‘SCAPES – Sustainable Conservation Approaches in Priority Ecosystems’ is a 5-year project funded by the United States Agency for International Development. Taking action to abate threats that risk the loss of biodiversity, depletion of ecosystem goods and services, and increased impoverish¬ment of marginalized resource-dependent communities is central to WCS’s mission of saving wildlife and wild places.
Goals
The principal goals of the WCS SCAPES program are to con¬serve biodiversity and to secure the livelihoods of the ru¬ral poor through targeted site-based and policy initiatives at globally important sites for biodiversity conservation.
SCAPES addresses four critical elements: 1) taking a threats-based approach to address conservation issues; 2) implementation with the aim of achieving finan¬cial, social and ecological sustainability; 3) implementation that emphasizes adaptive management; and 4) program suc¬cesses are identified and scaled up to increase conservation success at these sites and within the global conservation community as a whole. These elements are essential, interdependent components of suc¬cessful conservation efforts, and each is critical for a sustainable long-term impact on biodiversity conservation at a landscape scale, and to secure local liveli¬hoods.
Governing ‘Fugitive Resources’ Across National Boundaries: Wildlife Migrations, Illegal Trade and Habitat Fragmentation in the Daurian Steppe.
The Daurian Steppe, one of the last intact temperate grass¬land ecosystems, stretches across Russia, Mongolia, and China. It contains over 2,000 km of international borders, numerous protected areas in border regions, and multiple international transit corridors and wildlife migration routes, including three major migratory bird flyways. The jewel of this grassland is Mongolia’s Eastern Steppe, which is home to over a million Mongolian gazelle – the last large popula¬tion of migrating ungulates in Asia, and the reason for the Daurian Steppe’s designation as an IUCN-WCPA Criti¬cal Global Region and a WWF Global 200 Ecoregion. The Eastern Steppe provides essential resources for livestock herders (30% of Mongolia’s population) whose livelihoods depend directly on the grassland and its wildlife. The contig-uous regions of the Daurian Steppe in Russia and China are critical for the social, political and ecological connectivity of the steppe ecosystem. A holistic, transboundary approach is critical for the conservation of ecological processes and services (e.g., great migrations, rangeland production), com-plete assemblages of steppe wildlife and biodiversity, and the natural resources upon which many livelihoods depend.
By extending the lessons learned over 20 years working in Mongolia to neighboring Russia and China, WCS will enhance governance capacity to address the three main threats fac¬ing the Daurian Steppe: illegal and unsustainable hunting and wildlife trade; habitat fragmentation and degradation from poorly planned development and overgrazing; and wildlife/livestock disease transmission. Building governance capac¬ity within Mongolian and transboundary partners will help ensure the long-term sustainability of the Steppe landscape while securing rural livelihoods.
This project will contribute to the SCAPES goal of con¬serving biodiversity and securing the livelihoods of the rural poor by: 1) building a transboundary political constituency for collaborative conservation and development planning and implementation across the Daurian Steppe; and 2) scal¬ing up an effective community-based model for wildlife and livestock management. In five years, we expect SCAPES-supported activities to lead to greater harmonization of policies and initiatives across the Daurian Steppe, active implementation of transboundary agreements related to the conservation and management of the region, and broad adoption of the community-based model for sustainable management of wildlife and livestock.