January 14, 2018

Forest health

From biodiversity monitoring to GIS mapping, measuring forest health is an essential indicator of the success of Cool Earth’s partnerships.

Our partners know more about the forest than we ever will. That’s why we’ve hired local biodiversity officers to train and lead community Forest Watch Teams across our partnerships in Peru and Papua New Guinea. With training and a total of 32 camera traps and 5 laptops, our intrepid teams are sharing images from the forest with us and their communities. These images strengthen our understanding of the forest and the species that are being protected and are used for community education.

“We want our forest to be healthy, to breathe the clean air we breathe. We have to continue to protect what our ancestors have left us.” – Julian Quispe, Cutivireni.

Camera traps

Our rainforest partners know more about the forest than we ever will. That’s why the local Community Forest Watch Teams in our partnerships in Peru, Papua New Guinea are so key to measuring our effectiveness. With the help of camera traps and laptops, the teams collect images and data from the forest. As well as underpinning our monitoring work, the photos are used in the community schools to show animals the children may never have seen.

Red alert species

In the Lubutu partnership, the security situation doesn’t allow for camera traps. Instead Forest Watch Teams have conducted 630 patrols. More Grauer’s Gorilla nests have been found bringing the total number of families to twenty made up of 103 individuals. Other species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List spotted this year were a healthy population of 300 endangered Okapi, a huge antelope closely related to the giraffe with zebra-like markings and the extremely rare Congo Peafowl, an endemic bird species whose numbers have been dramatically dropping due to habitat loss. Perhaps the most important work of the patrols has been the removal of a staggering 1,779 snares.

Spectacled bear

The Spectacled Bear is the best known Red List species in Peru (thanks in no small part to Paddington) and despite its rarity, the Asháninka Biodiversity Officer, Jaime Pena, regularly captures photos of them. Jaime is on a mission to see one first hand, regularly walking for 8 hours a day to fulfil his quest. We hope 2018 will be his year.