habitats that are crucial for jaguar and other species, while improving overall sustainability. Relevant recommendations to reconcile biodiversity conservation with overall sustainable development include the design and adoption of strategic land use planning, making agricultural subsidies conditional to social and environmental standards, consolidating local institutions, designing incentives to foster the implementation of good agricultural practices, favouring small farmers, and creating a demand for certified agricultural commodities. Finally, this research proves that achieving conservation across agricultural regions is inherently complex. Interdisciplinary approaches are needed to study such landscapes and provide solutions that are effective and locally-relevant

Conserving predators across agricultural landscapes in Colombia: habitat use and space partitioning by jaguars, pumas, ocelots, and jaguarundis

Habitat loss and degradation continue to increase across the tropics. Consequently there is an urgent need to understand their effects, as well as species’ habitat requirements and distribution within human-modified landscapes, in order to reconcile agricultural expansion with the conservation of endangered and keystone species, like the felids. We combined camera trapping and remote sensing-generated data into occupancy modelling to study the habitat use and space partitioning by four sympatric felids across an agricultural landscape in Colombia. The area includes cattle ranching and oil palm cultivation, an emerging land use in the Neotropics. Strong determinants of species occupancy were wetlands for jaguars (positive effect); water proximity (positive effect) for pumas; and pasture (negative effect) for ocelots and jaguarundis. Felid species except ocelots were never recorded in oil palm areas. Our results suggest that to align development with the conservation of top predators it is key to maintain areas of forest and wetland across agricultural landscapes and targeting agricultural and oil palm expansion to already-modified areas like pastures, which showed limited conservation value in the region. Lastly, as there was no spatial segregation between the studied felid species, conservation strategies to simultaneously benefit this guild seem possible even in modified landscape

Habitat modification destabilizes spatial associations and persistence of Neotropical carnivores.

Spatial relationships between sympatric species underpin biotic interactions, structure ecological communities, and maintain ecosystem health. However, the resilience of interspecific spatial associations to human habitat modification remains largely unknown, particularly in tropical regions where anthropogenic impacts are often greatest. We applied multi-state multi-species occurrence models to camera trap data across nine tropical landscapes in Colombia to understand how prominent threats to forest ecosystems influence Neotropical carnivore occurrence and interspecific spatial associations, with implications for biotic interactions. We show that carnivore occurrence represents a delicate balance between local environmental conditions and interspecific interactions that can be compromised in areas of extensive habitat modification. The stability of carnivore spatial associations depends on forest cover to mediate antagonistic encounters with apex predators and structurally intact forests to facilitate coexistence between competing mesocarnivores. Notably, we demonstrate that jaguars play an irreplaceable role in spatially structuring mesocarnivore communities, providing novel evidence on their role as keystone species. With increasing global change, conserving both the extent and quality of tropical forests is imperative to support carnivores and preserve the spatial associations that underpin ecosystem stability and resilience. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Joining the dots Global Challenges and the Valuing Nature Agenda

The Valuing Nature Network aims to improve understanding of the value of nature in both economic and non-economic terms, and improve the use of these valuations in decision making. It funds interdisciplinary research and builds links between researchers and people who make decisions that affect nature in business, policy-making, and in practice. The Global Challenges Research Fund aims to support research that directly contributes to the sustainable development and welfare of people in developing countries. • A review of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (see Annex I) and their targets revealed a number of themes that have links to the Valuing Nature Network research agenda, specifically: the governance of natural resources; conservation of natural capital and sustainable use of ecosystems; environmentally, socially and economically sustainable agro-forestry systems; and knowledge exchange at the science-policy interface. Assessing the extent and depth of existing research in these areas, and identifying networks of current research collaboration, can enable the identification of key opportunities for advancing research into the natural environment that also seeks to address the challenges associated with international development

Impending anthropogenic threats and protected area prioritization for jaguars in the Brazilian Amazon

Jaguars (Panthera onca) exert critical top-down control over large vertebrates across the Neotropics. Yet, this iconic species have been declining due to multiple threats, such as habitat loss and hunting, which are rapidly increasing across the New World tropics. Based on geospatial layers, we extracted socio-environmental variables for 447 protected areas across the Brazilian Amazon to identify those that merit short-term high-priority efforts to maximize jaguar persistence. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and comparisons of measures of central tendency. Our results reveal that areas containing the largest jaguar densities and the largest estimated population sizes are precisely among those confronting most anthropogenic threats. Jaguars are threatened in the world’s largest tropical forest biome by deforestation associated with anthropogenic fires, and the subsequent establishment of pastures. By contrasting the highest threats with the highest jaguar population sizes in a bivariate plot, we provide a shortlist of the top-10 protected areas that should be prioritized for immediate jaguar conservation efforts and 74 for short-term action. Many of these are located at the deforestation frontier or in important boundaries with neighboring countries (e.g., Peruvian, Colombian and Venezuelan Amazon). The predicament of a safe future for jaguars can only be ensured if protected areas persist and resist downgrading and downsizing due to both external anthropogenic threats and geopolitical pressures (e.g., infrastructure development and frail law enforcement)

Richness, diversity, and factors influencing occupancy of mammal communities across human-modified landscapes in Colombia

