First-ever linking of Rare “Pride campaigns” focuses on Red Knot in Argentina

With generous support from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, an innovative educational approach to conserving the Red Knot on its critically important Patagonian wintering grounds is underway. Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences’ Shorebird Recovery Project is partnering with Rare, the international conservation organization specializing in social marketing, to carry out its signature Pride campaigns at three WHSRN sites in southern Argentina.

A Pride campaign is an intensive, two-year marketing effort that is centered on a particular threat and uses a flagship species to inspire positive changes in people’s awareness, attitudes, and behaviors toward conservation in their community. This project will mark three “firsts” for Rare campaigns:

1. featuring the Red Knot;
2. working in Argentina; and,
3. linking the conservation of one species across three sites.

In Argentina, the Red Knot — whose rufa subspecies’ population is declining precipitously — faces over-arching threats of habitat loss and degradation associated with development, manufacturing, and agriculture. The three Pride campaigns will launch simultaneously in October 2008, and the project will last for 2 years including ongoing follow-up support available for all Rare alumni partners. The WHSRN sites and project partners are:

• Bahía de San Antonio, located near the town of San Antonio Oeste, where the internationally recognized conservation organization Fundación Inalafquen will lead a Pride campaign in and around a 65,500-hectare National Protected Area. The new NFWF/Manomet-funded nature education center, Vuelo Latitud 40, near this site will be an invaluable resource during the campaign;
• Estuario Rio Gallegos, a glacial estuary of the Chico River experiencing increasing pressure from human population growth and industrial pollution. Asociación Ambiente Sur, an environmental conservation and outreach organization based in the Santa Cruz Province, will lead a Pride campaign in the 80,000-hectare Estuario Rio Gallegos area; and
• Reserva Costa Atlántica-Tierra del Fuego, in southernmost South America, where the City of Rio Grande and the Province of Tierra del Fuego’s Department of Technical Management of Protected Areas will help to support a Pride campaign in the 28,600-hectare Provincial Reserve. The Reserve provides critical habitats and resources to a myriad of wintering migratory shorebirds as well as endemic species.