Format: ORAL

Bente B. Klitgaard1, Maira T. Martinez-Ugarteche1,2, Daniel Villarroel2,3, Jack Plummer1, Hannah Rotton1, Rebecca Dicker1, Nicola Biggs1, Oriana Lino-Villalba3, Liliana Arroyo-Herbas3

1Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, United Kingdom 2Museo de Historia Natural Noel Kempff Mercado, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia 3Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia

The concept Important Plant Areas (IPAs) was developed by PlantLife International in the early 2000th and initially implemented in Europe and the Mediterranean, identifying IPAs in 27 countries. Given the impact of the IPAs program, the Tropical Important Plant Areas (TIPAs) program was launched in 2015, with Bolivia as the first country in South America for its application. The three main objectives of TIPAs are to: 1) identify the most important areas and habitats for rare, threatened, endemic and useful plants or habitats; 2) designate priority TIPA sites for their conservation; and 3) promote the sustainable management and protection of TIPAs through the participation of government decision makers, local communities and conservation institutions. To date, the Bolivia TIPA program has identified 37 sites in two ecoregions of the country: the Chiquitano Dry Forest and the Inter-Andean Dry Valleys. In total, 319 species and eight habitats met the TIPA criteria for inclusion. In the process, we have also:  a) identified six centres of richness of useful plants; b) evaluated the risk of habitat collapse following IUCN criteria in the highly threatened Chiquitano Dry Forest ecoregion; c) discovered 12 species new to science; and trained 28 Bolivian professionals and 65 undergraduate students in IUCN and TIPA methodology. The TIPA network of sites has been adopted by the subnational government of Santa Cruz along with the RAMSAR and IBA sites, and has informed 1) the revision of the Master Plan of protected areas in the Department of Santa Cruz, 2) the delimitation of two areas protected areas, 3) the Comprehensive Natural Resources Plan of the Department of Santa Cruz, and 4) the recent review of the Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) in Bolivia.