Field work.

In West Formosa, dry Forest is less degraded than in others regions of Argentinean Chaco. In this area of 5 millions hectares, there are communal lands distributed in the region with different forest conservation status, but in most case, with better forest situation than the neighbouring areas. On the other hand, the government began a program to increase the livestock by grasslands implantation and high deforestation rates will be expected for the coming years (in last year, deforestation rose to 14,000 ha/year, a 400% increment to previous ones). In this context, we want to support the regional planning that includes communal lands and the Wichi traditional territory. We want to evaluate effectiveness to conservation under future scenarios of deforestation of a preliminary propose of “Wichi Green Corridors” and also we want to collect field data about some aspects of biodiversity with the objective to have better indications about the conservation status of communal lands.

Glacidium brasilianum.

Major activities of this project include deforestation mapping and a model development to identify areas with high probability to be deforested. Also we plan to make field surveys focus in birds and large mammals into communal lands and this sampling will be used to fit species distribution models for West Formosa. Using deforestation scenarios, species distribution and others environmental covers we will make a High Conservation Value Areas identification. We expected that this project contribute to conservation by:

a) Developing a monitoring system in communal lands;

b) Identifying the High Conservation Value Areas (HCVA) of forest in west Formosa, to be integrated in the Wichi Green Corridor proposal

c) Improving the comprehension about the deforestation process related with pastures implantation and evaluating alternatives scenarios.