Rare species

[Don McAllister]

Thomas G. Lammers wrote:
>
>  I was thinking of situations (e.g., outside USA
> borders) were there is little or no legal protection available, or where our
> knowledge of the environment is so preliminary that we don't have good data
> yet on rarity, distribution, etc.   I was thinking of a species of
> angiosperm existing as thousands of individuals atop a single peak in, e.g.,
> Peru, vs. a congener that occurs as scattered plants or small populations
> along the length of the Andes.  One well placed logging camp could extirpate
> the former in a single day, the other could survive many logging camps.  -Aubrey Eben

I think it is Conservation International who has one answer to this
problem, RAP. RAP stands for rapid accessment proccess.  When
potentially rich areas are threatened by development a team of experts
including perhaps a botanist, ornithologist, herpetologist, etc.,
knoweldgeable in the area and in identifying calls of the species, can
do an assessment in a couple of weeks. That assessment then can be
compared with other known sites and will determine whether a special
effort would be made to save the site.  Of course this depends on an
environmental organization having the experts and the funds to send in
on short notice.  CI has done this in South America. There was a tragedy
a couple of years ago when the plane carrying the assessment team
crashed. That kind of expertise and dedication is rare.

But RAP teams are not available for many areas of the world threatened
by developement

don


--
Don E. McAllister             /& Canadian Centre for Biodiversity
Ocean Voice International          /Canadian Museum of Nature
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URL: http://www.ovi.ca  E-mail: mcall at superaje.com
 (or: ah194 at freenet.carleton.ca) Tel: (613) 264-8986, Fax: (613)
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