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All About RAP
CI's Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) was created in 1990 to rapidly provide biological information needed to catalyze conservation action and improve biodiversity protection. Small RAP teams of expert international and host-country tropical field biologists conduct rapid first-cut assessments of the biological value of selected areas over a short time period (three to four weeks).
RAP conducts surveys in terrestrial, freshwater aquatic, and marine ecosystems throughout CI's Hotspots and Wilderness Areas.
RAP teams provide conservation recommendations based on the area's biological diversity, its degree of endemism, the uniqueness of its ecosystems, and its risk of extinction on a national and global scale. RAP scientists record the diversity of selected indicator groups of organisms, and analyze this information in tandem with social, environmental, and other ecosystem information to produce appropriate and realistic conservation recommendations in a time frame suited to managers and decision-makers. Results from RAP surveys are immediately made available on the Internet and in the RAP Bulletin of Biological Assessment.RAP also conducts training courses in rapid biodiversity survey methods for local scientists and NGO staff in order to build local capacity for biodiversity assessment.
RAP scientists have discovered hundreds of new plant and animal species and provide key biological data on threatened ecosystems around the world. RAP results are applied directly to "on the ground" conservation, such as forming national parks in Bolivia and Peru, developing a protected area strategy for Guyana, and halting illegal oil drilling in a national park in Guatemala. | |
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History of RAP
The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann and the late Ted Parker conceived of the RAP while on a bird-watching trip in Venezuela in 1989. As they sat around the night campfire in the wilderness, they brainstormed, "How can we quickly learn enough about unknown tropical areas in order to make recommendations and catalyze conservation action in the face of impending destruction?"
CI answered this call by organizing a semi-permanent group of experienced field biologists to complete rapid biodiversity surveys in areas where the flora and fauna were previously unknown. The first RAP team was composed of botanist Al Gentry (Missouri Botanical Garden), ornithologist Ted Parker, mammalogist Louise Emmons (Smithsonian Institution), and ecologist Robin Foster (Chicago Field Museum of Natural History).
The team's first expedition was to northern Bolivia's Madidi region in 1990. Their findings and conservation recommendations significantly contributed to Bolivia's creation of Madidi National Park in 1996. Tragically, Ted Parker and Al Gentry were killed in a 1993 plane crash following an expedition to the Cordillera del Condor, Ecuador.
RAP continues to coordinate teams of expert scientists to conduct first-cut biodiversity assessments in tropical areas under immediate environmental threat. The RAP program has since grown to survey terrestrial, aquatic freshwater, and marine ecosystems. | |
| |  | | New Presentations on Hydrological Services Available Online: Sampurno Bruijnzeel, tropical hydrology expert, talks about vegetation, reforestation, and hydrological services in two CI-sponsored presentations.
Oct. 16 presentation at the World Bank (8 MB PDF)
Oct. 17 presentation at CI (7.2 MB PDF)New CABS Brochure Now Available: Click here to view the latest CABS brochure. Contact us to order a hard copy. The Environmental Systems Research Institute Awards CABS’ GIS & Mapping Lab: The Institute honored the Lab for the fifth time in six years, awarding it First Place in the Best Cartographic Design - Single Map Product category for the Coppename River AquaRAP by Mark Denil.
View the winning map Hotspots Revisited Available Online. Hotspots Revisited details the state of the earth's biodiversity hotspots. The book identifies 34 regions that cover only 2.3 percent of the Earth's surface but are home to 75 percent of the planet's most threatened species.
View Hotspots Revisited | |
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