Extremely proud to share that our article, Toward Sustainable Biocultural Ecotourism: An Integrated Spatial Analysis of Cultural and Biodiversity Richness in Colombia 🇨🇴, published in British Ecological Society’s journal People and Nature, is now among the top 10 most-cited papers of 2024

🔗 Read the paper: https://lnkd.in/gpFPb-Qi
🔗 Press release: https://lnkd.in/gRZWCqz8


This work explores a simple idea: biodiversity and cultural diversity are deeply intertwined. In Colombia, we show that areas richest in species often overlap with territories of Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities.

By integrating biology, anthropology, music, and spatial analysis, we mapped where biodiversity and cultural richness overlap… from birds 🦜 and freshwater fishes 🐠 to music festivals 🎶 and UNESCO cultural heritage 💃. These biocultural regions offer exciting opportunities for sustainable, community-led ecotourism… That is, if developed with care, respect, and genuine partnership.
Our findings also highlight a critical gap: many of these high-value regions remain inaccessible, raising important questions about infrastructure, equity, and governance in conservation and development.

Grateful to an incredible interdisciplinary team and collaborators who made this work possible including Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela ; Federico Andrade-Rivas ; Guido A Herrera-R; Andrés Felipe Díaz Salazar; Bryam Mateus; Andrew Neill; Katherine Hernandez; Allison Bailey; Natasha Batista, MS; Oliver Nguyen; Dallas Levey; Kelley Langhans; Anaid Cárdenas-Navarrete and others