Conservation of Critically Endangered Amphibians: Atelopus Farci and Bolitoglossa Capitana from Colombia Laguna de Pedropalo. This zone is very important for the threated amphibians. Chaves-Portilla G. & Cortes-Herrera O. 2006.
Ranita Nueva.
Girl and frog.
Specimen of the Pandi mushroom-tongue salamander (Bolitoglossa pandi).
Rana Muerta - a dead frog for unknown causes that we find in one of our searches that represents the serious decline of the amphibians.
The Salamander of Alban (Bolitoglossa capitana) and the Harlequin frog of Alban (Atelopus farci) are critically endangered species, endemic to forest of the Bogotá and the Negro river (Colombia).
Although extremely poorly known, their current distributions are likely to be highly restricted and their remaining forest habitat is under intense anthropogenic pressure, in order to develop and urgently needed and effective conservation strategy for these two species.
The principal aim of this project is to obtain basic but crucially important data on the Critically Endangered, Bolitoglossa capitana (CR) and Atelopus farci (CR), within the Province of Tequendama basin in Cundinamarca department, Colombia, in order to determine their current status and resource requirements and to develop a comprehensive management strategy to facilitate their long term conservation. Other objective is promoting conservation activities with local human communities.
Contact Giovanni and his team at biochaves@yahoo.com or gchavesp@gmail.com
Project Update: February 2007 This golden poison frog is an undescribed species of amphibian of my country. This was discovered for my work team in February of 2007 in the Supatá Municipally in the development of the project "Conservation of Critically Endangered amphibians: Atelopus farci and Bolitoglossa capitana from Colombia”.
This species is very important because is one of the few poison frogs that are in the mountainous zones of Colombia, and apparently this population that we discovered is the last of the species.
Project Update: March 2007 At the beginning on March, our team did the first educational work with the children. In this working day we did a long walk with some children and young of the Tena municipally. They could look some amphibians and helped to find them.
The photo shows a girl with a frog in her hands. She participated in some activities that we organized for the environmental education.
Project Update: July 2007 In the Supatá municipally and in the same relict of forest in when we discovered a new poison frog (Dendrobatidae: Ranitomeya), we locate a new population of the Pandi mushroom-tongue salamander (Bolitoglossa pandi) an endangered species of the cloud forests from the department of Cundinamarca.
This success is very important for the amphibian conservation because this salamander species was knew only from the type locality in the Pandi municipally. The new population of this salamander exists in a little fragment of forest and now this species united to the new poison frog are threatened for the destruction of your habitat. The project Conservation of Critically Endangered amphibians from Colombia will make chats and environmental campaigns with the rural community in the zone for show the need of protect and conserve this relict of forest and the fauna and flora of this region.
Project Update: September 2007 After eight months of search of new populations of Atelopus farci and Bolitoglossa capitana in the Cundinamarca department, the results have been unsatisfactory. The destruction of the habitats is a constant in the zones where we have been carried out searches. This devastation has produced a remarkable decrease of the populations of amphibians in many areas of Cundinamarca. As is known, now the populations of amphibians are threatened for several causes and this is reflected in the absence of Atelopus farci and Bolitoglossa capitana in the forests of Cundinamarca.
We are convinced that the environmental work with the human communities around the relicts of forest is one of the tools most important that we have to protect these last natural places. For this reason we will increase our work with the community for explain the urgent necessity of preserve the last natural resources that are in the department.
Final Report Read about the findings of this project and activities undertaken in the final report below.
2nd RSG Awarded Read about Giovanni's latest RSG project at http://www.ruffordsmallgrants.org/rsg/projects/giovanni_alberto_chaves_p...
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