guanaco It is a close relative of the llama, alpaca, and vicuña and has pointy ears and light brown fur. Found in Argentina, Peru, Bolivia and Chile, this wild camelid species is one of the only large native herbivores in the region and is a cornerstone of the Patagonian ecosystem. They once roamed freely throughout Patagonia, numbering up to 50 million in number, and were prey to many of their native predators. But because of this competition due to livestock and excessive hunting. estimated population Now it’s about 2 million. Guanaco is Charismatic megafaunaThey are large, attractive animals used by conservation groups to raise support and funds.
In Argentina, some people have tried to reintroduce guanacos to areas where they had all but disappeared. Organizations are choosing wildlife movement (the practice of moving populations of free-ranging animals from one location to another) through a slower, less certain process of rebuilding existing populations.
In 2018, the NGO Fundación Rewilding Argentina (FRA) announced plans to relocate guanaco herds from Parque Patagonia, a glacier national park in southern Argentina’s Santa Cruz province, to Argentina. Luro State ParkIt is a protected area in La Pampa, 1500 km (932 miles) north. group name indicate Their allegiance to rewilding, a transplantation framework that focuses on restoring pristine ecosystems that are presumed to be adaptive and self-regulating. The new park specialized It is caused by dry forest vegetation, savannas, and a variable but generally warm climate.
Supporters of this plan say They could help restore the guanacos to the once thriving landscape. They hope this will open the door to further migration further north. El Impenetrable National ParkA subtropical region with forests and wetlands. A small population of guanacos survives in La Pampa, but guanacos “critically endangered” In the area. Santa Cruz, on the other hand, has a rich guanaco population. estimated In 2015, there were 1.1 million animals. In June 2023, some Santa Cruz ranchers complained about guanacos. overpopulation problem.
The governments of Santa Cruz and La Pampa collaborated to enact a Guanaco migration plan. Approved Led by Argentina’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development with support from FRA. Foundation website main The project “represents a great start to reintroducing guanacos to areas of Argentina where we had driven them to extinction.” For FRA and its supporters, bringing guanaco from places where it was plentiful to places where it was scarce seemed a logical choice.
However, a group of Argentine researchers criticized the move. “These management decisions violate the guiding principles for rewilding,” wrote five Argentine researchers. letter Published in a leading ecology journal. The letter, published in October 2023, pointed out that many achievements had been made during the cultivation. recent Public attention and praise are still uncertain territory. The authors noted a lack of scientific evidence and evaluation. They also raised procedural concerns about how management decisions are made, claiming the government prioritizes private goals over local, publicly funded science.
Experts agree that it is important to consider the potential for genetic variation when evaluating proposed species movements. guanaco exhibit Regional genetic differences. Dislocations can therefore produce what are known as artificial leads. mixed populationThis is when individuals from two or more previously isolated populations interbreed due to human interference, sometimes reducing the fitness of the populations. In this case, the guanacos of Santa Cruz have genes that adapt them to cold grasslands, a very different habitat from the warm climate of La Pampa. If the two populations interbreed, the unique genetic makeup of La Pampa’s small population could be overwhelmed by that of the Santa Cruz guanaco. If that happens, La Pampa genes will not be able to be used in future efforts to protect the species.
According to Ulises Balza, lead author of the letter, the benefits and risks of animal movement processes should be discussed on a case-by-case basis. “There was no such discussion here,” Balza wrote in an email to GlacierHub. Balza pointed out that FRA only emphasized the potential benefits of guanaco cultivation, while “completely ignoring” the genetic risks.
Viorel PopescuAn associate research scientist in Columbia University’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, he told GlacierHub that non-recommended conservation decisions are not uncommon. Popescu explains that while successful rewilding cases typically include scientific support and public support, many failed projects do not consider the impact of relocated animals on host ecosystems or the impact of new environments on the ecology and behavior of relocated species. I did it. “We often fail to learn from our mistakes. Like in this case,” he said.
Balza described this delegation of approval processes as highly unusual. “Typically, government agencies will approve projects with a justification that can be supported to some extent by information.” But in this case, Balza said, the Department of Defense outsourced management to FRA even though all government engineers strongly opposed the move based on evidence.
According to Marcos Mendoza, an anthropologist at the University of Mississippi, the power of FRA in this context is: pre-established meinfluence From Argentine conservation and government agencies. It is a subsidiary of FRA. Tompkins Conservationis a non-profit environmental organization founded by American environmental philanthropists.
Tompkins Conservation has been working to: important Patagonia’s role in conservation pours in hundreds of millions Although it has invested US dollars in land rehabilitation and conservation initiatives, the organization has also been a source of controversy. critic Green condemned neo-colonialism and conservation capitalism. They say Tompkins implements conservation plans at the expense of rural Patagonian communities by creating “private reserves” that disrupt local production systems and cause losses to local residents.
The landmark April 2023 paper by Guerisoli and colleagues, published before the aforementioned letter, is as follows: criticism Argentina’s overall rewilding policy addresses some of the same genetic risks, particularly FRA’s failure to consider these concerns in the past. After this publication, FRA’s leaders Threats to sue the author for defamation In June 2023, it was claimed that the paper was “written in a violent manner.”
The scientists who wrote the paper will publish the first journal in October 2023. second In November of that year, he accused FRA of refusing to engage in constructive discussion with the scientific community. “We strongly reject these unfounded threats,” the letter said, adding that such discussions should be treated respectfully and in an academic context.
It is unclear whether FRA is pursuing a litigation effort, and Mendoza noted that it would be difficult to assess the legal consequences of such a case. “The defamation claim brought by FRA appears to be a meritless charge,” he said.
However, Argentine scholars and scientists, especially Coniset (Argentina’s main scientific government agency) is concerned about future cuts to public funding for research. Mendoza explained: “Scientists have been left out of the renewed debate. Meanwhile, Fundación Rewilding Argentina has been using its institutional networks to push conservation policies at a distance from potentially critical scientific voices.”
As climate change threatens biodiversity, guanaco populations in cold regions such as glacier-filled Patagonia may appear to be replacing losses elsewhere. But as this example shows, such solutions are complex and there is no panacea for species restoration. Future rewilding decisions require careful research, preparation and consultation with local communities to avoid similar controversies in the future.
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