Guanaco management in Patagonian rangelands: a conservation opportunity in the brink of collapse.

BALDI, R, NOVARO, A, WALKER, S, FUNES, M, FERRANDO, P, FAILLA, M Y CARMANCHAHI, P.

Wild Rangelands: Conserving Wildlife While Maintaining Livestock in Semi-Arid Ecosystem

Blackwell Publishing

Lugar: London; Año: 2010; p. 266 - 290

The guanaco is the only large, widely distributed native herbivore in the Southern Cone. However, guanacos have undergone a dramatic population decline, in particular during the 20 century from around 10 million to half a million individuals, after traditional sheep ranching overtook most of the Patagonian steppe. Competition with sheep, hunting and habitat degradation due to overgrazing resulted in substantially reduced guanaco densities, local extirpation, and restriction to marginal, low-quality habitat and fragmentation of guanaco populations. Protected areas encompass less than 1% of the 700,000 km2 of Patagonian steppe. High-density populations are rare and confined either in these scarce and small areas, or inhabiting remote or degraded places unsuitable for sheep ranching. Today, sheep ranching is still the main economic activity in Patagonia and guanaco poaching continues to be widespread. In addition, the few high-density populations of guanacos are under increasing pressure to be exploited for wool or meat production. During the last five years, several large sheep ranches in Argentina