The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a news item on our publication “National REDD+ overcomes gold and logging: the potential for cleaning up profit chains”. The article analyzes relationships between carbon stocks, markets, conservation, sustainability and indigenous peoples in Guyana.
Monitoring biodiversity and the environment is extremely challenging, especially in the tropics. Brazil’s Center for Biological Research’s (CENBam) PPBio program is a novel, versatile and extremely ambitious approach to enhance the study of biodiversity in the tropics. The program presents a systematic approach to sampling that was first deployed across the Amazon basin. It now is also found in other Brazilian biomes, and in Australia, Argentina and Liberia. This may well be the largest systematically organized biodiversity research effort in the world. PPBio has been operating without funding for the last few years, because of this it is in danger of collapsing. The Brazilian tendency, and that of funders as well, is to reinvent the wheel and come up with a new system each time. Efforts should focus instead of consolidating existing, proven systems like PPBio and leveraging the significant investments those systems have already received.
We used a technically approved United Nations Forest Reference Emission Level (FREL) submission and Opt-In Mechanism to assess how fifteen indigenous communities with tenured forestland may financially benefit from national REDD+. We provide a first-time assessment whether field estimates of the average carbon density of mature forests managed by fifteen forest-dependent communities equals that of nearby unmanaged mature forest, as this could affect REDD+ payment levels. We conclude that, notwithstanding some pending issues, Guyana’s national REDD+ program could be very beneficial for FDP, even under a modest United States (US) $5 unit carbon price.
Free access to full paper: http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/9/5/231
A conservação de espécies cinegéticas neotropicais deve levar em conta os meios de vida e necessidades alimentares das populações humanas locais.
Artigo: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0152659
Stanford University reports on how our computer model simulating sustainability sheds light on how modern interventions can affect tropical forests and indigenous peoples. Our computer simulation shows that carefully designing government interactions with rural indigenous people is critical for protecting the sustainability of people, wildlife and the land.
Read the full article here: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2016/march/amazon-model-fragoso-031116.html
Our latest publication is out in Frontiers in Ecology and The Environment. We examine the socio-environmental sustainability of protected areas inhabited by indigenous and rural peoples and describe how socio-ecological change and development (e.g., forest clear-cutting outside indigenous areas, religious conversion, improved child mortality rates and introduction of resources from outside) outside these areas influences the sustainability of biodiversity, forest cover, and people inside. There are some surprising results so read the publication!
Read the article:
Jose Fragoso was honored to serve as a panelist at the amazing Women in Science Summit at the California Academy of sciences on January 28, 2016. Amazing people described how they maintained family life, dealt with bias challenges and succeeded in their careers. Speakers included: Jane Goodall (Gombe Reserve), Sylvia Earle (National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence), Dawn Wright (ESRI), Pam Matson (Stanford University), Jane Lubchenco (former head of NOAA), Kathy Sullivan (the first woman to walk in space) Tom Lovejoy, Joan Roughgarden and others. Google Hangouts live streamed the event.
Watch the full event and all speakers at (Jose’s begins speaking at 7:41:15 into the recording. He recommends watching all the presenters.): (https://plus.google.com/events/chqqlc7dt0em8j65g0nvo7o35uc).
Stressing a need for scientists to occasionally step out of university classrooms and professional meetings, Jose Fragoso gave a slide presentation on the Amazon forest, its animals, plants and people at the Encinal Elementary School in Atherton, California, USA on Jan. 28, 2016. The rapt attention and amazing questions from the children reinforced the view that scientists should reach out more to children and other members of the public. About 100 grade five students, along with parents and teachers, attended the presentation.
Congratulations to Takuya (Tak) Iwamura, former post-doc with the Fragoso lab on attaining a tenure-track position as senior lecturer at the Zoology Department, Tel Aviv University (https://en-lifesci.tau.ac.il/profile/takuya). Tak will continue his work on understanding biodiversity loss using a natural and human systems approach, spatial modelling and systematic conservation planning .
On November 10, 2015, large numbers of white-lipped peccaries moved across the town of Caracaraí in Roraima State, Brazil. Many became trapped in yards or were killed by townspeople. Caracaraí has a population of over 10,000 people. Jose Fragoso (1997, 2004) described these exceptional movements as possible population level dispersal events or perhaps a herd that abandoned its usual home area after long term persecution by humans.
Newspaper story, photos and Fragoso articles here: Continue reading “Large numbers of white-lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari) invade Amazonian town”
Fragoso Lab 