Photo credit: Nick Hawkins/Nai Conservation
Sometimes, what seems like bad news can turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
That’s what Costa Rican biologist and conservationist Esteban Brenes-Mora discovered when he was called upon in 2013 to help solve a mystery: why tapirs were being hit by cars and trucks on a stretch of the Pan-American Highway that runs between two national parks in the country’s highland region.
Brenes-Mora, in Malaysia at the time working on tapir and tiger conservation, returned home to get to the bottom of the problem – and to find a way to protect Central America’s largest and most distinctive mammal from fast-moving vehicles.
The solution to the puzzle, he learned, lay in the very success of Costa Rica’s efforts to restore and conserve its forests and biodiversity. Suddenly, a species that had been reduced to near-extinction in the area bisected by the highway was actually becoming abundant.
“I did an analysis of the landscape and understood that it was not that tapirs were being pushed onto the road, but that the forests in the area where they were being hit had actually recovered and, with them, wildlife populations,” he said.
The rebound of Costa Rica’s forests and the species that rely on them is the best possible news for one long-time tapir fan: Global Environmental Facility CEO Carlos Manuel Rodríguez.
It was policies he pioneered during his three terms as Minister of Environment and Energy that helped halt rapid deforestation and set nature on the path to recovery. These policies, guided by research from local scientists, included paying farmers to preserve ecosystems, establishing new protected areas and biological corridors, and encouraging private conservation.
“As we sought to measure the impact of our policy changes on the landscape in the early 2000s, we asked ourselves if the restoration of the forest was leading to a recovery in wildlife as well. To find out, we set up camera traps and trained rangers and guides in biodiversity monitoring techniques,” Rodríguez said.
Esteban Brenes-Mora and Carlos Manuel Rodriguez installing a camera trap in Los Quetzales National Park, Costa Rica. Photo courtesy of Carlos Manuel Rodriguez.
“We were impressed by the evidence. We discovered that a mix of more – and more effective – conservation and restoration actions, combined with a fall in hunting and poaching as ecotourism became the main source of jobs for Costa Rica, were bringing wildlife back, and quickly.”
That the GEF CEO is so fond of tapirs that he collects tiny wooden models of the animals may seem surprising given that an attack by an enraged female left him injured and lost in the wilds of Costa Rica’s Corcovado National Park back in 2006.
Solitary, nocturnal, and weighing in at 300-500 pounds, this relative of the rhino and horse is the largest neotropical land mammal. Its most unique – and useful – feature is its prehensile nose, which it can use to pluck leaves from trees, clear brush, or as a built-in snorkel for swimming.
Female tapirs outweigh males, have long gestation periods, and, as Rodríguez witnessed first-hand, are very protective of their offspring whose coats have patterns similar to watermelons.
The gardeners of the forest
Tapirs may be dependent on forests, but forests are equally dependent on tapirs, which are such important dispersers of seeds that they are known as the “gardeners of the forest.” Like the African forest elephant in the Congo Basin, tapirs help maintain the complex interrelationships between species in the ecosystems they inhabit.
“You have 500 pounds of herbivore with a really inefficient digestion,” Brenes-Mora said. “Picture these beautiful animals walking around the forest, eating around 50 pounds a day of vegetation, and defecating seeds as they go. As they push their massive bodies through the foliage, they clear spaces that allow saplings to grow.”
These tapir trails are also regularly used by other animals, including large carnivores: perfectly illustrating the role of a keystone species on the ecosystem.
Tapirs are held sacred by many Indigenous Peoples in Malaysia and Mesoamerica and are linked so closely in popular imagination in the countries they inhabit that it is the tapir, not the jaguar, that Belize anointed as its national animal.
There are four distinct species: the Baird’s tapir, which ranges from Mexico to Colombia; the lowland tapir, found across diverse ecosystems in South America; the mountain tapir, which loves the cold heights of the Andes; and the Malayan tapir in South East Asia.
Today’s tapirs are remarkably similar to those that roamed the earth 35 million years ago. That is not the case for their numbers. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says populations of all four species are in decline. Its Red List ranks the lowland tapir as “vulnerable” and the other three as “endangered.”
