Colombia: Wildlife and Wildlife Management

Submitted by The Catt-Trax2 Team on Fri, 2007/01/05 - 3:05pm.
Report prepared by Johanna Paradis and Amanda White, students in BCIT’s Fish, Wildlife and Recreation Program.

After Brazil, Colombia has the most biodiversity in the world.

Colombia has:

  • 517 species of reptiles (Canada has 40)
  • 623 amphibians (Canada has 43)
  • 359 mammals (Canada has 194)
  • 708 birds (Canada has 426)
  • 3,200 fish (Canada has 1,100+) and
  • 51,220 plants (Canada has 4,934).

Eighteen percent of its fauna and thirty percent of its flora is endemic to Colombia.

Much poaching and wild animal trade occurs in the country: parrots, butterflies, snakes, and crocodile skins are common items.

One new wildlife management issue is the conflict between fish farmers and ospreys. An estimated 14,000 ospreys are killed every year in northern South America. The ospreys prey on the fish raised in the open-net farms and the farmers, suffering economic loss, respond by shooting the birds. Deterrents have proven ineffective.

Ospreys, like the American widgeon, cinnamon teal, northern shoveler, common nighthawk, peregrine falcon, purple martin, bobolink, willow flycatcher, tanagers, warblers, vireos, breed in B.C. and winter in Colombia or further south.

Colombia’s mammals include several species of opossums, tree rats,
Marsupials, weasels, giant otters, bush dogs, spectacled bears, jaguars, ocelots, and margays, tamarins, spider monkeys and many other kinds of monkeys. Colombia also has armadillos, anteaters, sloths, tapirs, deer, alligators, cayman, snakes, iguanas, sea turtles, manatees, river dolphins, sperm and humpback whales, bats, butterflies, and other insects.

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