Nature & Culture International: NCI Supports Process for Declaration of 325,000 Acres of Conservation Areas in NW Peru

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NCI Supports Process for Declaration of 325,000 Acres of Conservation Areas in NW Peru
January 2010

The creation of five Regional Conservation Areas would protect 325,000 acres of priority sites in Peru's unique Tumbesian region

Commissioned by the Regional Governments of Tumbes, Piura and Lambayeque in northwestern Peru, and with financial support from the KfW Bankengruppe of Germany, NCI staff have prepared and submitted a series of technical documents with the goal of declaring five new Regional Conservation Areas (RCA’s) in northwestern Peru. These areas would preserve over 325,000 acres of priority sites for conservation in Peru’s unique Tumbesian region, and the Peruvian Environmental Ministry is expected to approve the creation of all five areas later this year.

Limon Within the biological corridor of the critically threatened White-winged Guan (Penelope albipennis) two areas have been proposed (the Dry Forests of Salitral-Huarmaca with 121,100 acres and the Forests of Moyán-Palacios with 30,400 acres), which would not only protect 40% of the global distribution of this endemic bird, but also a number of valuable and threatened dry forest species. Another RCA has been proposed over the threatened carob tree forests of Huancrupe – La Calera (21,200 acres), which have an additional value due to the recent discovery of a number of pre-Incan archaeological ruins. In the Sechura Desert Ecoregion, an RCA has also been proposed for a unique wetland complex (Virrilá Estuary and the Lakes of Ramón-Ñapique, 133,200 acres), which is an important stopover point for migratory waterfowl. Finally, in Tumbes a proposal to create the Faical Angostura RCA (21,700 acres) aims to increase the equatorial dry forest area protected by the Cerros de Amotape National Park, the core area of Peru’s Northwest Biosphere Reserve.

In addition to these five important areas, other proposals under final development include an RCA that would protect the southern foothills of the Amotapes mountain range (60,000 acres), whose thorny shrub vegetation is home to one of the largest populations of the endemic and threatened Peruvian Plantcutter (Phytotoma raimondii), and the mangroves of San Pedro (7,600 acres), the southern limit of the natural distribution of mangroves in the South Pacific.

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