According to the IUCN, there are just 2,500 mature Malayan tapirs left in the wild, while experts peg the Baird’s tapir population at 4,500. The mountain or Andean tapir, the smallest of the species, numbers roughly 2,500. There are no clear population estimates for the lowland tapir.
In recent decades, these unique animals have faced a host of direct and indirect threats to their survival. Hunting in countries where it is not outlawed, poaching in those where it is, and habitat encroachment and fragmentation caused by deforestation, farming, cattle ranching, human settlement, and mining.
According to Brenes-Mora and his fellow specialists, the fall in numbers isn’t just bad for the tapir, it’s bad for the planet.
By promoting healthy forests, tapirs are indispensable in the fight against climate change. Central America’s Five Great Forests, which store half the region’s carbon, are home to Baird’s tapir and many trees there, such as the slow-growing Central American wild almond Dipteryx panamensis, depend entirely on tapirs to spread its seeds.
Photo credit: Michiel Van Noppen/Nai Conservation
For Brenes-Mora, the tapir sowed the seeds for a career in conservation.
“I became obsessed with them when I was 5 years old. I had an album of animals of the world and in it there was a picture of a tiger attacking a tapir. And I got obsessed with the tapir, not the tiger,” he said.
When he grew up, that obsession led him to start a small tapir-focused NGO called Nai Conservation that has now evolved into the Costa Rica Wildlife Foundation. Although he has moved on to Re:wild, he remains a board member – and his desire to save the tapir remains as strong as ever.
“I will never forget what brought me where I am right now. That's tapirs.”
The power of community buy-in
Brenes-Mora’s work has certainly benefited the species he loves.
To address the issue of tapir-vehicle conflicts that brought him back to Costa Rica in 2013, he and his colleagues erected signs on stretches of road where tapirs commonly crossed and worked with local communities to raise awareness. The result: road kills in the area have fallen by 70 percent in the past five years.
Meanwhile, local tapir sightings are on the rise, which Brenes-Mora attributes directly to the creation of an economy that stopped rewarding destructive practices such as logging and beef rearing and started incentivizing ecotourism and the preservation of nature.
By making green activities financially attractive, the Costa Rican government was able to ensure its human population bought into the new shape of the economy.
Community buy-in has also been hugely effective in addressing a more recent tapir-human conflict: crop theft by the hefty animals.
After his success reducing tapir road deaths in the highlands, Brenes-Mora and the Nai Conservation team was called upon in 2018 to find a way to stop the animals raiding farmers’ fields. These incursions were both new and startling, particularly in an area where tapirs had all but vanished.
The Costa Rica Wildlife Foundation joined forces with the Baird Tapir Survival Alliance, Osa Conservation, and Re:wild to find ways to ease the tension. They worked closely with farmers to highlight the important services tapirs provide the planet and, more importantly, they together developed solutions, such as erecting electric fencing to stop the hungry marauders.
“And now there is a community who's completely passionate about tapirs and coexist with them,” said Brenes-Mora. “Despite the fact that they live with a species that can destroy a whole cucumber plantation in one night, local farmers celebrate the tapir – now their crops are protected.”
While it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how much Costa Rican tapir populations have grown, Brenes-Mora pegs the current number at around 1,500 – significantly higher than before Costa Rica embraced conservation.
Photo credit: Caliope Rojas
He also believes there is a good chance of reversing the downward trend in other nations if conservationists work together and governments choose the right policies.
In 2017, Brenes-Mora and a group of Baird’s tapir specialists attending the IUCN/SSC Tapir Specialist Group’s Seventh International Tapir Symposium decided to create the Baird's Tapir Survival Alliance, which works across borders to fundraise and develop conservation actions. Their aim is to implement local action in a regional collaborative model to achieve global impact.
“There’s a lot of hope,” Brenes-Mora said.
“The tapir is a super-resilient species. They have changed so little in millions of years. Their genetics are so viable that even though their populations have been drastically reduced, they have the ability to recover. If we give them the chance, they will come back. And they will come back strong.”
Rodríguez, too, hopes that tapirs in other countries will soon be less affected by deforestation, poaching, and other threats that are driving down their numbers.
“In Costa Rica, this special species has taught us some very important lessons that we need to prioritize elsewhere as well,” he said. “This is important not only in individual countries but across regions and in decisions about international resources for conservation and biodiversity across the GEF partnership.”
