Community Management Areas
The mountain tapir community management areas are territories that are part of the distribution of the species in Colombia and that have human populations around them. Our objective is that the people living close to the mountain tapir take ownership of the species conservation cause, by being part of our initiative, which is based on three main components: research, education and community development.
Our initiative seeks to achieve the integration of these three components through the monitoring of the tapir, which focuses on evaluating the trends of the species within the community management areas through the estimation of parameters that serve as indicators of the status of the population.
We promote research focused on mountain tapirs in universities both in the region and in the country, but also internationally. Although our main line of research focuses on the ecology of mountain tapir populations, we are open to different research approaches related to their habitats and associated species.
With the local communities we develop a strategy to convert the community management areas into a destination for researchers, interns and volunteers who want to work for the conservation of the species and its habitats. For this purpose we adapt rural houses as lodges for researchers where they are also offered food and accompaniment in the field through a programme of local researchers. This represents direct benefits that the conservation of the mountain tapir brings to the local human communities.
We train local environmental leaders as co-researchers who team up with students and professionals who come to the area to carry out their research.
Finally, we work with young people from rural schools to achieve a change of perception towards the tapir and its habitats. In this way, the new generations begin to visualise new opportunities derived from conservation and leave behind the extractivist vision of past generations.