The Rufford Small Grant Conference South America was held by Costa Humboldt and the Centro de Investigaciones Marina de Quintay (CIMARQ) of the Universidad Andres Bello sponsored by The Rufford Foundation. The coastal town of Quintay was the perfect place to host grantees from diverse countries in the continent.
The RGS programme, offers grants to support a variety of environmental and conservation projects, involving both endangered species and ecosystems. In South American, it has been granted 724 projects, which include important contributions to Argentina with 187 projects, Brazil with 126, Peru and Colombia with 91 and 86 respectively, Chile with 56, Uruguay 52, Ecuador 47, Bolivia 44, 26 to Venezuela, Guyana 4 and Paraguay only 2. As a result, numerous initiatives have achieved significant impacts at different levels of organization. Since the creation of a whale sanctuary in Uruguay, the creation of a Marine Protected Area in Chile to protect feeding areas of Blue Whales, to the identification and description of the bacterial diversity associated with several groups or ecosystems. On the other hand, they have sponsored important projects to protect endangered animal species, such as the north-eastern Peruvian amazon giant otter, native deer species in Argentina’s Patagonia or the Pacific’s Ocean black marine turtle.
