The Amazon is one of the world’s biodiversity homes and provider of a number of key ecologic processes and services for mankind. With a total of 7.3 million km2, it is the largest tropical region in the world containing the greatest river network in the planet. For this reason, its global influence in the hydrological and climatic dynamics provides a valuable percentage of 15%^[1] freshwater discharge into the oceans of the world, as well as its forests^[2], a really gigantic carbon storage and one of the most critical elements in the temperature reduction of the Earth.

In addition, just considering, for example, the Brazilian Amazon territory, 20 million inhabitants, constituted by 385 indigenous and tribal communities^[3], may be quantified. There are 8 countries (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guiana, Peru and Venezuela) sharing part of the Amazon, and their communities are inter-connected with this territory, which makes it still richer in its global cultural diversity. However, due to the poor management of the resources and infrastructure at appropriate scales, its future is put at serious risk. The anthropic pressure resulting from the financial system, affect its sustainability tremendously, overfishing, agro-industrial expansion, deforestation, construction of hydroelectric plants, mining exploitation, lack of unified management of the territory, among other, fostering the conditions for national and international criminal increase and threats to all ecosystems at the same time.

In order to preserve the ecological integrity of the Amazon Basin, the wildlife and the well-being of the communities depending on it, an integrated basin management is necessary, with an ecosystems-based approach. A first basin classification based on ecosystems precisely arose as a tool/solution to integrate/articulate a perspective in the Amazon Biome within the basins system and it was published in 2016. The article of  Venticinque et al. (2016) represents an ecological point of view of the basins, defining them according to the flooding pulse and its effect over connectivity, functioning and preservation of the Amazon aquatic and semi-aquatic habitats.

Since its publication, this classification was successfully used for diverse and multiple-scale preservation and management objectives, however, a very important challenge for its implementation was that the scope did not cover the entire Amazon Biome. The new Pan-Amazon basins classification (Eduardo Venticinque, Bruce Forsberg, Ronaldo Barthem, and Michael Goulding, 2021) addresses this challenge, and offers a useful spatial reduction to make integrated analysis of the aquatic, semi-aquatic and land systems at the Amazon Biome scale, or at different hydrographic scales, such as a specific basin. This spatial framework may be particularly useful for a great variety of users in the investigation, evaluation and monitoring of the aquatic and semi-aquatic systems, not only due to the hierarchy of the basins, but also to the outstanding position granted to the regions accredited under the category of “Main Stem’’ that contain the flood areas along the big rivers and basins of small water flows located in solid ground but under the pulse influence of flooding.

The most important improvements of the Pan-Amazon basins classification (Venticinque et al. 2021) are:

1) The spatial coverage extension now includes the entire Amazon biome and the Amazon, Tocantis, Guianas, Orinoco, Paranaiba, headwaters of the Parana River basins and coast basins north and south of the Amazon River.

2) The number of hierarchical basin levels increased with the new classification to 12 levels (instead of 7 under the previous classification.) This database is constituted by a hierarchical system of 12 hydrographic basins that is now formed by 142.572 basins in the most detailed level (BL 12).

3) The new basins classification is now based on a digital model with a better capacity to create the drainage network and outline the basins in the flooded or very plain areas, the DEM-MERIT (Yamazaki et al 2019).

4) The improved basins classification includes an excellent definition of the coast basins and a substantial improvement of the semi-automatic edition of the basins.

Following the principles of Open Science, this new basins classification has free access and is available at:

-Extended database at the following DOI ,

-Maps: maps maybe downloaded here.

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Refferences:

-Eduardo Venticinque, Bruce Forsberg, Ronaldo Barthem, and Michael Goulding. 2021. Pan-Amazon Basins: A spatial Framework for the Conservation of Aquatic Ecosystems in the Amazon-Orinoco-Guianas Region. urn:node:KNB. doi:10.5063/BG2MDZ DOI .

-Yamazaki D., D. Ikeshima, J. Sosa, P.D. Bates, G.H. Allen, T.M. Pavelsky. MERIT Hydro: A high-resolution global hydrography map based on latest topography datasets Water Resources Research, vol.55, pp.5053-5073, 2019, [doi:10.1029/2019WR024873] https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR024873

-Dissemination Manual: A new GIS-Based river basin Framework https://doi.org/10.19121/2021.Report.40050

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^[1] “Humid tropical forest clearing from 2000 to 2005 quantified by using multitemporal and multiresolution remotely sensed data” (2008). Matthew C. Hansen, Stephen V. Stehman, Peter V. Potapov, Thomas R. Loveland, John R. G. Townshend, Ruth S. DeFries rdefries@mail.umd.edu, Kyle W. Pittman, Belinda Arunarwati, Fred Stolle, Marc K. Steininger, Mark Carroll, and Charlene DiMiceli. (Fecha de consulta 29 de Marzo de 2022) Consultado en: http://www.pnas.org/content/105/27/9439

^[2] Executive Summary, Science Panel for the Amazon, Amazon Assessment Report 2021. https://www.theamazonwewant.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/SPA-Executive-Summary-11Mb.pdf

^[3] Organización del Tratado de Cooperación Amazónica (OCTA). (2014). El cambio climático en la región amazónica: Acciones de la Organización del Tratado de Cooperación Amazónica. Brasilia: Organización del Tratado de Cooperación Amazónica . p. 5

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In Colombia there are more than 48 thousand wetlands that represent about 26 percent of its continental territory. Photography: Colombian Amazon Region-Carolina Obregón Sánchez.

