Natalia Ocampo-Penuela

University of California, Santa Cruz | UCSC · Department of Environmental Studies

The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List classifies species according to their risk of extinction, informing global to local conservation decisions. Unfortunately, important geospatial data do not explicitly or efficiently enter this process. Rapid growth in the availability of remotely sensed observations provides fine-sc...

Unprotected lands can help prevent the extinctions of species if managed carefully. Over half of the tropical forest is leased by logging companies, whereas only 6%–18% is protected. This makes the timber industry, institutions that regulate it, and consumers of its products important actors in conservation. We assessed the conservation responsibil...

Gustavo Kattan fue un científico visionario que soñó con repetir expediciones ornitológicas en las localidades históricas del Museo Americano de Historia Natural en Colombia, para estudiar los cambios en las aves del país como respuesta a cambios ambientales y en el paisaje, y así contribuir a su conservación. Construyendo sobre el trabajo de Gusta...

A major barrier to advancing ornithology is the systemic exclusion of professionals from the Global South. A recent special feature, Advances in Neotropical Ornithology, and a shortfalls analysis therein, unintentionally followed a long-standing pattern of highlighting individuals, knowledge, and views from the Global North, while largely omitting...

Understanding and mapping anthropogenic threats on species distributions is a crucial task in conservation science to identify priority areas and propose appropriate conservation strategies. Yet, there is a big challenge to quantify how these threats are associated with species distribution patterns at multiple temporal scales. For birds, existing...

Many academics move countries in pursuit of career opportunities. With every move, personal identities are renegotiated as people shift between belonging to majority and minority groups in different contexts. Institutes should consider people’s dynamic and intersectional identities in their diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

A major barrier to advancing ornithology is the systemic exclusion of professionals from the Global South. A recent special dossier, Advances in Neotropical Ornithology, and a shortfalls analysis therein, unintentionally followed a long-standing pattern of highlighting individuals, knowledge, and views from the Global North, while largely omitting...

Accurate maps of species ranges are essential to inform conservation, but time-consuming to produce and update. Given the pace of change of knowledge about species distributions and shifts in ranges under climate change and land use, a need exists for timely mapping approaches that enable batch processing employing widely available data. We develop...

Background Research on bird-window collision mitigation is needed to prevent up to a billion bird fatalities yearly in the U.S. At the University of Utah campus (Salt Lake City, Utah, USA), past research documented collisions, especially for Cedar Waxwings ( Bombycilla cedrorum ) drawn to fruiting ornamental pears in winter. Mirrored windows, which...

The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from 89 different studies. Hundr...

Collisions with buildings cause up to 1 billion bird fatalities annually in North America. Bird‐building collisions have recently received increased conservation, research, and policy attention. However, efforts to reduce collisions would benefit from studies conducted at large spatial scales across multiple study sites, with standardized methods,...

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the potential of using data from long-term citizen science projects to answer questions about the impacts of unexpected events on biodiversity. We evaluate the suitability of data from the citizen science platforms iNaturalist and eBird to describe the effects of the “anthropause” on biodiversity observation in Col...

Tropical forests are undergoing drastic transformations, putting at risk the species that rely on them. On the island of Borneo, between 1973 and 2015, 50% of the forest was lost, much of this to oil palm and other industries. We explore the impacts of these four decades of forest loss on the functionally connected habitat of 245 forest birds and m...

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species includes assessment of extinction risk for 98 512 species, plus documentation of their range, habitat, elevation, and other factors. These range, habitat and elevation data can be matched with terrestrial land cover and elevation datasets to map the species' ar...

Bird collisions with windows are an important conservation concern. Efficient mitigation efforts should prioritize retrofitting sections of glass exhibiting the highest mortality of birds. Most collision studies, however, record location meta-data at a spatial scale too coarse (i.e., compass direction of facing façade) to be useful for large buildi...

Ongoing conflict resolution in Colombia brings an opportunity for economic development of impoverished communities and a conservation threat of deforestation in newly accessible rural areas. Ecotourism is often proposed as a ''win-win'' solution for developing countries to meet both economic and conservation needs. With the highest number of bird s...

Characteristics of buildings and land cover surrounding buildings influence the number of bird-window collisions, yet little is known about whether bird-window collisions are associated with urbanization at large spatial scales. We initiated a continent-wide study in North America to assess how bird-window collision mortality is influenced by build...

Studies on bird-window collisions have generally drawn inferences about species’ differential vulnerability from collision tallies. However, this common methodology is potentially biased because the number of collisions may simply reflect prevalence of species at the study site rather than species-specific vulnerability. Building on recent studies...

The IUCN Red List has assessed the global distributions of the majority of the world's amphibians, birds and mammals. Yet these assessments lack explicit reference to widely available, remotely-sensed data that can sensibly inform a species' risk of extinction. Our first goal is to add additional quantitative data to the existing standardised proce...

A) Mapping Forest and Evaluation. Table A) Confusion matrix and error estimate. Fig A. Validation of forest cover. Tables B-D. Species Information. The tables list the IUCN status, elevational range, original range, range after refined by elevational range, and remaining forest, coverage from the protected areas (PA), and whether it is considered a...

