Non-urban nature fragments in urban context- protection and utilization -: The case Buenos Aires

FAGGI A.

Campos de Jordao

Simposio; Latin American IALE Conference; 2009

IALE

In the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires 11 urban reserves, located in the coastal flats and in the pampas plains,   protect 4683 ha of grasslands, wetlands, scrublands and forests. Their extensions range between 2 and 300 ha and the growing vegetation reflects the landscape transformations that took place as the city spread.  Therefore most of them have periurban plant signatures with an increase in forest cover and evidence of invasion of exotic plants.  Nevertheless half of the urban reserves protect birds and mammals that are threatened for the region, indicating efficiency by the conservation of the biodiversity. The urban reserves are devoted to recreation and environmental education.  Visitors come especially on the weekends.  While Buenos Aires city reserve is very much visited and becomes annually 600000 visitors, the other ones only received 8 to 28 visitors a day. Bad signalized accessibility, low contact with the vicinity, little participation of the local community, lack of fauna inventories and threats referring illegal occupation and extraction of resources (fauna, timber) are some of the weakness they share. In this presentation we discuss the significance of the urban reserves in the metropolis Buenos Aires, their strengths and weaknesses, differences of conservation efforts towards the W, E and N of the urban conglomerate, including some examples of the importance of management assessment.