Colombia is a country with more than 48 thousand wetlands that represent about 26 percent of its continental territory. Part of its history is linked to these ecosystems that since ancient times have defined not only the amphibious nature of their soils, but also that of indigenous peoples, farmers or Afro-descendants, that is, they are amphibious cultures. However, nowadays 24.2 percent of these wetlands are transformed by livestock, agriculture and deforestation, and by an urban and construction process unknown to them for decades: in large cities such as Bogotá, for example, there were close to 50 thousand hectares of wetlands 60 years ago, of which only 727 hectares remain due, in part, to the fact that entire neighborhoods have been built on them. 

Although this country has a National Wetlands Policy (since 2002) and different standards, management plans and projects that support the management of wetlands, there are several challenges that must be overcome to achieve an adequate management of these ecosystems; such as large-scale planning, making visible the close relationship between wetlands and human activities or strengthening governance at different levels.

Integrate other approaches

Wetlands are highly dynamic ecosystems that depend on equally dynamic natural and anthropic processes: the elements that define them are climate, water levels in rivers, the water cycle, the state of forests, soils, or biodiversity, or human beings and their activities. Until now, the study and management of wetlands in Colombia was done from specific approaches (hydric, hydrological, biological, ecological, etc.) that were unaware of this dynamic.

Although progress has been made in integrating different approaches both in wetland research and management, Sandra Vilardy, who holds a doctorate in ecology with extensive experience in wetland ecology, assures that it is necessary to strengthen the understanding of these ecosystems from their different dimensions (biological, ecological, water, hydrological, etc.) and scales (starting from local areas to regional or cross-border), but from a comprehensive perspective.

“There are no minor issues or topics. Some approaches are purely hydric, others hydrological, others ecological, and all are key to understanding how a wetland works; but it is necessary to start observing them on a larger scale in order to foresee the possible conflicts that may be generated by planning that excludes some of them”, states Wilson Ramírez, coordinator of the Biodiversity Territorial Management Program at the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute (from which restoration processes of this country wetland areas have been carried out). In this country there are experiences in different wetland areas, such as Magdalena-Cauca or La Mojana, in which management has ignored, for example, the socio-ecological character of wetlands, that is, the relationship between natural resources and human populations, generating conflicts over the use of water or soil or fishing resources, explains Wilson Ramírez.

Wetlands are socio-ecological systems in which the natural environment-human population relationship is decisive: these ecosystems provide food for self-consumption or wood to build houses or serve as natural transportation routes, they also define ways of life and well-being of many human populations, at the same time that they are transformed by them. It has been and will continue to be so. Hence, integrating other approaches (such as Nature-Based Solutions) that take this relationship into account, in addition to the multidimensional and multiscale view, is a challenge in wetland management.

Promoting knowledge about wetlands

In Colombia, wetlands are a little-known ecosystem, in fact, they are understood as “simple natural ecosystems” or are seen as “flooded areas that hinder development”. Sandra Vilardy explains that technical-scientific knowledge about these ecosystems tends to “remain within the heart of institutions” in technical reports or scientific articles that few know about, when one of the greatest challenges is that this knowledge transcends not only the common citizen but to those entities and people who are in charge of environmental or territorial planning or organization. In Colombia there are more and more people, from different disciplines, interested in providing solutions that consider the complexity of wetland areas, as well as the transformations that have occurred and are occurring due to issues such as climate change, explains the researcher, who adds that “the greatest challenge is that time is breathing down our necks and a new awareness of what is happening is urgent.”

What IPBES did– collecting global information on biodiversity and ecosystem services and putting it together and analyzing it to present a current picture – is a good example of how knowledge can be spun and explained to be useful, says Vilardy. But if it is about reaching those who make decisions about environmental, economic, development or land use policies (national, regional or local governments, for example) or those who implement the actions derived from said policies (technical, industrial sectors or communities with whom interventions are carried out), this is an exercise that can and should also be enriched with the transfer of knowledge and the installation of technical capacities. To reach the common citizen, there are currently many tools to share knowledge about the country’s wetlands. Social networks or digital media, for example, are platforms through which the story of wetlands can be told and the way in which they have influenced the amphibious nature of the country, its transformations and the pressures they face due to human activities.

The challenges in wetland management in Colombia are similar to those in other countries: addressing wetlands on a large scale, strengthening governance at different levels or greater compression of water and its natural cycles are some of them.

