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Adapting to Change
Building ecological integrity assessment and resilience to climate change into Andean conservation planning
The Cordillera Oriental of the Andes in Colombia, a globally‐recognized “hotspot” for biodiversity, home to an extraordinary diversity of narrowly endemic plant and animal species.
Goal

The goal of this project is to improve regional conservation planning in the northern Andes by using methods and tools to explore how climate change will affect species movements, and to evaluate the viability of landscape components to provide the required habitat for those movements.

Significance

For the past decade, the Colombian NGO Fundacion Natura has worked with the Colombian Natural Parks Agency and local stakeholders to protect remnants of oak forest and adjacent páramo and andean forest habitats in the Guantiva–La Rusia–Iguaque Conservation Corridor. Recognizing that climate change was likely to strongly affect plant and animal communities, they teamed up with NatureServe to perform vulnerability assessments on focal species and the landscape to use the results to inform ongoing management strategies.