PA March
In This Issue
2009: A Successful Year
Planet Action Supports IUCN
Interview With UNESCO
Pastoralist Routes in Kenya
Andean Bears in Venezula
Reducing Flood Risks in the Philippines
  News from the Blogosphere
Top 10 Tiger Trouble Spots in 2010
Courtesy of WWF
The year 2010 is the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese lunar calendar and has been celebrated beginning February 14 in many parts of Asia. Tigers now occupy just seven percent of their historic range and there are as few as 3,200 left in the wild, down from an estimated 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century.
Click here for the full story.
Can Corals Adapt to Climate Change and Ocean Acidification?
By Lauren Morello and Climatewire   
Courtesy of Scientific American
New research from American Samoa suggests that at least some coral can withstand warmer waters.
Click here for the full story.
IUCN Holds Seminar on Marine Turtle Conservation, Experts Discuss Issues, Threats and the Way Forward
By Afia Salam
Courtesy of ICUN
KARACHI: IUCN Pakistan's Balochistan Programme arranged a seminar to highlight the state of the marine turtles in Pakistan.
Click here for the full story.
For more information about Planet Action, please visit www.planet-action.org or contact us at
[email protected].
 Latest News
2009: A Successful Year for Planet Action
The PA team is particularly proud of its accomplishments last year and wishes to thank all our partners, projects and friends for their enthusiasm and commitment.

We are happy to have met so many new NGOs this year and to provide support - imagery and technology - to such a variety of projects all over the world.

Feedback from the field is tremendous.  These reports are made available to our community and help raising awareness about Climate Change.

Some highlights from last year :
  • PA Ambassador Stéphane Lévin visited the Green Belt Movement in Kenya with PA staffer Louis-François Guerre and made a photo-report about the GBM's efforts to restore water resources and the Five Towers project.  Peter Ndunda was an outstanding host and facilitated all the necessary contacts and logistics.
  • Planet Action Day on June 9th brought together more than 100 NGOs, partners, and Climate Change experts for a day of exchanges and presentations.
  • ESRI US offered us a significant space at their annual international user's conference in San Diego in July.
  • Our trip to Copenhagen in December was emotional - a mixture of hope and disappointment - but the firm conviction that we are doing our part to fight Climate Change remains intact.  A special thanks to Good Planet for making our presence at the Cop 15 possible.
The coming year will be equally dynamic.  See you at
ESRI San Diego or Mexico!
Planet Action Supports the IUCN
Biodiversity is the foundation of life on earth. Ecosystems must function properly to provide us with products and services essential to human life. Oxygen, food, fresh water, medicines, shelter, protection from storms and floods, stable climate and recreation - all have their source in nature and healthy ecosystems.
Raising awareness about biodiversity and the global extinction crisis is the goal of the United Nations' International Year of Biodiversity.
Planet Action supports an IUCN initiative to publish factsheets about the state of biodiversity and ecosystems in Francophone countries.  This extensive research will be used as a basis to secure commitments from member states in favor of sustainable management of natural resources.
Planet Action will participate in the steering committee and special events organized by the IUCN this year.  We hope to identify new projects in Francophone countries.
Interview With UNESCO
UNESCORecently, Dr. Mario Hernandez was interviewed regarding the partnership between Planet Action and UNESCO. Read how Planet Action is helping UNESCO to combat climate change.
Click here for the full story.
 Focus on the Field
Pastoralist Routes in Kenya
GiraffesThe Samburu landscape, located north of the equator and east of the Great Rift Valley in central Kenya, is a semi-arid area with a mosaic of land ownership from extensive private ranches, large pastoralist area and state-owned National Parks and wildlife game reserves. AWF has identified significant information gaps regarding the current distribution of settlements cultivation and socio-economic infrastructures that impact mobility for pastoralists and wildlife and figure prominently in conservation planning.
"Our work with Planet Action aims to fill in some of this information gap with the analysis and application of the latest geo-spatial understanding of the landscape... The outcomes of AWF's partnership with Planet Action dovetail precisely with AWF's ongoing efforts in the Samburu landscape to increase the area of land open to wildlife management and the integrity of key areas such as wildlife corridors, and to increase the capacity of civil society stakeholders to engage meaningfully with conservation decision-making processes... AWF and particularly its GIS unit wish to reiterate our thanks to Planet Action for this partnership".
For more information on these findings and results, click here.
Andean Bears in Venezula
BearsAs the Andean bear is considered vulnerable to extinction worldwide and endangeredin Venezuela by the IUCN Red List, the purpose of this project has been to generate a habitat model for the Andean bear population in Sierra de Portuguesa.
"With the support of Planet Action, we have been working on incorporating new satellite images to the existing assessment of Andean bear habitat availability. During the past year, the classification of the remote sensing imagery supplied by Planet Action, together with the software provided by ESRI Conservation and ITT Visual Information Solutions has successfully fulfilled the objectives of this project".
For more information on these findings and results, click here.
Assessing dispersal corridors connecting protected Andean bear habitats is a project that is being continued by Central Michigan University. For details about their project, please click here.
Reducing Flood Risks in the Philippines
FloodThe project aims at reducing fatalities and material losses in areas prone to natural hazards in the Eastern Visayas region of the Philippines with various methods:  flood early warning systems, safe building practices, slope stabilization for landslide hazard areas, tsunami / storm surge protection by mangroves, river bank protection with bamboo plantations, introduction of disaster risk management (DRM) to the educational sector, integration of into spatial and development planning, search & rescue / first aid training.
"The satellite images where used to identify land uses according to a key provided by the Philippine Department for Environment and Natural Resources...  Currently, GTZ has covered the hazards of flood, typhoon, landslide and the vulnerabilities of settlements, annual and perennial crops, mangrove, and closed forest... The land use maps have been utilized for the characterization of the flood prone area in four Local Flood Early Warning Systems (LFEWS)... However, we intend to include more hazards and vulnerabilities".
For more information and detailed explanations on these findings and results, click here.