Protecting the Flamingos of the South American Altiplano

Three of the world’s six flamingo species are found in the wetlands of the high Andean plateau or altiplano, a unique ecoregion that extends through Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. Within the arid desert, wetlands provide essential resources for human activity, and habitat for biodiversity highly adapted to extreme temperatures, altitudes, and salinity gradients. In a region where water is scarce, the unique biodiversity and lifeways are now confronted with an unprecedented level of development from lithium mining for rechargeable batteries. The world’s most abundant lithium reserves coincide with the areas of highest abundance of the altiplano’s iconic flamingos. While the landscape changes at a rapid pace, researchers are working to understand the social and environmental impacts of mining. In this program we’ll discuss how flamingos are an ideal flagship for conservation because of the landscape scale at which they use wetlands, and the tradeoffs of transitioning to renewable energy sources that rely on mining unexploited mineral reserves in sensitive, unique areas. Dr. Felicity Arengo is a conservation biologist with experience in applied scientific research, outreach and communications, and site-based and regional conservation planning. She has thirty years of field research and project management experience and is currently the Americas coordinator of the IUCN Flamingo Specialist Group. She obtained her graduate degrees from the SUNY-College of Environmental Science and Forestry conducting research on flamingos in coastal wetlands in Mexico. In South America, she is working with partners monitoring flamingo populations and wetland habitats to develop and implement a long-term regional conservation strategy that will promote conservation of these systems. Until recently, Dr. Arengo was the Associate Director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History, serving in that position since 2004. From 1997-2004 she was the Assistant Director of Latin America and the Caribbean at the Wildlife Conservation Society. She is also an Adjunct Research Scientist at Columbia University where she teaches in the Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology department.