Press Release

Photo credit: Esteban Barrera, Field Museum, 2024 Additional photos, here.

A collaborative expedition of scientists has just completed a month-long survey in one of the world’s most remote forests, in the northern reaches of the Amazon region. This survey of the Guyanese rainforest is the most comprehensive study of the area’s ecological and biodiversity ever performed. The land surveyed contains parcels of the largest ecologically undisturbed forests left in the world, making the findings fundamental to the scientific understanding of forest ecosystems as they exist today. 

Few people have set foot in this place, making this remote wilderness a scientific treasure and, increasingly, an anomaly. A partnership, formed by the Protected Areas Commission (PAC), the Field Museum of Natural History, and numerous local Guyanese institutions, brought together 55 experts from a wide swath of scientific study including geology, pants, fishes, reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals, soils, and local ecology, in order to perform a comprehensive investigation of the region’s unique ecosystem. 

This expedition forms part of the programme of work on Guyana’s expanded Low Carbon Development Strategy, LCDS 2030, that integrates forest carbon, watershed management and biodiversity as priority areas of conservation and sustainable management of a low carbon economy.  
 
“Guyana is a global hotspot for biodiversity and harbors one of the best-protected tracts of rainforest on Earth,” says expedition leader Dr. Lesley de Souza, Lead Conservation Ecologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. “But many areas of Guyana have not been scientifically documented. The Amerindian communities know more about these areas than the foreign scientists who come to study the region’s biodiversity. Our goal is to marry these two bodies of knowledge.”
 
This was the first expedition in nearly 90 years to explore the biodiversity of the New River, a tropical wilderness that possesses some of the world’s least-explored plant and animal life. Protected for decades from logging, mining, and other extractive industries, the area is now a keystone of the government’s strategy to sustain ecosystem services, build climate resilience and conservation models that can be replicated. The information gathered by the expedition will give the government a solid foundation for decisions about the area’s future.
 
The Protected Areas Commission of Guyana (PAC) partnered with the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago to conduct the Rapid Inventory. The PAC Board of Directors through the Commission manage the current protected areas and is also focused on identifying areas in Guyana with opportunities for conservation.

 “Guyana is building a new model of conservation that benefits all Guyanese, and that requires the highest-quality science available,” says Chairman of the PAC Board of Directors and Foreign Secretary Robert Persaud. “Sampling our biodiversity with a combination of cutting-edge research methods, local Amerindian knowledge, and an all-star team of Guyanese and international scientists is yielding insights that we just can’t get any other way.”

The PAC Chairman sees the rapid inventory as an important tool as they plan for the expansion of the Protected Area System. Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy aims to reach 30% protection of the nation’s terrestrial and marine areas by 2030. Additionally, Guyana has announced plans to lead a Global Biodiversity Alliance that will focus on conservation and protection of biodiversity resources as part of the national LCDS 2030.

Now out of the field, the team will spend a week synthesizing, analyzing, and writing up a draft of the final report. The team provides a summary of these preliminary results shortly after getting out of the field. Biodiversity data from the rapid inventory is shared to decision makers to provide key information for conservation planning and natural resource management.