World Wildlife Day – Manakin Nature Tours Conservation Program
Wild animals and wild plants, in addition to their intrinsic value, contribute to ecological, genetic, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic aspects of human well-being and sustainable development.
World Wildlife Day gives us the opportunity to celebrate the beauty and variety of wild flora and fauna, as well as to raise awareness about the multitude of benefits that the conservation of these life forms has for humanity. The celebration of this day also reminds us of the urgent need to combat crimes against the environment and the decline of species caused by human activity, which have far-reaching negative consequences in the economic, environmental and social spheres.
This year, World Wildlife Day is celebrated under the theme: “Recovering key species for ecosystem restoration” in order to raise awareness about the status of endangered and critically endangered wildlife species and highlight the power of the conservation efforts that are underway to alter their destiny.
For Manakin Nature Tours this is an important topic, since we began to operates tourism, the conservation of species and their ecosystems has always been very important, over the past 12 years we have always been involved with conservation projects that you can read more now! In the last two years, we have been dedicating conservation efforts in two large projects to preserve two ecosystems!
The first of them is in the Inirída region! The municipality of Inírida is located in the Estrella Fluvial de Inírida, a place where three great rivers converge: the Guaviare river, the Atabapo river and the Inírida river, which flows to the great Orinoco river. A land of innumerable indigenous communities such as Curripaco, Puinave, Piapoco and many others that make this experience much more particular.
This project has as its objective the conservation of land, for the preservation of species that are local! In 2020 Manakin Nature Tours with its own resources acquired more than 286 hectares, in the heart of the Amazon! The acquisition of these lands has as its main objective the conservation of said ecosystems through a 10-year action plan, which involves specific activities of conservation, environmental education, scientific research and sustainable development based on community development and nature tourism; with this we intend to ensure the protection of the animal and plant species of the place and one of the most important and biodiverse wetland systems within the Estrella Fluvial del Inírida Ramsar site, especially the new species of Turtle Matamata (Chelus orinocensis) and the Dolphin Amazon rosé (Inia geoffrensis) among other species of priority conservation interest. Our objective is to ensure the conservation of the ecosystems and forests surrounding the Matamata nature reserve through specific conservation actions, environmental education, monitoring activities and research and sustainable development. The first part of this project will be the construction of a biological station for scientific research, in which we will develop scientific research and support conservation entities such as WWF Colombia as we support scientific expeditions such as the GUAVIARE EXPEDITION, which can assist in this video!
The second project that we are working on is Project Saving Morocho and a nesting area of the Harpy Eagle in Colombia.
Recently, in Colombia, a very easily accessible nesting area was found for the Harpy Eagle, with an adult female and next to her a 15-day-old chick in a ceiba tree. The nest was found by a member of the local community nicknamed “Morocho”, with whom we have been working for some time on explorations of places with potential for nature conservation through birdwatching.
According to the local information, the nest has been active every year for the last 30 years on two farms with agricultural and livestock production, which unfortunately have specific plans to increase their production capacity, which puts the area at imminent risk. nesting of the Eagle and its habitat.
Today we have achieved a rapprochement with the owners of the two priority farms for the conservation of the Harpy nesting area and we have managed to negotiate a total value of $80,000 USD for the acquisition of approximately 140 hectares of land that are made up of native forest , pastures for cattle ranching, some expanding avocado crops areas and water sources; purchase this piece of land is an urgent call because there are projects in the area that intend to massively expand the avocado crops and paddocks for livestock, which seriously endangers the nesting site, the individuals that live there and other species of birds and mammals that live in the area and that in turn make part of the Harpy’s diet.
To protect this site, MANAKIN NATURE TOURS and local partners launched the #HARPYEAGLECONSERVATION campaign, which seeks:
1- Buy the properties where the nesting area is.
2- Develop research projects to determine the conservation needs of this species in a local way.
3- Promote community participation in monitoring, environmental education and sustainable nature tourism.
Nesse first moment we created a campaign of donations to help buy this land, and we got a little resource, but we are a little long from our goal to buy this local! As soon as we do not get any financial resources, we are monitoring children, collecting scientific data on their behavior, feeding, surveying the fauna of birds and mammals and getting closer to the community so that they can understand the need to conserve the forests!
On this Wildlife Day we want to share our conservation actions, to show that birdwatching tourism is a tool to conserve ecosystems and invite all who wish to help in our projects so that we can write for people who wish to help with donations just to make in this link below!
