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In South America, southern temperate grasslands make up 10 percent of the continent, but less than 2 percent are protected.Go DeeperWhere We Work
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Now & Then: Southern Exposure —
Growing Conservation in the Americas
By Jennifer Winger
In 1964, The Nature Conservancy established a Latin American “desk,” manned by a single employee, at its national headquarters in Washington, D.C. Today, as the Conservancy prepares to open an office in Argentina, the organization employs 332 staff members in 15 Latin American countries.
Four decades of working in Central and South America have taught the Conservancy a few lessons about growing a conservation ethic on foreign soil.
“It was clear from the beginning that we couldn’t conduct business as usual — we couldn’t just buy land to protect it,” says Brad Northrup, the Conservancy’s first director of Caribbean operations, part of the Latin America program.
The land trust movement exploded in the United States in the early ’80s, but it had not yet reached south of the border. So in Latin America, the Conservancy would have to target public, rather than private, land.
“We needed to stop thinking of ownership and start thinking of large landscapes and how we could work with partners and communities to protect them,” says Northrup.
The Conservancy’s Parks in Peril program, established in 1990, did just that. Working with partners, the Conservancy empowered Latin American nongovernmental organizations to work with governments to strengthen the management of national parks.
Protected in name only, these “paper parks” had few financial resources or personnel to back them up. Since Parks in Peril began, it has operated in 45 protected areas in 17 countries and trained more than 1,000 rangers — but it has also paved the way for something larger.
“We’re not just looking at protected areas anymore,” says Jerry Touval, the Conservancy’s science director in South America. “We’re looking at all major habitat types and asking: What’s in crisis?”
Saving entire ecosystems rather than single species, habitats rather than hot spots, reflects a shift in conservation priorities. In South America, for example, though southern temperate grasslands make up nearly 10 percent of the continent, less than 2 percent are protected. With sheep ranching threatening the Patagonian steppe, the Conservancy now aims to conserve 10 percent of Argentina’s grasslands — some 40 million acres.
The Conservancy’s burgeoning work in Argentina is critical to its global mission but also hits close to home. Protecting species like migratory birds that travel between the continents means preserving habitat wherever the birds fly. “They are not their birds; they are not our birds,” says Northrup, “but they link us together.”
Nature picture credits (top to bottom): Photo © TNC (Nature Conservancy News); Konrad Wothe / Minden Pictures(Guanaco)
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