Collisions with windows are responsible for one billion annual bird deaths in the United States alone, and are the second greatest cause of human-caused bird mortality. Although windows can be a significant threat to Neotropical birds, few studies have quantified collisions and none have targeted residences in this tropical region. Research in the...

Bird-window collisions cause an estimated one billion bird deaths annually in the United States. Building characteristics and surrounding habitat affect collision frequency. Given the importance of collisions as an anthropogenic threat to birds, mitigation is essential. Patterned glass and UV-reflective films have been proven to prevent collisions....

Newspaper and TV stories about bird-window collisions at Duke University

Duke University collision data 2014–2015 Carcass survey data for Spring and Fall 2014, and Spring 2015 for Duke University’s West Campus. Study buildings information for 6 structures.

Deforestation causes habitat loss, fragmentation, degradation, and can ultimately cause extinction of the remnant species. Tropical montane birds face these threats with the added natural vulnerability of narrower elevational ranges and higher specialization than lowland species. Recent studies assess the impact of present and future global climate...

Bird species recorded in Mesenia-Paramillo Reserve during April 2014-March 2015. IUCN = threat categories [15]. End = Colombian endemic [76]. Inc = incidental observations, not within point counts. PC = point counts. MN = mist-nets. Mean = abundance-weighted mean elevation (m). Min = minimum elevation (m). RW = elevational range width (m). Taxonomy...

Results from one-tailed ANOVA test comparing elevational range width of different trophic guilds, in forested and partially deforested transects. (DOCX)

Results from one-tailed ANOVA test comparing abundance-weighted mean elevations of different habitat preference categories, in forested and partially deforested transects. (DOCX)

Results from TukeyHSD test showing differences in abundance-weighted mean elevation between habitat preference categories, and forest and no-forest transects. (DOCX)

Results from ANOVA test comparing elevational range widths of different habitat preference categories, in forest and no-forest transects. (DOCX)

Abundance data for all species recorded at Mesenia-Paramillo Reserve during April 2014-March 2015 in alphabetical order. Numbers represent sum of 20 replicas for each point count (PC) in six elevational transects. (XLSX)

Although forests cover an estimated 30% of the Earth's land surface, they are among the most biodiverse ecosystems and the flagship of World conservation. Because they house disproportionate amounts of biodiversity [1], their deforestation and fragmentation remain some of the biggest threats to wildlife [2].

Conservation and restoration priorities often focus on separate ecosystem problems. Inspired by the November 11th (2011) landslide event near Manizales, and the current poor results of Colombia's Article 111 of Law 99 of 1993 as a conservation measure in this country, we set out to prioritize conservation and restoration areas where landslide preve...

We aspired to set conservation priorities in ways that lead to direct conservation actions. Very large-scale strategic mapping leads to familiar conservation priorities exemplified by biodiversity hotspots. In contrast, tactical conservation actions unfold on much smaller geographical extents and they need to reflect the habitat loss and fragmentat...

Resumen. – Contribución de diferentes tipos de bosque a la comunidad de aves en un paisaje de sabana en Colombia. – La heterogeneidad del paisaje es particularmente importante en paisajes frag-mentados, donde cada fragmento contribuye a la biodiversidad del paisaje. Este aspecto ha sido menos estudiado en paisajes naturalmente fragmentados, compara...

We used a simple engineering principle, which suggests that the width of a road needed for a smooth traffic flow is proportional to the peak traffic volume (“engineering hypothesis”), to analyze the adaptive significance of trail width at branching points in the leaf-cutting ant Atta cephalotes. Since the flow of outgoing ants splits at trail bifur...

Cartilla para aumentar la conciencia ambiental hacia las aves amenazadas del Parque Nacional Natural Farallones de Cali

La migración es un fenómeno que ha llamado la atención de investigadores a lo largo del mundo y de la historia de la ciencia. Este proceso biológico ha sido bien estudiado en aves, sin embargo, en Colombia y, especialmente en la región de la Orinoquia, aún queda mucho por conocer sobre estas viajeras. Este artículo presenta el fenómeno de la migrac...

Land transformation and the accelerated rate at which cities are growing have generated new conservation problems that have not been studied thoroughly in the tropics. This is the case of bird collisions with human built structures, estimated to claim billions of victims every year around the world. Between April 2006 and November 2008, we recorded...

Land transformation and the accelerated rate at which cities are growing have generated new conservation problems that have not been studied thoroughly in the tropics. This is the case of bird collisions with human built structures, estimated to claim billions of victims every year around the world. Between April 2006 and November 2008, we recorded...

5 es documentar las experiencias de aplicación de los mecanismos de conservación privada en el país; en varios esfuerzos del G-5, éste ha acumulado información valiosa y lecciones aprendidas sobre el tema, las cuales ha difundido a través de diversos medios. En esta ocasión quiere dar a conocer una publicación que presenta los mecanismos de conserv...

Resumen Las investigaciones actuales de fauna y flora se basan en una escala temporal corta, olvidando en algunas ocasiones los procesos biogeográficos, importantes en el entendimiento de la dinámica de los sistemas naturales. Después de una exhaustiva revisión bibliográfica este documento solo extrae algunos apartes que sirven para dar una primera...