Strengthen governance

“There is a challenge in the current management of wetlands, which is an ethical challenge, and it is to understand the dignity of the people who depend on their wetlands. From the big cities of the country we do not realize how much rural communities depend on these ecosystems for their well-being”, says Sandra Vilardy.

In this sense, Wilson Ramírez affirms that the management of wetlands must be approached in a transversal way in which the governance of these communities is strengthened; “The management of wetlands implies a transversal and shared responsibility by the different actors in the territory, from national to local levels,” he explains. Although there is a government level that is key in this management, there is also a responsibility of the academic sector to support from science to decision-making, through information that allows identifying the impacts (positive and negative) on wetland areas and projecting possible future impacts and the possible transformations and adaptations that may occur, and there is a responsibility of the industrial sectors and their activities, and there is an individual responsibility regarding consumption habits (finally we all make direct or indirect use of these ecosystems), and there is a responsibility of local communities to exercise their governance.

The challenge is to understand that this is a shared responsibility in which each one, from their role, supports a shared management model, taking into account the importance of wetlands for the good living of these communities.

A common agenda

Despite being one of the most productive ecosystems in the world, wetlands are also one of the most transformed by human activities. Photography: Colombian La Mojana -Carolina Obregón Sánchez region.

Wetlands are among the most productive ecosystems in the world, but also among the most threatened on the planet, which is why both Sandra Vilardy and Wilson Ramírez agree that the importance of consolidating an agenda for their management is a challenge that should not be delayed. This means strengthening, coordinating and harmonizing the different management agendas of these ecosystems to consolidate and enhance a national (and global) agenda that promotes a type of management that integrates the challenges mentioned above: scientific research, knowledge dissemination, transfer capacities, governance at different levels. But, the specialists state, it is a long-term agenda that should focus on solutions to current problems such as adaptation and mitigation of climate change, water pollution that affects fishing and agricultural productivity, rehabilitation and conservation of wetlands or the loss of biodiversity.

The large-scale impacts on wetlands can be explained by the fact that everything that happens thousands of kilometers away causes damage that is now evident. However, the solutions that are proposed and implemented, not only thousands of kilometers away but in an comprehensive way, can also mark the protection, conservation, management and good management of these ecosystems in Colombia, which is an amphibious country.

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Written by Carolina Obregón

Sources consulted:

-Sandra Vilardy Quiroga, Marine Biologist, Doctor in ecology and environment, and researcher on topics related to the analysis of socio-ecological systems. She is currently the Director of  Parques Cómo Vamos.
-Wilson Ramírez Hernández, Doctor in Ecology with an emphasis on restoration ecology. He is the main author of the restoration chapter of the United Nations Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and advised the concept document of the National Restoration Plan of the Environment and Sustainable Development Ministry of Colombia.
–Wetlands for the people. Sandra Liliana Mosquera, Olga Nieto and Carlos Tapia Caicedo. Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute, 2015.

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The Amazon Basin continues to be one of the places with the least access to the Internet.

The Internet is a network of networks, a way of sending information across the world. This information is sent via wave signals (electricity, light, microwaves, radio waves, etc.), using standard protocols that allow receivers and users to interpret the wave signals. While the world is increasingly becoming connected with at least 4.6 billion people using the Internet, there are some places that are still remote. The Amazon rainforest is one of these places.

Why is the Amazon rainforest so hard to connect to the Internet? The fastest access to the Internet today comes from fiber optic cables that send information at the speed of light. These fragile cables were first invented in the 1980s, and have to be laid in expensive casings in order to protect them. So far, they have been mainly laid underwater to connect continents, where, once they reach the continent, the information will be relayed in some other way. As the heart of South America, the Amazon is among the furthest to reach from the fiber optic cables on the coasts, and there are few terrestrial networks reaching the basin (see map 1). To install these, it would take not only a large investment from both government and private companies, but a large amount of deforestation.

Map from Infrapedia.com/app : Shows the cables connecting internet systems. Go to link for more detailed information.

At the same time, conservation efforts often need internet access to function. The Citizen Science for the Amazon Network is motivated by many of the same goals as the Amazon Waters Initiative, but aims to use citizen science to better understand migratory fishes and the factors that affect their migration. Yet, thus far, the data is concentrated in a few regions. Dr. Thiago Couto (Florida International University) and Guido Herrera (PhD Candidate, University of Tennessee) are leading the effort to map factors that could influence where the network will focus efforts. These factors are many: (1) Biological factors– Where do we need data samples to capture the complete life cycle of migratory fish? We need data from there; (2) Importance for fisheries– Where will fishers use the data and thus drive the data collection?; (3) Data factors –Where are the gaps and biases of current knowledge?; and finally, (4) Logistics– factors such as partner locations, and, maybe most importantly in a citizen science project that uses a mobile application, access to the Internet.

