Large ranches as conservation tools in the Venezuelan llanos

Traditionally, conservation efforts have concentrated on protecting plant and animal populations through the establishment of national parks and reserves. These protect only a small proportion of wildlife habitats and, in many countries, increasing their extent is difficult. This is certainly the case in many countries in Latin America, where enforcing wildlife protection laws is also difficult, so that wildlife is often overexploited. It is thus important to evaluate alternative conservation strategies. One such strategy involves the application of wildlife conservation regulations by private range owners on their properties. While the expansion of the cattle industry has been one of the principal factors in causing deforestation in some parts of Latin America, in seasonally flooded savannahs cattle production has proved to be a relatively non-destructive land-use system, at least compared with alternatives such as rice or sugarcane production. These habitats occur in the llanos (plains) of Venezuela and Colombia, the Beni of Bolivia, the Pantanal of Brazil, other parts of Bolivia, parts of Paraguay and the forested savannahs of Guyana. The establishment of many large ranches throughout this biome has caused minimal habitat modification, and wildlife can be abundant. In this paper we use examples from ranches in the llanos of Venezuela to evaluate if effective wildlife conservation can coexist with the sustainable use of capybara Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris and caiman Caiman crocodilus, and with cattle production. Because the economic benefits of capybara and caiman harvests can only be realized by conserving wildlife habitats, the harvest of these animals could