Contents:
- Project Objectives and Strategy
- Who the project benefits
- Results to date
- Monitoramento da Biodiversidade
Project Objectives and Strategy
To prevent further deforestation and the array of related consequences in the Brazilian Pantanal and highlands, we work with landowners to promote sustainable ranch management practices that are profitable alternatives to deforestation and habitat conversion.
Using a team of consultants and researchers, we evaluate each partner ranch and develop a management plan to optimize profitability and reduce pressures on natural resources. By adopting best-management practices that remove economic incentives for deforestation and concentrate cattle impacts within a limited area, the ranch management plan (RMP) is able to reduce pressures on natural resources while increasing ranch profitability and efficiency.
To track progress during implementation of the RMP, project consultants monitor financial, socioeconomic, and environmental indicators established for each ranch. WCS’s work in the Pantanal is the first to empirically and scientifically document and demonstrate the consequences of poor and best ranch management practices on a wide variety of environmental and socioeconomic indicators, including peccaries, bats, amphibians, and freshwater ecosystems. Great expectation and excellent institutional / policy influence has been achieved, including partnerships with key governmental agencies, universities, and local NGOs, such as EMBRAPA-Pantanal, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS)m and Mato Grosso (UFMT), IAGRO (IAGRO (State Institute of Animal Health), UNIDERP and UCDB (local private state Universities), Estancia Ambiental Quinta do Sol, among others.
Who the project benefits
Increasing the economic viability of ranches through a variety of environmentally-sound, sustainable, ranch-management techniques will eliminate economic justifications for deforestation and habitat conversions in the Pantanal. The forests that are preserved as a result of the project will benefit the entire region through maintenance of ecosystem services, such as CO2 sequestration and regulation of water balance. Reduced pressures on natural resources (e.g., less foraging by cattle in forest understory and wetlands as a result of improved native pasture and grazing conditions), will also benefit forests and aquatic habitats. Landowners will benefit directly from improved economic viability of ranches through increased profits and long-term economic sustainability, and ranch employees will benefit from improvements in housing and income made possible by increased profits. Another benefit of the project for ranch owners and workers includes educational outreach provided by project leaders and consultants. The program provides basic knowledge concerning best-management practices, training for specific techniques, such as artificial insemination, and advice for implementing conservation measures.
For the Pantanal region as a whole (beyond advances made on partner ranches), the key to project success is demonstrating profitability and long-term sustainability of environmentally-friendly ranch management techniques to the community of Pantanal landowners, ranch workers, and policy makers.
To that end, we showcase results from partner ranches that demonstrate the advantages of particular cattle or pasture management techniques, conservation measures, etc., through workshops, courses, and other meetings. This dissemination serves in part as a rancher outreach program, filling knowledge gaps and educating landowners about the advantages of sustainable, best-management practices and forest conservation. Additionally, it serves as a recruitment tool for establishing new partner ranches, and it provides an opportunity to encourage non-partners to adopt environmentally-friendly ranch management techniques, independent of project participation.
Results to date
Pasture biomass improvement with
rotation system, Pantanal
In 2006, two partnerships with landowners in the southeastern Aquidauana/Rio Negro region of the Pantanal were established, encompassing approximately 6,000 ha of well-preserved forests, wetlands, and native savannas.
On one of the ranches, we set up an experimental pasture rotation system that has been the focus of a number of studies examining the sustainability of the technique in terms of native pasture condition, cattle productivity, ranch profitability, and impacts on forest and wetland communities. These studies represent the first experimental investigations of pasture rotation in the Pantanal.
Results to date show that there are significant advantages to using a rotation system in comparison to traditional open-range grazing, such as increased biomass and quality of native pasture, increased cattle weights, improved reproductive success of cattle, and decreased impacts on forest understory and wetland plant communities. Additional studies comparing forest and wetland communities between areas with different levels of cattle use have shown that in areas of high cattle impact, species composition is altered and diversity is reduced. The rotation system minimizes these impacts by improving native pasture conditions and, as a consequence, reducing cattle foraging in forests and wetlands.
From 2007 through 2008, the project expanded as a result of the dissemination program, which included a WCS-Brasil - sponsored landowner workshop, several visits by potential partners to the experimental rotation area, two WCS-Brasil - sponsored courses for landowners and ranch workers demonstrating best-management and artificial insemination techniques, and attendance by the project coordinator and researchers at meetings for cattle producers and scientific congresses. In the Aquidauana/Rio Negro region, where the original partnerships were established, three new ranches, totaling 9,500 ha joined the project. In addition, formation of partnerships in three new regions of the Pantanal basin and two regions in the highlands are in progress, which would add another 37,500 ha.
The total area protected by established and new partnerships is now approximately 53,000 ha. By recruiting partners in different regions of the flood plain and in the highlands, we hope to expand the impact of the project as local pockets of neighboring ranchers begin to recognize the benefits in terms of profitability and reduced environmental impact. Some of the neighboring ranchers are potential future partners, while others may adopt improved ranching practices independently.
Environmental monitoring
White-lipped peccaries and cows
eating Spondius lutea, Pantanal
Beginning in 2006, WCS broadened its efforts so as to focus on other key landscape species, including important prey species for jaguars, such as peccaries, and also on the assessment and mitigation of the impact of cattle ranching activities on the landscape itself. Our work focuses on evaluating the direct and indirect impacts of a changing cattle industry on key species (e.g. peccaries, otters), ecological communities (e.g. macrophyte, macroinvertebrate and fish communities within water bodies), and habitats (e.g. physicochemical and biological characteristics of aquatic environments) in the Pantanal, and on the development of a general management plan to preserve the traditional Pantanal grazing practices so as to protect the region’s biodiversity. As part of a pilot study being conducted at two ranches, WCS is generating technical tools to improve the ranchers’ cattle management practices, yielding both greater returns for the ranchers and improved conservation of these lands. Additionally, an effective monitoring system is in place to account for impacts of this initiative on conservation and to improve livelihoods of ranch workers.
Diverse wetland community in
a freshwater lake, Pantanal
To date, camera trap surveys show a greater diversity and abundance of native frugivores in forests with low cattle impact. White-lipped peccaries, which are considered a landscape species in the Pantanal, rank highest in low-impact forest (31% of visits to fruiting trees), while cattle and feral pigs are the most recorded species in high-impact forest (77%). Bat surveys show that species diversity is highest in forest with low to intermediate levels of disturbance. Four medium-abundance understory species show potential as bioindicators of low cattle-impact forest, while an abundant diet generalist, the Jamaican fruit bat (Artibeus jamaicensis), is the dominant species at high cattle-impact sites. Surveys of forest amphibians and reptiles show greater overall abundance at low cattle-impact sites during wet and dry seasons.
Two frog and two lizard species show potential as bioindicators of low cattle-impact forest, and one frog species appears to be an indicator of disturbed forest. Freshwater surveys on a partner ranch have detected physico-chemical and community alterations of “vazante” wetlands (seasonal rainwater drainages that form shallow wetlands with slow flows) related to deforestation and water diversions on neighboring (non-partner) ranches. The seasonal drying of one “vazante” has been accelerated by more than one month, altering aquatic succession cycles and reducing the availability of water and pasture for native grazers (and cattle) during the peak of the dry season.
Based on these results, restoration of “vazante” flows will be a conservation priority. Cattle exclusion experiments have shown substantial recovery of forest understory plants after one year (67% increase in exclusion plots vs. 19% decrease in controls), and preliminary data from cattle rotation experiments show increased forage biomass in rotation pastures in comparison to traditionally managed grazing areas. Housing improvements and worker’s rights issues are currently being discussed with partner ranch owners.