By Benoit de Thoisy
TSG Coordinator for the Guiana shield

Free map of French Guiana courtesy Wikipedia.com/CIA World Fact Book

The Guianas host a single contiguous forest block that represents more than one hird of remaining neotropical forest coverage, with expected good conservation status of several large mammals, including the Jaguar (Marieb 2006),  the Giant otter (Groenendijk 1998), and the Lowland tapir (Taber et al. 2006). Conservation policy remained nevertheless for long quite unsatisfactory, with evident lack of ambition and means implemented on the field for distinct reasons. Guyana and Suriname face since decades politic, economic and social difficulties, relaying biodiversity at lower priority concerns. In contrast French Guiana has a high economic level. But due to its status of French administrative unit, many juridic decrees related to nature conservancy remain either inapproriate for application on the territory, either legally inapplicable. Also, divergent ambitions between local authorithies and national governement agencies complicate the political implementation of a conservation vision for the country.

Two major rises have nevertheless been reached in 2007: the National Park, a new protected area in the south of the country, and a decree prohibiting the sale of several game species, including the Lowland tapir.

The National Park, a process initiated 15 years ago
At the Rio conference in 1992, the French president claimed his will to create the “Amazonian National Park” in French Guiana. Fifteen years later, the decree was signed. The road has been long until this success, and has exhausted many and many persons. Conflicting interests between national (i.e., from France) and local authorities, between biodiversity spots and gold mining lobbies (Hammond et al. 2007), lack of traditionnal communities rights in the French laws, resulted in two aborted pre-projects, before the one signed in February 2007. With this new protected area of 20,000 sq km, the country presently contains a comprehensive and well configured network of protected areas. The other interest for conservation is regional: together with the Tumucumaque national park (3,8 millions ha), the ecological station of  Grão-Pará (4,3 millions ha) and the Maicuru reserve (1,2 millions ha), now is under legal protection under the responsability of both France and Brazil, the largest tropical forest area in the world, with more than 12,000,000 hectares. However, the Guianan National Park still wait for the IUCN consideration, since I-IV IUCN protected areas status is not reached with the park regulations. Indeed, all the area remains legally open to hunting practices by tribal communities, and extractive activities are controlled by the same French decrees than outside the park. The single difference is that no species can be sold or bought. This decision was contraversial, but the Park argue the policy rationale both scientific monitoring and respect for aborigine livelihoods are parts of the solution for nature resource conservation in inhabited Amazonian forests. An innovative concept of National Park may have been implemented, although difficulties remain important: intense illegal gold mining pressure on the Park territory, stress between communities inhabiting the Park (e.g., Bush negroes and amerindians), recursive denial of the project by several local elected politicians, necessity to implement conditions of daily functionning of the park.

The Decree of July 23th, 2007
In French Guiana, the legal protection of terrestrial vertebrates was restricted to a national decree signed in 1986. This decree is still in course for most species; it categorizes species with two protection levels: (i) some species are fully protected, e.g. the Giant otter, the spider monkey, the giant armadillo; and (ii) some species are prohibited to sale and/or buy, e.g. the capuchins, the howler monkeys, the brocket deers. Consequently species not listed, including the tapir, were not protected, and could then be killed and commercialized. In 1995, the governement acted by decree a “positive list” of species that could be regularly commercialized: the tapir was included in this decree.

In 2002, the “National action plan for the management of fauna and is habitats” was implemented under the responsibility of the Ministry of Environment. The key idea of this initiative was to join together managers, scientists, NGOs, communities representatives, socioprofessionals, to initiate discussions on the status of fauna and to reach consensus recommendations for its conservation. Improvments of existing laws was one but not the exclusive points to deal with. During 4 years, public-open working groups included several topics: awareness and education, hunting practices and regulation, forest management, non extractive uses of forest (tourism, etc).

After hundreds hours of discussions, often getting  lively since so many conflicing points of view had to deal together, some consensus points were reached. The necessity to retrieve the tapir and three frugivorous birds: Psophia crepitans, Crax alector and Penelope marail, fom the list of commercial species was one of those points, and the first approved with a decree. Forthcoming working groups sessions will be focused on hunting periods, quotas. Indeed the status of many sensitive species remains precarious: despite the National Park, only 3% of the territory is under strong protection, where hunting is totally prohibited. Elsewhere, susbistance hunting is allowed, and several species are under a strong risk of overharvesting (e.g., monkeys and tapirs, de Thoisy & Vogel 2002; de Thoisy et al. 2005).

The weakness of the legal status of the tapir in French Guiana had been pointed out during the last TSG meeting at Sorocaba (Working group “Human conflicts”, objective 2, action 2.2). The implication of many Guianan people has to be acknowledged for this first but indispensable step for large vertebrates conservation in French Guiana.

References cited

de Thoisy B, Vogel I. 2002. Status of lowland tapirs (Tapirus terrestris) in French Guiana: a preliminary assessment. Tapir Conservation (IUCN/SSC Tapir Specialist Group Newsletter) 11: 18.

de Thoisy B, Renoux F, Julliot C. 2005. Hunting in northern French Guiana and its impacts on primates communities. Oryx 39: 149-157.

Groenendijk J. 1998. A review of the distribution and conservation status of the giant otter (Pteronura brasiliensis), with special emphasis on the Guayana Shield Region. Netherlands Commitee for IUCN. Amsterdam.

Hammond DS, Gond V, de Thoisy B, Forget PM, DeDijn B. 2007. Causes and consequences of a tropical forest gold rush in the Guiana Shield, South America. Ambio, in press.

Marieb K. 2006. Jaguars in the New Millennium. Data Set Update: The State of the Jaguar in 2006. Wildlife Conservation Society.

Taber A, Chalukian S, Minkowski K, Sanderson E, Altrichter M, Antúnez M, Ayala G, Beck H, Bodmer R, Cartes JL, Gomez C, Gómez H, de Thoisy B, Emmons L, Estrada N, Flamarion de Oliviera L, Fragoso J, Garcia R, Goldstein I, Gómez H, Keuroghlian A, Ledesma K, Lizárraga L, Lizcano D, Lozano C, Medici P, Montenegro O, Moraes E A, Neris N, Noss A, Palacio Vieira JA, Paviolo A, Perovic P, Reyna-Hurtado R, Radachowsky J, Rodriguez Oriz J, Rumiz D, Salas L, Sarmiento Dueñas A, Sarria Perea J, Schiaffino K, Tobler M, Utreras V, Varela D, Ventincinque E, Wallace R, Zapata Rios G. A 2006. Range-Wide Status Analysis of Lowland Tapir (Tapirus terrestris) and White-lipped Peccaries (Tayassu pecari): Preliminary results for lowland tapirs and conservation implications. 3rd International Tapir Symposium, TSG / SSC – IUCN, Argentina.

For more information, please read:
Pierre Forget's article in Tropicnet, Jan, 2006 (1.5 Mb PDF)

Pierre Forget's online blog discussing the bushmeat crisis in FG (links off this site).