Latin America
Latin America covers a land area of approximately 19.2 million square kilometres. According to the IUCN, it is home to 40% of our planet’s biodiversity, 25% of its forests and 26% of its freshwater.
It encompasses a vast variety of landscapes, from lush tropical forests to hyper-arid deserts, coastlines that teem with marine life, the subantarctic steppes of Patagonia, and the longest mountain chain on Earth.
These varied environments are at risk. All five of the key causes of biodiversity loss worldwide (land degradation, climate change, pollution, unsustainable use and invasive alien species) are rising across the continent.
The greatest of these challenges is habitat loss. This takes the form of both reduction and fragmentation, nearly half of which is driven by the growth of commercial agriculture for the exportation of goods like soya, livestock, fruits, vegetables and flowers.
Coastal and marine areas are also under pressure, mainly from tourism, urbanisation, pollution and aquaculture.
We work in Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile, supporting local organisations in their efforts to protect a great diversity of wildlife.
Our projects
Find out more about all of the projects we support in Latin America.
People
The Latin America field programmes team:
Paul is the project manager for our field conservation work in Latin America.
Cat leads our deforestation-free commodities work. She oversees field projects and research in Malaysia, Indonesia and Brazil, addressing land-use change associated with key forest risk commodities.
Pablo Lechuga is engaged in a PhD researching achoque salamanders. His focus is on genetic research to support conservation.
Ximena is conservation biologist based in Bolivia. She has more than twenty years of experience in Andean bear ecology and conservation.
Our partners and funders
