Mailinglist...
Yasuni Biodiversity Center |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Scientists release map for United Nations events, showing Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park is most biodiverse zone in Western Hemisphere PRESS RELEASE: September 21, 2011 “The map indicates that Yasuní National Park is part of a small, unique zone with the maximum biological diversity in the Western Hemisphere,” said Dr. Clinton Jenkins, lead designer of the map and Research Scholar at North Carolina State University. “It shows that Yasuní is the center of a tiny area where four key groups—amphibians, birds, mammals, and vascular plants—all reach their peak diversity within the hemisphere,” added Margot Bass, lead author on the study where the map was first published. Ecuador launched their innovative offer in 2007. In exchange for leaving its second largest proven oil reserves—located under Yasuní—permanently untapped, Ecuador would accept compensation for half of revenues lost by not exploiting the oil. However, President Rafael Dr. Holger Kreft of University of Göttingen, co-designer of the map, explained, "We used the most comprehensive data on plant species distributions along with comparable datasets generously shared by the Global Amphibian Assessment, Global Mammal Assessment, and a Dr. John Kress, Smithsonian Institution Director of the Consortium for Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet, said: "This map suggests east Ecuador and northeast Peru may indeed have the highest numbers of birds, mammals, amphibians, and plants coexisting Hugo Mogollon, tropical ecologist from Ecuador and Executive Director of Finding Species, concluded: “The Yasuní-ITT Initiative is pioneering. It is a serious effort to keep megadiverse forest intact, coming straight from the office of the President of Ecuador. Governments of the region and around the world should really want to support this.” CONTACTS, The scientific team can be contacted via:
|