Conservation Entrepreneurship/Assignments/Projeto Iauaretê/Introduction
Introduction
CONSERVATION ISSUE
Like most extant large wild cat species in the world today, jaguar (Panthera onca) survival has three major obstacles: (i) destruction/fragmentation of habitat, (ii) depletion of natural prey and (iii) direct hunting. All of which are related to human activities. These obstacles are not trivial ones because they are connected with national and local economics. At a national scale the need for ‘development’ pledged by governments calls for the expansion of cattle and soy bean plantations and the construction of all-weather highways that cut through forest. At local scale rural populations compete with jaguars for food and also kill jaguars directly. Jaguar hunting is generally retaliation by villagers to depredation of livestock by jaguars. In resume, jaguars have little to no economic value (or even a negative value in the case of the local villager who's livestock was eaten by a jaguar) to countries or communities that would justify investing in stopping these activities.
PROJETO IAUARETÊ – An entrepreneurial model for jaguar conservation
To change the scenario described above I propose an enterprise that would aggregate value to jaguar through eco-scientific tourism, making jaguars economically profitable for communities, empowering people to their local natural resources, and also providing funding to develop scientific research on the species.
Projeto Iauaretê’s main objectives are to promote jaguar conservation and social development in the Amazon Forest. Our strategy to achieve this objective has three major parts: scientific research, eco-scientific tourism, and social development. These parts complement each other and we believe that our main objective can only be achieved through the effective deployment and function of all three. Projeto Iauaretê is as a self-sustainable Social Conservationist Enterprise. It uses a specialized niche in the tourism industry, eco-scientific, to gather funds for scientific research, local social development, hence jaguar conservation.