Ángela María Amaya-V

Colombia / MSc Biologist

She is a biologist graduated from the Universidad de Los Andes and a teacher in Biological Sciences from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She has oriented her academic trajectory towards the study of bird ecology and conservation. In her undergraduate thesis, she evaluated the effect of the invasive species thorny broom (Ulex europaeus) on the bird community at the edge of the high Andean forest. Her master's thesis, carried out in the Mexican southeast, was developed in the context of a reintroduction program of the scarlet macaw (Ara macao) in Palenque -Chiapas-, a species in grave risk of extinction in Mexico.

She is co-author of the Red Book of Birds of Colombia (Vol. I and II). Since 2010 she has been a researcher at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, as part of the team that assesses the risk of extinction and the trend in the conservation status of birds in Colombia. Currently she, along with professors from the U. Javeriana, is a co-investigator in a study on the motivations of birdwatchers in the country. In the past, she has been a professor of population ecology in the undergraduate course in Ecology at the Faculty of Environmental and Rural Studies of the same university. Recently, she is part of the work team that investigates threatened high Andean parrots at the Fundación Vida Silvestre, Colombia.

Master conference (included in the congress plans)
“The Red List Index as a measure of changes in the extinction risk of Colombian birds”
DateTimePlaceSpace available
Saturday, November 114:30 – 5:15pmMain auditórium
C.C. Termales El Otoño
500
Pre-registration

 

The Red List Index (RLI) allows understanding of the trend in extinction risk of a set of species over time by detecting changes in the red list category of species. The methodological process that leads to the estimation of an ILR makes it possible to analyze the causes of such changes in the conservation status of each one of the species and therefore contributes to the understanding of the effectiveness of conservation measures. We calculated the first national ILR for the birds of Colombia in the period 2002-2016 and included indices disaggregated by regions, ecosystems, and groups of species of particular interest for conservation. We found that the trend in the extinction risk of the country’s birdlife as a whole is relatively stable, although it shows a moderate trend of deterioration that is very worrying: of the 16 species (100%) that had a genuine change in their risk category, for 13 (81%) there was an increase in the risk of extinction, and only for 3 (19%) species there was an improvement. According to the disaggregated ILR, the birds of the páramos, high Andean forests, freshwater ecosystems, and mangroves are the most threatened. Likewise, there are groups of birds that are more sensitive than others: game birds, parrots, large frugivores, understory insectivores and birds of prey inside the forest are the most negatively affected groups. In terms of regions, the Andean birds and those of San Andrés y Providencia are the most threatened. Our findings show that some threats advance and worsen the extinction risk of some species, but also that habitat conservation and/or recovery actions have been effective in reducing to some extent the extinction risk of other species. Monitoring the risk of extinction of birds with methodological tools such as the ILR is very important in a country with the greatest richness of bird species in the world, high levels of endemism, and dynamic and complex spatial patterns of habitat loss.

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