Programme
Key Issues
Publications
Links

Mr William HENWOOD

Programme

The network is in the process of developing a programme that will contribute to achieve the above mentioned objectives. This will involve a process of consultation with members of the network and other elevant experts and institutions. The programme will also be based on recommendations from a number of regional meetings.

Key Issues

The temperate grasslands of the world, known variously as the prairie in North America, the pampas in South America, the steppes in eastern Europe and northern Eurasia and the grassveld in South Africa, are among the most diverse and productive of all the earth's terrestrial biomes. Yet, without exception, temperate grasslands have received very low levels of protection. According to the 1997 United Nations List of Protected Areas, only 0.69% of the temperate grasslands biome is under some kind of protective status. This protection level ranges from a low of 0.08% in the Argentine pampas to very modest highs of 2,01% in the lowland grasslands of south-eastern Australia and 2.2% in the South African grassveld.

This protection level is not only the lowest of the globe's 15 recognised biomes, but is the lowest by several orders of magnitude. Tropical grasslands and savannas, for example, enjoy a level of protection nine times higher than their temperate cousins. Temperate broad-leaf and needle-leaf forests receive protection levels six and eight times higher than grasslands, repectively. Temperate subtropical forest, over which so much justifiable concern has been expressed, receive 14-fold greater protection worldwide than to temperate grasslands.

Why are the levels of protection for temperate grasslands so low and, perhaps more significatly, why are these low levels so universal? What is it about temperate grasslands that has failed to inspire governments to protect them? What can we do to improve this situation?

The aim of WCPA Network on Temperate Grasslands, created in 1996, is to provide WCPA members interested on this issue with a space for discussing these questions and to exchange ideas and knowledge on how to provide practical answers to them. The network has the following objectives: 

• to assess the conservation of temperate grasslands throughout the biome;
• to analyse the constraints to grasslands protection; and
• to develop a strategy and action plan to achieve an expanded system of protected grassland areas.

To prepare a set of management guidelines designed to conserve grassland biodiversity.

Links