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Great Rivers Partnership Great Rivers The Partnership The Great Rivers Mississippi Upper Lower Paraguay-Paraná Yangtze River Science Press Releases |
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Pilot Projects The Great River’s Partnership’s focal river areas provide an ideal testing ground to for specific strategies. • Conservation planning underway in China will map areas that produce the most ecosystem services, then compare those areas with where the greatest biological diversity exists. The result will be a detailed catalogue of the most important places for conservation in China – places where conservation of natural areas could result in a win for biodiversity and a win for societies that benefit from these services. This information will create a detailed conservation and development plan for the Upper Yangtze River basin. The longer term aim is for the Chinese government to adopt this approach for similar assessments throughout China. • In the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, the Conservancy is undertaking projects with partners to determine the value of forested wetlands, including their ability to store flood waters, reduce pollutants and sediment, and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This project will develop predictive models and quantitative estimates of how conservation activities affect the ecosystem services of forested wetlands. It also will estimate the economic value of these services and assess whether projects aimed at improving ecosystem services also improve biological diversity. • In the Upper Mississippi River basin, the Conservancy is examining how floodplain restoration projects at Emiquon and Spunky Bottoms on the Illinois River are improving ecosystem services. The Conservancy also is investigating how agricultural and land management techniques can improve ecosystem services and conservation for the Mackinaw River in Illinois and the Pecatonica River in Wisconsin. • In Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, the Conservancy and partners are implementing a “payment for ecosystem services” approach. A portion of urban water user fees are being directed to rural landowners in Atlantic Forest watersheds of the Paraná River basin to support sustainable agricultural practices and forest protection and restoration. The goal is to restore 2.4 million acres of Atlantic Forest and generate millions of dollars in public funding for conservation. • In Brazil’s Cerrado, an expansive savanna that is the headwaters for the Paraguay River, the Conservancy and partners are developing a “cap and trade” system for grasslands exchange. Under the Brazilian Forest Code, landowners in the region are required to maintain 35 percent of their land as grasslands. Rather than many isolated patches of grasslands, the Conservancy is promoting trading through a grasslands exchange as a way to ensure the most biologically-important land is being protected. |
Fishing along the Upper Zambezi River in Africa © Pamela Wyeth
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