Instead, the best access to the Internet in the Amazon seems to come from cellular networks. Using publicly available data, Mr. Herrera created a map of accessibility of population to cellular towers with mobile internet (see below). Cellular networks are dependent on these towers, which have their own set of limits. For example, in non-forested areas, waves at the frequencies that cellular devices have a range of about 1 km, and they rely on antennas to pick it up and relay it at greater distances via connections to other antennas or to terrestrial electronic networks (copper wiring) or fiber optic cables. With the forest, this range can be much shorter. With estimates of population in the Amazon basin, Mr. Herrera estimated that about 27 million of the 55 million people that live in the basin (~48%) live within 1 km of a cellphone tower. Those that don’t, live either in peripheries of cities or in places with no large settlements.

Map created by Guido Herrera, University of Tennessee. The color of the landscape indicates how far away from a cellphone tower that part of the map is with white being very close to a cellphone tower, and green being very far away (see legend on right). The blue dots indicate major cities in the region. The basin is divided up into sub-basins.

How can we improve Internet access in the Amazon without deforesting? Google had been working on a project called “Loon” that would use hot air balloons to cover a wider range than cellular towers, and thus allowing better Internet access. However, with its closing in January 2021, the hopes of Internet access seem limited to satellite internet. Currently, mobile devices cannot reach satellites (although, with specialized satellite phones, people in the Amazon can reach the Internet), yet SpaceX (Starlink), Amazon (the company; Project Kuiper), and Beijing have been investing in satellite-broadband technology. These projects aim to create lower-altitude satellites that could be used in places like the Amazon to broaden Internet access. Engineers have also proposed the possibility of running fiber optic cables in the rivers of the Amazon itself– although a cable that extends from Manaus to Iquitos along the mainstem would cost at least $USD 500 million– and a Brazilian government project, Amazonia Conectada, remains under-funded. Whether these initiatives will work, whether they’ll be accessible to the residents of the basin, and whether they are respectful of the environment remains to be seen. 

In the meantime, the Amazon relies on more local networks. For those of us who have traveled on the main stem of the river, we have seen boat operators talking to each other via walkie-talkies or low bandwidth cell phones, telling each other what the river looks upstream, to know whether it’s safe to disembark. The cell towers along rivers connect people on the Amazon, but above all, the river connects them. Underlying all these person-to-person connections that are mediated by technology is the knowledge of the waters themselves– a relationship going back generations of knowing what the river looks like when it pulses and when it retreats.  

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Written by Natalia Piland

Further Readings:

Explanation on how the Internet works:
https://roadmap.sh/guides/what-is-internet   

Explanations on specific infrastructures:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable#Optical_telecommunications_cables 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_network 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_high_frequency 
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55770141 

Proposal for a subfluvial cable in the Amazon:
https://tnc16.geant.org/getfile/2321 

An opinion piece on important investments in the Amazon: https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/investing-in-amazon-rainforest-conservation/ 

Report on global broadband access: https://en.unesco.org/news/new-report-global-broadband-access-underscores-urgent-need-reach-half-world-still-unconnected 

For more information on electrical grid mapping, (you also need electricity to access the Internet), please see: https://engineering.fb.com/2019/01/25/connectivity/electrical-grid-mapping/ 
But in the Amazon, many places use generators, which are not represented on this map.

A case of investment in expanding Internet reach in Peru: http://latamsatelital.com/hughesnet-se-lanza-peru/ 

Relevant datasets and maps: 
https://data.apps.fao.org/map/catalog/static/search?keyword=Cellular 
https://www.infrapedia.com/app
https://time.com/3221958/internet-map/ 

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The bocachico from the Magdalena-Cauca basin, in Colombia, was the species studied with the hydroacoustic technique, with the aim of knowing its song during the breeding season. Photography: Juan Guillermo Ospina Pavón/TNC

Sounds are one of the most important forms of communication in fauna. The animals sing, roar or buzz when they detect a threat or are about to hunt their prey, and to defend their territories or attract the attention of potential mates. Fish, although they do not have ears, also emit and hear sounds. In fact, so far we recognize that more than 700 species of fish produce some type of sound and of these at least 80 are freshwater fish. Fish communicate with each other thanks to their middle and inner ear.

One of the techniques for studying fish sounds is hydroacoustics, in which, with the help of aquatic microphones (hydrophones), non-invasive observations are made to measure the frequency, intensity or periodicity of these sounds. Silvia López Casas, PhD in Biology from the University of Antioquia and an expert in conservation and management of freshwater fisheries, observed for about a year (2019), together with Sebastián Muñoz, a student at the University of Antioquia, the Ichthyology Group of the same university and The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the way in which the male specimens of bocachico (Prochilodus magdalenae) communicate during the moment of reproduction, specifically in courtship.

Fertilized bocachico eggs. Photography: Silvia López Casas.

The study to analyze and describe the song of the bocachico was carried out in seven points of the Magdalena-Cauca macro-basin, in Colombia, in two phases: in the first, the fish arranged in pairs (male and female specimens) were recorded at different fish farms. The first results showed that males emit a song when they are ready for spawning (in cases where the males did not sing, there was no spawning by the females and, therefore, there was no fertilization and reproduction was not successful), which is indicative of the gonad maturity of the species. In this phase we learned how the song of the bocachico sounds, what is its duration and its frequency.

