Inspiring Successes

Seventy-four-year-old Ap Trongchu squints into the morning glare as his yaks graze on the mountain slope. The grizzled herder’s gho, the traditional knee-length robe worn by Bhutanese men, peeks out from under the extra layers of fleece he’s added to protect against the biting wind. Here in Bhutan’s Jigme Singye Wangchuck National Park, climate change has forced pastoralists like Trongchu to adapt by guiding their herds to ever-higher altitudes. And yet, despite the many challenges, Trongchu is optimistic about the future.

“I feel blessed,” he says. “We’ve replaced the wooden shingles on herders’ huts with more durable roofing materials and installed pipes for easier access to drinking water. These improvements make our lives more comfortable when we have to migrate our herds to grazing ranges that are often more than 12,000 feet above sea level.”

It was a program called Bhutan for Life, which launched in 2018, that made those improvements possible. Bhutan for Life is an innovative funding initiative that aims to permanently protect the nation’s 5 million-acre network of protected areas and biological corridors; it is also the first such project in all of Asia. The approach used in Bhutan—as well as Brazil and Peru—has proven to be such a success that WWF has now partnered with several other groups to help governments replicate it in other areas around the world.

The groundbreaking new partnership, called Enduring Earth, aims to secure permanent protected status for over 2 million square miles of land, freshwater, and ocean habitats—a portion of the Earth’s surface roughly equivalent to three times the size of Mexico—and to do so in a way that secures the clear consent of the Indigenous peoples who live on and rightfully manage many of those spaces.

In the process, the hope is to conserve vital ecosystems and iconic species, reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions, and deliver lasting benefits to Indigenous peoples and local communities in some of the most ecologically important places in the world. And the partnership comes at a critical time…

Costa Rica Expands Cocos Island National Park by 27 times in size

President Carlos Alvarado of Costa Rica has signed a decree expanding the Cocos Island National Park, increasing the fully protected area in their Pacific waters by almost 53,000 square kilometers.

Costa Rica also creates the new Bicentennial Marine Managed Area

December 17, 2021—Today President Carlos Alvarado of Costa Rica has signed a decree expanding the Cocos Island National Park, increasing the fully protected area in their Pacific waters by almost 53,000 square kilometers. Located about 500 kilometers off Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, Cocos Island National Park is a fully protected area that bans fishing and other extractive activities, designated by the Costa Rican government in 1982. President Alvarado also created the Bicentennial Marine Managed Area, twice the size of the expanded Coco Island National Park, which will include some no-take areas and strengthen fisheries management.

This expansion follows an agreement that the presidents of Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador signed at the climate COP26 in Glasgow on November 2, committing to protect a total of 500,000 square kilometers in the eastern tropical Pacific. The region is home to endangered species of sharks, sea turtles and marine mammals that migrate in between marine protected areas along “marine highways.”

Ecuador expands protections around Galápagos, creating ‘a new highway’ for sea life

The South American government will curb fishing in more than 20,000 square miles of ocean next to the archipelago, which is treasured for its abundance of wildlife

The Galápagos, Charles Darwin once said, are “a little world within itself.” Many of the finches, tortoises and other animals that he saw there in 1835 — and that inspired his ideas on evolution — know no other home on Earth.

But the sharks, whales, sea turtles and manta rays that teem in the waters around the wildlife-rich islands are on the move. Like Darwin, who spent only five weeks in the Galápagos, many sea species there are transient, regularly migrating outside that little world and to neighboring island chains.

On Friday, the government of Ecuador announced it will curb fishing in more than 20,000 square miles of ocean to the northeast of the archipelago, in essence erecting guardrails around an underwater animal freeway between the Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands and Costa Rica’s Cocos Island…