7 June 2024
Protection for Peru’s precious fog oases
We celebrate as science leads to new protections for a wet ecosystem found in one of the driest places on Earth.
Travel through the coastal deserts of Peru’s Atacama and Sechura and, as well as some of the most exquisite landscapes, you will find some of the harshest, driest expanses on Earth.
So little rain falls here, that the deserts have earnt the title ‘hyperarid’. Yet hidden in this extreme landscape you can find verdant green hills where unique plants and animals thrive. Lomas, as they are known, are watered not by rain, but by fog alone, that condenses on rocks and plants to sustain life.
These fog oases owe their existence to the mixing of warm, humid pacific winds with the cooler Peru current, and so are naturally dependent on the Pacific for their moisture and climate. Their presence, like ‘islands’ in the desert, brings both a wealth of biodiversity and an incredible range of human services: clean air and water, carbon storage, food and cultural benefits, and more.
A lack of modern human transit routes through the shifting desert sands have kept just a few lomas free from disruption by vehicles and largely untouched by the modern world , but, in recent years, off-road vehicle travel, mining, illegal land-grab and new roads for wind farms have begun to take a toll.
During this time of change, over more than two decades, scientists at Kew and Huarango Nature have sought to understand the unique species making their home in lomas, working out the extent of their fragility and the possibilities for protecting these ecosystems from harm.
Today, after years of persistence working with local landowners, taxonomists, government authorities and environmental legal teams we are able to celebrate a huge success as a result.
Plants of the lomas
The unique combination of climatic conditions found in ancient lomas ecosystems encourages extreme specialisation. Botanical surveys across the region have identified around 675 vascular plant species known to inhabit lomas, many of which are found nowhere else. These plant species have unusual adaptions for survival, and many have even become co-dependent on one another.
There are species of lichen that thrive solely upon the spines of Haageocereus cacti, who themselves depend on clumps of Stipa grass, whose dense, long blades rake the air collecting dew and fog. This fog water runs down the grass and into the soil’s deepest layers, triggering Nolana ephemerals to bloom, often with stunning blue flowers, whilst beneath them, stolon-forming Alstroemeria spread new roots and shoot up delicate pink blooms.
One result of this plant collaboration is 'phytogenic mounds', clumps of plant communities ranging from the size of molehills to football pitches, clinging onto sand (and existence) together.
Their specialised way of life comes at great cost. Many of the plants that live here are unable to cope with anything but the specific conditions they’re adapted to, making lomas ecosystems some of the most fragile known on Earth.
Lomas Amara y Ullujaya
The 20-year effort of our Kew/Huarango Nature partnership has focused on a particular area containing two lomas – Lomas Amara and Ullujaya (LAU), located in the Ica region of Southwest Peru.
Lomas are seasonal, and with the marine fog building during the austral winter (June-August), they burst into life. Of the 675 known vascular plants of lomas, 95 are found here, and 40% of these are found nowhere else.
Included in this list are narrow endemics – species restricted to very small areas. Teloschistes peruensis, the Peruvian orange-bush lichen, is known mostly from a single intact area of its former range, giving it a global distribution of barely a few hundred square meters. It has a status of Critically Endangered (CR) on the IUCN Red List, and it joins five other CR plant species known from the LAU lomas. 30% of the vascular plants living here are considered at risk of extinction.
The meticulous survey, taxonomy and mapping work conducted by the team under permits includes the first ever scientific herbarium reference collections for many of these plant species, as well as conservation assessments that can help guide their protection from extinction.
Animals too are reliant on the LAU ecosystem, just as the ecosystem is reliant on them.
Our collaboration with entomologists has seen the identification of new species of insects, while teams have been able to observe and track threatened mammal species that act as key seed distributors for plants, including the guanaco (Lama guanicoe) – a relative of the llama – and two species of desert fox (Lycalopex culpaeus, Lycalopex griseus).
Mapping the distribution and abundance of endemic geckos and lizards has allowed species like the Peruvian eyelash iguana (Ctenoblepharys adspersa) to be assessed for the first time, arriving on the Red List as Vulnerable (VU).
A race for protection
Such a valuable mix of life cannot be left to destruction by off-roading trails or new industrial projects, and the Peruvian government and people are the first to recognise this, with great pride in their globally extraordinary biodiversity.
Over two decades of research has revealed the extent of Lomas Amara y Ullujaya’s enormous biological value. The evidence base to make its protection possible has been built through extended fieldwork, herbarium collections, new remote surveying techniques utilising drone models and satellite imagery, and understanding historical change with traditional knowledge.
But what has proved most critical of all, to transform that evidence into real protection, is an enormous collaboration of impassioned people and organisations. The scientific expertise of the Kew and Huarango Nature teams has been joined with that of local biologists and communities across Peru, and with legal knowledge from environmental law experts and national park authorities, directed towards a moment of triumph decades in the making.
Conservation achievement
On 12 April 2024, 15,688 acres (6,349 ha) of state-owned land was declared as a renewable Concession for Conservation. Its name is Lomas y Tillandsiales de Amara y Ullujalla, and it is afforded protection for at least the next 30 years, over which the teams of our partnership will work closely with the authorities, local landowners, schools and communities. This collaboration and continued work will allow the lomas to be explored and understood in full, alongside the monitoring of how their finely tuned, fragile ecosystems respond to the shifting effects of climate and sea currents.
This key moment for Lomas y Tillandsiales de Amara y Ullujalla represents the very first time that a lomas ecosystem or area of Peru’s desert coast has been afforded a Concession for Conservation under SERFOR (the National Forestry and Wildlife Service, Peru), and is testament to what can be achieved when groups unite towards environmental protection.
This extraordinary outcome has been made possible thanks to the work and dedication of: Oliver Whaley, Alfonso Orellana, Justin Moat, Yannet Quispe, Darwin Garcia, and Stefania Grimaldo.
More conservation research from Peru
The secret desert fog oases
Seeing through the clouds
Mapping desert fog oasis ecosystems using 20 years of MODIS imagery over Peru and Chile
An Annotated Checklist to Vascular Flora of the Ica Region, Peru
With notes on endemic species, habitat, climate and agrobiodiversity