The second phase was carried out in the natural environment of the species, the rivers, with the objective of verifying if this song is the same or if it varies between different locations. “Under natural conditions, fish choose certain areas for spawning, these are areas in which they meet at specific times of the year to emit acoustic signals, and in which there are even other species of fish, also migratory, to spawn. Although different types of songs were detected, it was noted that the song of the bocachicos was different from the others”, comments Silvia López.

Listen here to the song of the bocachico (Prochilodus magdalenae).

An opportunity

During the second phase, at the sites selected for the study, artisanal fishermen served as a guide to identify the spawning areas of bocachicos. “The fishermen took us to some places where they hear the fish ‘snore’ (they spoke of the snoring of the bocachicos), they even said that they ‘feel on their feet’ these acoustic signals when they travel in the boat or hear them when they go into the water to fish. Other artisanal fishermen from other basins in this country (Atrato, Orinoquia, Amazonía or Sinú), say that they have also heard the fish sing, snore or push and that they have also felt them blow in the water. This shows that in addition to the bocachico, other migratory species, including those of the genus Prochilodus (present in the great Amazon basin), choose certain areas and times for reproduction”, comments the researcher.

For the planning of the territory and the management of the fishing resources it is necessary to identify the spawning moments and areas to determine their protection since they are critical areas for the species. “If the objective is to manage the fishing resource, it is necessary to establish good practices such as what is the allowed amount that can be extracted, in what periods of the year it can be done and in what moments of the reproduction of the species it is better to do it to avoid putting its survival at risk. This is especially important when it comes to migratory freshwater species that are the basis of food and income generation for local communities, but that nevertheless face different pressures such as water pollution”, explains Silvia López. In Thailand, for example, 23 communities in the Salween River basin organized to implement measures such as restricting fishing in certain areas of the basin, which favored the connectivity of ecosystems, the regeneration of fish biomass, the decrease pressure on fish species, and increased economic benefits for these communities.

Hydroacoustics

Hydroacoustics is a technique that allows us to study biodiversity in a non-invasive way with the species. Photography: Silvia López Casas.

As already mentioned, hydroacoustics is one of the least invasive techniques for monitoring biodiversity; it can be used in ecological, evolutionary, behavioral or reproductive studies, for the identification and inventory of species, and for the evaluation of processes of both aquatic species and the ecosystems (marine or freshwater) in which they inhabit. Its use in fisheries management has served to implement conservation measures for species and their habitats, based on the identification and characterization of breeding areas. Although it is a rarely used technique, possibly due to the high cost of hydrophones and the limited availability of applications to save the recorded data, Silvia López explains that hydroacoustics are ideal for observing (or listening to) fish in dark water rivers, which are cloudy and laden with sediment, like many of those present in the Amazon basin. The technique allows us to “hear things that which we are not able to see” due to the natural conditions of rivers, and, to this extent, it can favor the connection of communities with these ecosystems.

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Written by Carolina Obregón Sánchez
Sources:

• Silvia López Casas. Doctor in Biology from the University of Antioquia and researcher in fish ecology and freshwater ecosystems.
• Status, development and trends of studies in acoustics of fauna in Colombia, Biota Colombiana magazine, Vol. 22 No. 1 (2021), Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute.
• The sounds of fauna: a powerful tool for monitoring biodiversity.
• This is how the bocachicos from Magdalena “sing” when the time to reproduce comes; Daniela Quintero Díaz, El Espectador, Blog El Río, February 21, 2021.

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Photo: Rodrigo Kugnharski Unsplash

Plan for Freshwater Conservation

Integrated terrestrial-freshwater planning can support conservation of both ecosystems, say Cecilia Leal and colleagues.

A recent study comparing conservation scenarios in two locations of the Brazilian Amazon (Paragominas and Santarém) showed that by prioritizing both freshwater and terrestrial conservation, protected areas can increase freshwater benefits by up to 600% with a negligible 1% loss in terrestrial benefits. This is important because many current conservation strategies don’t take into account freshwater considerations. Justification is that there is little data about freshwater species, and that we can assume spatial overlap between terrestrial and aquatic species. Yet, this spatial overlap is often assessed at: a coarse spatial resolution, and it disappears when you zoom in; for a few taxonomic groups, and it’s not true for others; and without taking into account connectivity, which is vitally important for freshwater species.

Fotografía: Walter Wust, WCS.

