Expeditions > Guyana > Project overview

Introduction to the Guyana projects

The Guiana Shield in South America is a massive granite dome that developed two billion years ago and forms what is now Guyana, Surinam, French Guiana and parts of Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil. Throughout most of this area there is a low human population density and as a result 2.5 million km² of tropical rainforests still remain largely untouched, in addition to extensive savannas and wetlands.

Operation Wallacea is working in Guyana – an English speaking country with some of the most pristine remaining forests, savannas and wetlands and where sightings of jaguar, tapirs, giant otters, harpy eagles and many other charismatic South American species are common.  The expeditions to the interior of Guyana involve trekking through undisturbed forests, lengthy river travel in canoes, temporary field camps on the river banks, and are not for the faint hearted – this is true South American forest and a real expedition experience.

Research objectives
Operation Wallacea has formed a partnership with the Iwokrama International Centre for Rainforest Conservation and Development (IIC) that manages one million acres (371,000ha) of undisturbed forests in the centre of the country.  The IIC represents an international partnership between Guyana and the Commonwealth to demonstrate how tropical forests can be sustainably used in the interest of global scale climate change, local communities, and biodiversity conservation.  The Iwokrama Forest is divided roughly into two, a Sustainable Utilization Area (SUA) where sustainable use of forest resources are permitted and tested, and a Wilderness Preserve (WP) where there is no commercial extraction of forest resources.

Surama Village is a primarily Makushi Amerindian community that is part of the villages encompassed under the administration of Annai Village. Surama’s vision is to develop, own and manage a community-based eco-tourism business by constructively using the natural resources and their traditional culture in a socially appropriate manner.  The Opwall survey teams are participating in an annual monitoring programme for the SUA and WP parts of the Iwokrama Forest and the forests surrounding Surama Village. The purpose of this monitoring is to provide long-term data sets on the abundance and diversity of key biodiversity taxa so that the impacts of sustainable use can be identified in comparison with the non-utilised wilderness areas.