As human-modified landscapes are increasing in the tropics, it becomes critical to understand how they affect mammal communities to reconcile conservation and development. We combined land cover information and camera-trapping data to explore the effects of agricultural expansion on mammals in the Magdalena river valley of Colombia. We estimated species diversity, evenness, and dominance across two agricultural landscapes, modified by cattle ranching and oil palm cultivation. We further assessed which variables influence species- and community-level occupancy using multi-species occupancy models. Results highlight that modified landscapes display lower species richness, diversity and evenness, and higher dominance than more pristine sites. Residual forest cover and distance to water had significant effect on community occupancy (positive and negative respectively). Forests were particularly important for pumas, ocelots, lowland pacas, Central American agoutis, and crab-eating raccoons while wetlands had a positive effect on jaguars, the apex predator in the region. The influence of anthropogenic pressure was not clearly evident, though pastures were not valuable habitats for any mammal species, as they had a negative, yet not significant, effect on species and community occupancy. In light of rapidly expanding agriculture across the tropics, our findings highlight species-specific responses to disturbance that can inform land use planning and conservation policies. We stress the conservation value of forest and wetland habitat to mammal occupancy in heterogeneous ecosystems. Moreover, our results demonstrate that oil palm and crop expansion should target existing pastures, which displayed limited conservation value for Neotropical mammals but occupy vast swathes of land across Latin America

Reflecting on the role of human‐felid conflict and local use in big cat trade

Illegal trade in big cat (Panthera spp.) body parts is a prominent topic in scientific and public discourses concerning wildlife conservation. While illegal trade is generally acknowledged as a threat to big cat species, we suggest that two enabling factors have, to date, been under‐considered. To that end, we discuss the roles of human‐felid conflict, and “local” use in illegal trade in big cat body parts. Drawing examples from across species and regions, we look at generalities, contextual subtleties, ambiguities, and definitional complexities. We caution against underestimating the extent of “local” use of big cats and highlight the potential of conflict killings to supply body parts

Jaguar Densities across Human-Dominated Landscapes in Colombia: The Contribution of Unprotected Areas to Long Term Conservation

Large carnivores such as jaguars (Panthera onca) are species of conservation concern because they are suffering population declines and are keystone species in their ecosystems. Their large area requirements imply that unprotected and ever-increasing agricultural regions can be important habitats as they allow connectivity and dispersal among core protected areas. Yet information on jaguar densities across unprotected landscapes it is still scarce and crucially needed to assist management and range-wide conservation strategies. Our study provides the first jaguar density estimates of Colombia in agricultural regions which included cattle ranching, the main land use in the country, and oil palm cultivation, an increasing land use across the Neotropics. We used camera trapping across two agricultural landscapes located in the Magdalena River valley and in the Colombian llanos (47–53 stations respectively; >2000 trap nights at both sites) and classic and spatially explicit capture-recapture models with the sex of individuals as a covariate. Density estimates were 2.52±0.46–3.15±1.08 adults/100 km2 in the Magdalena valley, whereas 1.12±0.13–2.19±0.99 adults/100 km2 in the Colombian llanos, depending on analysis used. We suggest that jaguars are able to live across unprotected human-use areas and co-exist with agricultural landscapes including oil-palm plantations if natural areas and riparian habitats persist in the landscape and hunting of both jaguar and prey is limited. In the face of an expanding agriculture across the tropics we recommend land-use planning, adequate incentives, regulations, and good agricultural practices for range-wide jaguar connectivity and survival

Achieving sustainable development in rural areas in Colombia: Future scenarios for biodiversity conservation under land use change

Agricultural expansion is a complex land use change phenomenon with deep environmental and socio-economic consequences, especially across tropical countries where most of this expansion is occurring. Here we use scenario and network analysis combined with sustainability assessment to understand the drivers of landscape change and their effects on sustainable development in Colombia’s rural areas, using the Central Magdalena region as a case study, and ultimately informing strategies to reconcile agricultural expansion with biodiversity conservation and rural development. Using this approach we investigated three environmental and agricultural policy scenarios: the Business as Usual scenario, enforcing a stronger regulatory framework, and adopting incentives. Our analysis show that the Business as Usual scenario is not supported by stakeholders and negatively affects most sustainability objectives with the predominant agricultural sectors in the region (cattle ranching and oil palm) not improving social inequality, and threatening biodiversity, natural resources, and food security. Both alternative scenarios improve overall sustainability, including biodiversity. Therefore to reconcile agricultural expansion, biodiversity and sustainable development, it is important to adopt a stronger regulatory and enforcement framework at different administrative levels, as well as incentive schemes focusing on small holders. Our study also shows that history cannot be ignored when thinking about the future and sustainability especially in areas with legacies of strong inequalities caused by armed conflict. Finally, we suggest that combining scenario analysis, network analysis, and sustainability assessment is a useful methodology for studying land use changes holistically, exploring complex systems at different scales, and informing locally-relevant strategies and recommendations, ultimately enabling science to be proactive

El lado oscuro del imperio: La violación de los derechos humanos por los Estados Unidos

Examen de la política de derechos humanos practicada por el gobierno de Estados Unidos tanto en el terreno internacional como en el doméstico, y sus implicaciones para los procesos de autodeterminación nacional de los países subdesarrollados.Fil: Boron, Atilio Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Vlahusic, Andrea Valeria. No especifíca