To get these results, the researchers went to many sites in these two locations and took data on common terrestrial and freshwater species groups that are used for conservation priorities (plants, birds, and dung beetles for the former; fish, dragonflies and damselflies, mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies for the latter). Then, they took that data and created distribution models, prioritizing different river catchments based on how diverse they were in each group (so, for example, a catchment with many bird species would receive a high priority score). Using those maps, the researchers pretended they had either a limited budget or a limited area they could conserve, and then made decisions of where to conserve based on freshwater or terrestrial species groups, and saw how it affected the others. This is how they realized that conserving by terrestrial groups was not a great way to conserve important areas for freshwater groups, but vice versa did a good job of covering both. If there’s not a lot of information on the freshwater groups, they also saw that planning for terrestrial groups with an element of aquatic connectivity did better than terrestrial groups alone.

This research shows us that conserving places with a freshwater lens does a better job of conserving both types of ecosystems than conserving them with a terrestrial lens, which is the more common practice. This is also likely to be conservative — freshwater ecosystems are so important to humans, beyond the species that live in them. For example, they provide water to drink, water for agriculture, water for rain, and water to navigate boats on from place to place. They are also places where people create social connections and maintain a spiritual connection to place. The fish species, too, contribute towards proper nutrition, which is not always taken into account in these types of scenario building. Conserving freshwater ecosystems and aquatic connectivity would support all of these! Leal and colleagues end their paper saying, “identifying promising new approaches for biodiversity conservation is only the first step toward improving conservation outcomes.” These approaches must also be converted into tangible benefits.

Fotografía: Walter Wust, WCS.

One way that these approaches can turn into tangible benefits is using data from many places to make models more specific and have interdisciplinary teams look for synergies. For example, researchers from many disciplinary backgrounds and multiple organizations are currently working on identifying how to best conserve freshwater elements in the Amazon. This team, led by the Wildlife Conservation Society and Florida International University, is looking at what variables we have to think about to support fish and fisheries, wetlands, and freshwater connectivity. By integrating and looking at the system holistically, the work will build upon Leal and colleagues’ work, providing a framework and proposal of indicators to monitor for conservation practitioners. Stay tuned!

Writted by Natalia Piland.

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Photo: Guido Miranda / WCS

Healthy Fisheries Mean Healthy People

Writted by: Natalia Piland.

A new study in Nature Food by Heilpern et al. highlights the nutritional consequences of replacing wild fish with aquaculture and chicken in the Peruvian Amazon.

Replacing wild fish as a local food source with aquaculture and farm-raised chicken in the Peruvian Amazon can exacerbate malnutrition issues, in particular iron and essential fatty acid deficiencies. These issues already exist; as the paper states, citing a study by the Peruvian National Institute of Information and Statistics (INEI), “43.3% of children under 5 years are iron deficient, and 25.3% are chronically malnourished or stunted; and 22.4% of women of reproductive age are iron deficient.” This is an important result because it gives context that can help adjust current investments: For example, the World Bank has granted 40 million USD to the Peruvian Ministry of Economy and Finances to develop the aquaculture system in the spirit of development. Yet, as the Sustainable Development Goals, ratified by the United Nations, state, reaching “zero hunger” requires “food security and improved nutrition.”

Photo: Walter Wust, WCS.

What are the specific nutritional components that change with this replacement?

While the availability of protein, a macronutrient that helps to repair body cells and create new ones, and zinc, a nutrient that helps with the immune system, goes up with chicken and aquaculture, other nutrients, which already present a problem of availability in the Amazon, go down. In particular, the availability of iron, a mineral necessary for growth, development, and oxygen transport, and fatty acid, molecules that prevent heart disease and other illnesses, as well as provide energy storage, could decline with ongoing replacement of wild fish with farmed foods. This can limit access to these key micronutrients, particularly for groups such as children and menstruating people whose unique nutritional demands can leave them acutely vulnerable to nutritional deficiencies. Further, since no one species is high in all nutrients, having a diverse diet is fundamental.

Fish also provide more than nutrition– they are important for cultural identity and decision-making

In the Amazon, the diversity of fish do more than provide the food that people eat: They are also integral to ways of living and knowing. For example, fish migrations, known in many places as the “mijano”, not only bring important food fishes back to where people live, but they also tell people about the water levels in the river. This communication allows people to physically navigate on the river to places that are not available during the dry season, thus changing the strategies for socializing and fishing. Recognizing that fish, and food generally, have multiple roles in people’s lives supports the pillars of “food sovereignty,” a movement that explicitly acknowledges that food security depends on integrating reflections on culture, power, environment, and distribution, and how these dimensions interact to make food available, culturally-appropriate, and nutritious. Heilpern and colleagues speak to these dynamics by pointing out that farm-raised chicken and fish are industries that not only favor those with economic means (as they require a large initial economic input and are generally more expensive than wild-caught fish), but also come at an environmental cost since raising farmed animals results in greenhouse gas emissions, land use, and eutrophication of waterways.

Photo: Walter Wust, WCS.

“Policies that invest in managing capture fisheries, such as through protection of key habitats and harvest monitoring, can work towards increasing food security while abating the impacts of overfishing on aquatic ecosystems”.

