Story | 25 3月, 2009

1st South American Workshop for the World Temperate Grasslands Conservation Initiative: defining the South American Strategy

San Clementte del Tuyú, Buenos Aires Province Argentina

Prepared by Andrea Michelson, Regional coordinator for the Initiative in South America

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Photo: Bill Henwood

The Temperate Grasslands Conservation Initiative (TGCI) is a project implemented by the Grasslands Protected Area Task Force of the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with assistance from the Asian and South American Regional Offices (ARO and SUR). The project team is made up of five people from the WCPA, ARO and SUR. The TGCI has a Steering Committee made up of ten experts from seven countries. The entire taskforce is made up of approximately 75 people from 20 countries (Peart 2008).

The goal of this initiative is to double the current level of protection of temperate grasslands (5.5%) by 2014. In order to achieve this, TGCI will promote the creation of protected areas of the biome and the wide use of sustainable management practices. In that way the project will contribute to reverse the trend of biodiversity loss and degradation of the temperate grassland biome

In June of 2008, the first TGCI global workshop was held in Hohhot, China. South America and Eastern Asia were confirmed as priority pilot regions for the initiative. More information about the results of that workshop can be found at the following link:

https://www.iucn.org/about/union/commissions/wcpa/wcpa_puball/wcpa_pubsubject/wcpa_grasslandspub/