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1 Finding and Conserving the Little Spotted Cat of Yungas, Argentina

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1 Finding and Conserving the Little Spotted Cat of Yungas, Argentina 1 Finding and conserving the little spotted cat of Yungas, Argentina Project ID: 0615010 Host country: Argentina. Study site: Acambuco Provincial Reserve (Salta Province), Lotes 50-51 Provincial Reserve and PanAmerican Energy Properties. Field surveys: 18-jun-11 to 21-sep-11; 15- nov-11 to 03-mar-12 Organizations: CETAS, CONICET. The overall aim: Generate distribution and ecological information and to raise awareness for the conservation of Oncilla ( Leopardus tigrinus ). Griet An Erica Cuyckens Correspondence: CETAS - Ecología de Comunidades, Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias, Alberdi 47, 4600 San Salvador de Jujuy, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] http://centroestudiosterrit.wix.com/cetas 2 Table of Contents Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ 4 Section 1: ....................................................................................................................................... 5 Summary .................................................................................................................................... 5 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 5 Project members ........................................................................................................................ 7 Methodology .............................................................................................................................. 8 Section 3: ..................................................................................................................................... 25 Conclusion................................................................................................................................ 25 Problems encountered and lessons learnt ................................................................................ 25 In the future ............................................................................................................................. 26 Section 4: Appendices .................................................................................................................. 27 Appendix 1. Names of cameras and geographic position ...................................................... 27 Appendix 2. Question survey to school children. ................................................................... 28 Appendix 3. Educational material developed for the Project ................................................. 29 Appendix 4. Brochure about cat species in Yungas ................................................................ 38 Appendix 5. Complete list of species registered by camera traps during the project. ............ 40 Appendix 6. Abstract of the presentation during IV Congreso binacional de Ecologia (Buenos Aires, August 2010) .............................................................................................................. 43 Appendix 7. Poster presented during X Congreso Internacional de Manejo de Fauna Silvestre en la Amazonía y Latinoamérica, 4 al 18 de Mayo, 2012, Salta – Argentina. .......................... 44 3 .................. 44 Appendix 8. Abstract “Primer congreso y VIII jornadas cientifico-tecnicas de la facultad de ciencias agrarias, UNJu” 15-19 Octubre 2012 ....................................................................... 45 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 46 Address list and web links ......................................................................................................... 47 4 Acknowledgements Thanks for information on the study area to Luciana Cristobal and for GIS and shapefiles to Silvia Pacheco (ProYungas). For presence points of the species we are grateful to Pablo Perovic and Agustin Paviolo. We received help with field work from Pablo Perovic and Parques Nacionales (National Parks of Argentina), Ariel Cazón, Federico Luna, Gloria Ramos, César Bracamonte, Diego Delgado and Sebastian Albanesi. We were able to extent the project and realize a second field survey thanks to Fundación ProYungas, For permission to work in Acambuco: Ministerio de Recursos Naturales (Salta) and in property of PanAmerican Energy: staff of PanAmerican Energy, Tartagal, Salta, especially Eugenia Barros. We thank Parkrangers: Ariel Cazón, Gloria Ramos and Mariano Libua and teacher Alejandro Montes and especially all school children and their teachers from Acambuco, El Chorrito, Macueta and Campo Largo schools. 5 Section 1: Summary Oncilla or little spotted cat ( Leopardus tigrinus ) is a Vulnerable small felid which has a wide distribution range (from Costa Rica to northern Argentina) dough, it is locally very rare. To delineate conservation priorities, we need to accurately know the geographic distribution of the species and indicate the threats of changes in human land use. For successful in situ conservation local human communities are very important and children are key in this process. In this project we developed a potential distribution map for Oncilla and applied a Jack-knife analysis to indicate the most important variables. We developed a map indicating areas where the species is already lost and indicate priority sites for its conservation. To analyze the community of big and medium sized mammals that lives with Oncilla we did 5 camera trap surveys (5 cameras each during 90 days each). We realized a conservation campaign in 4 local schools, analyzing their knowledge of native mammals and felids. The school they study explained their knowledge of native mammals, probably due to distance from nearest town and proximity to Bolivian rural areas. We successfully created a risk map, indicating potential distribution, losses due to human land use and areas of high conservation priority. We did not photograph Oncilla and could evidence presence of Oncilla only through oral interviews with local inhabitants; indicating the extreme rareness of Oncilla in Yungas and its probably low densities. This species is probably the rarest cat species in Yungas and so needs urgent conservation actions. Introduction Oncilla or little spotted cat ( Leopardus tigrinus ) ranges from Costa Rica to northern Argentina. The species is considered as Vulnerable on international (de Oliveira et al., 2008) and national level (Aprile et al., 2012). It is rare in the majority of its geographical extension and patchily distributed. Information in order to conserve this species is needed and totally lacks in Argentean Yungas. 6 To delineate conservation priorities, we need to accurately know the geographic distribution of the species. As with many rare species (Hernández et al., 2006; Thorn et al., 2009), there are very limited data on the distribution of Oncilla; in the Yungas region there were only 9 presence records (Perovic, 2002). Changes in human land use can threaten this typically forest felid, so it should be indicated where those losses occurred and also indicate areas of high conservation priority, considering areas of high presence probability and relative big extension that could serve to protect the species in the future. Little is known about its ecology in Argentina; for example the environmental variables that define its distribution are unknown, although this is crucial for management and prediction of the effect of climate change for example. The biological community that share habitat with Oncilla in Yungas is not very well known. Finally, local human communities are important in conservation efforts (Danielsen et al., 2007), so there is need to know how much local villagers know about the species and to reinforce the potential knowledge they have. Children are an important group in this process as they constitute the future of a place and it is more easily to create awareness in them. Study Area: This study took place in the northwest of Argentina, in the ecoregion of Yungas (Fig. 1), Yungas are vital to provide water in the region, offer a landscape resource and has a great cultural diversity. They harbour together with the upper Paraná forests of Misiones more than halve of the biodiversity of Argentina and cover less than 2% of its surface (Brown et al., 2006). The Southern Andean Yungas begins in southern Bolivia and continues south into Argentina. It is a humid forest region between the drier Gran Chaco region to the east and the dry, high altitude Puna region to the west. The Yungas forests are extremely diverse, ranging from moist lowland forest to evergreen montane forest and cloud forests. The terrain is extremely rugged and varied, contributing to the ecological diversity and richness. A complex mosaic of habitats occurs with changing latitude (-22º to -24º) as well as elevation (400 to 2500 msl). There are high levels of biodiversity and species endemism. Our study area is the Bermejo Basin Biogeographic Sector 7 (Navarro & Maldonado, 2002). Our study site was the provincial Reserve Acambuco. In this reserve are several human populations (Chorrito, Acambuco, Macueta and Campo Largo among the most important. The surrounding areas of the reserve are property of PanAmerican Energy and they realize petrol extraction. Fig 1. Location of study site. Project members Erica Cuyckens,
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