The final conclusion of Heilpern and colleagues’ work further highlights the importance of the first objective of the Amazon Waters Declaration— an integrated management of fisheries can promote freshwater connectivity and the overall biocultural diversity of the Amazon basin. Specifically, a move towards consumption of a variety of species, particularly lower trophic species, is recommended. A different move, one towards farm-raised chicken and aquaculture, could lead to both environmental and nutritional consequences. Instead of investing in new industries, we should focus on the fisheries that already exist– where there’s a healthy environment, there are healthy fisheries, which may just mean healthy people.

More Information : Webinar Recording:  Biodiversity, aquaculture, fisheries:  challenges for the Amazon

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Photography: Omar Torrico / WCS

How to identify an important freshwater fish spawning area

Written by: Natalia Piland.

Miranda-Chumacero et al. 2020 collects fish eggs and larvae to confirm a priority area for migratory fish conservation.

The location and confirmation of a freshwater fish spawning area of at least 13 fish species in the Beni River basin is an important step towards integrated management of river basins. It is important because in order to conserve fish populations, we must know where and when crucial life history stages, like spawning or reproducing, occur. Yet, this is difficult information to acquire because many fish species, particularly those that are important to humans, are migratory, so studying them requires research across a large spatial and temporal scale. Looking to the experience described in this paper can help guide us in identifying more of these priority areas.

The first step is deciding where to look for the spawning area. If you fish for a living, it is very possible that you would be aware of where the fish you fish spawn. Strong relationships with local people mean that you may be able to ask for guidance. Lead researcher Guido Miranda told us, “Local fishermen told us that this was a good area because you could catch both male and female dorados (Brachyplatystoma rouseauxii), and that the piraibas (Brachyplatystoma filamentosum) didn’t reach the Andes. This helped us define our study area.” Once identified, research can begin on whether or not it is a spawning area.

Once you have a place, you can choose many ways to identify where and which fish are migrating. Here, ichthyoplankton (fish eggs and larvae) samples were collected using specialized nets, which were weighed down and held against the current for approximately 15 minutes. Eggs and larvae were then separated from other organic matter and then preserved so that DNA could be extracted and then sequenced for species identification. Using published information on embryo stages (how many days does the identified species or genus take to get to a certain stage) and water velocity of river, researchers were able to estimate how far upriver the egg may have been spawned. This is how researchers identified this expansive spawning area connecting national protected areas and indigenous territories, and reaching into the Andean foothills.

Upstream delimitation of the spawning area from the sampling point (yellow point), estimated from eggs at the morula-gastrula stages (red line), and from eggs at the final embryo stage (orange line). The map also indicates existing and potential threats in the area, as well as the Madidi and Pilon Lajas protected area limits and the location of indigenous territories (more information).

Overall, these species are important to local people’s food security, economic livelihoods, and culture.

Here are some specific results to highlight the importance of this fish spawning area:

♦ Cryptic diversity in Prochilodus species may lead to identification of new species in the basin – already a megadiverse region.
♦ Dams in the Madeira have already blocked off this region from the estuary, putting the long-distance migrants at risk since they can’t migrate the full length. The results of this study show that the resulting endangered gilded catfish is spawning in this area.
♦ Other areas in the Upper Madeira have already been destroyed by threats like gold mining (see Madre de Dios), and it stresses the importance of conservation here to maintain free-flowing connectivity and the ecological integrity of the spawning area, so that these migrating species have somewhere to go.

Once the spawning area is identified, we can do the work of conserving the fish spawning area. The authors outline the following steps for this basin in particular:

♦ Maintain the free-flowing Beni, Madre de Dios, and Mamoré, avoiding construction of dams.
♦ Declare a fishing ban in the Upper Madeira for the most threatened fish species (such as the goliath catfishes). This will also lower mercury consumption from large-bodied species in the context of gold mining.
♦ Regulate and zone extraction of gravel and stone – moving gravel and stone haphazardly can erode and change the shape of the river, making it harder for the species to migrate and survive.
♦ Understand better the impact of agro-industrial waste and gold extraction in this area via research – these are livelihood activities so understanding them will help us maintain balance.
♦ Strengthen monitoring systems – for both fishing and larvae.
♦ Use science to meaningfully involve local peoples in the monitoring and conservation of their important fish species.

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This news article is not available in English. Read it in Spanish here.

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Good faith is something that accompanies the actions of environmental organizations and professionals and, in general, of all organizations whose objective is the conservation of the environment, biodiversity and the improvement of the quality of life of the populations. Behind every initiative or project there will always be a great effort in terms of planning and design of interventions, research, management of economic and human resources, logistics and systematization of information. Good faith, however, is not a tool or a methodology for intervention: there are already structured resources of proven effectiveness that can help in this regard.

Over the last decades, environmental projects (which contemplate the conservation of biodiversity and the improvement of the quality of life of human populations) have been given special attention to promoting and facilitating that communities in those territories participate in all phases of their implementation. Projects always require a great effort in terms of planning and design of interventions, research, management of economic and human resources, logistics, and systematization of information, so integrating the efforts and voices of the different actors is a way of ensuring their positive contribution to local development. The combination of efforts and voices is referred to as dialogue of knowledge, a methodology in which organizations provide technical knowledge and communities provide practical and traditional knowledge about how they relate to and use their territories. This dialogue is a valid and very necessary tool for all types of work involving communities, but it is even more important when working with the indigenous, peasant, and Afro-descendant populations, since these groups usually have knowledge and ways of relating to a very specific territory, and the links with nature can become very strong and determine many local activities, including the forms of organization, division of work, and economic and productive activities.

A dialogue of knowledges

The dialogue of knowledge is accomplished through open processes of active listening with all the actors involved. This listening should be carried out in all phases of the projects, even from the drawing-up to ensure that the ideas, objectives, and methodologies chosen are aligned with the needs, interests, and capacities of the local communities. Wanting to include the dialogue of knowledge only in some stages or after implementation can put the process’s success at risk.

For many communities, the management and use of territory are linked to their ancestral traditions. Photo: Walter Wust.

Rosario Gómez-S., a biologist and anthropologist with extensive experience on issues related to the use and conservation of biodiversity, talks about the challenges and setbacks based on her personal experience that can be created when the exchange of knowledge implied in the dialogue of knowledge is not incorporated in the primary phases of the projects: “I came to the Peña Roja indigenous community in the Colombian Amazon to work on a sustainable initiative of butterfly breeding, based on the care of eggs and larvae in captivity. By isolating them from natural enemies, the survival rate increases from 10% to even more than 80%, so at the end of the process between 10% and 15% of the butterflies that would normally have reached adulthood return to the environment, and the rest are marketed. The proposal consisted of taking advantage of the great biodiversity of the Amazon and the extensive knowledge that indigenous communities have about the cycles of nature in order to generate sustainable economic alternatives.”

This initiative has even been in other countries for decades, such as Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica, resulting in economic benefits for local communities in parallel with the conservation of species and their natural environment. “I showed my guides, who were community members, the drawings of caterpillars in the catalogs and they told me that they were worms, not butterflies, and that butterfly caterpillars did not exist. I talked to them about international markets, collectors, museums, butterfly farms, people who throw butterflies in weddings instead of rice, the dust from their wings used for microchips and computer screens, but nothing of the kind convinced them. It seemed nonsense to them that someone would want to buy butterflies.”

When investigating more about the history of the community, the researcher discovered that the ethnic group had suffered a drastic decrease in population and uprooting of the territory during the time of rubber extraction, a process during which much of the knowledge about the natural processes, ancestral cultural practices, and vital elements for the transmission of such knowledge such as language was lost, which explained that they did not know the natural process of the butterfly metamorphosis. Additionally, in the history and worldview of the community, worms (in general) were associated with diseases, and many of the butterfly species had some link with mystical or ritual issues, so the elders (the knowers) did not look at their marketing with good eyes. The younger generation, on their part, with a different conception of the territory, began to hunt adult butterflies to try to sell them; which, contrary to what happens with breeding, can put species at risk at the local level.

Lessons learned from the Dialogue of Knowledges

The concepts of economic growth and development from a Western vision of the world differ from the vision of the communities that have inhabited their territories for thousands of years. Photo: Walter Wust.

“The project did not work. Without taking into account the cultural aspects of the community and its vision of development, understanding their needs and interests, we could not speak of true sustainability,” says Rosario Gómez-S, “I hoped to lay the foundations for a project to generate economic resources in a community that did not want economic surpluses. When initiating a real dialogue with the community, I discovered that what they wanted was to increase the availability of the royal palm, a plant from which the salt that is used in the mixing of ritual tobacco is extracted and that it was increasingly difficult to find. They were also interested in arrau turtles, but had no interest in butterflies and worms.”

Based on this experience, and many others that have been widely documented in processes of territorial and community development, it is possible to affirm that identifying the interests of the community and understanding how, from their culture, they are related to the territory and biodiversity is fundamental and a priority. “Many times, it is more viable and sustainable to support processes that are already underway because they have been thought about and discussed by the community and those things have already raised their interest. It makes no sense to go to someone’s house to tell them that you are going to remodel it without the person asking for it,” says the researcher.

To work with local communities, it is necessary to document their worldview, traditional practices, and transformation over time, as well as research their needs in their daily lives. The vision of economic growth and development that emerged from a Western vision of the world differs, as in this case, from that vision of the peoples who have inhabited territories for thousands of years; that is why they speak of their territories. In this documentation, which also includes the first approaches with the communities, an attitude of listening rather than speaking is vital, and it is necessary to consider that the cultural, social, traditional knowledge and forms of community organization should be the starting point in any initiative. “We must work without forgetting that projects are not eternal; there are agreed-upon deadlines and commitments with donors, but certain processes such as restoration, for example, will only show results 15 years after their implementation. The institutions leave and the projects are finished, but the communities stay, that is why they cannot be treated as guests in their own territories,” says the researcher.

Written by Carolina Obregón Sánchez.

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