Carbon credits through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) offer a unique opportunity to positively impact habitat and biodiversity conservation. Few financial tools are available to jaguar conservationists to conserve forest habitats; thus carbon credits are of great interest. In order to examine the opportunities and challenges of integrating conservation impact for jaguars and biodiversity into carbon credits, we review 44 REDD+ projects in Latin America certified by Verified Carbon Standard + Climate, Community and Biodiversity located within jaguar distribution, registered between 2011 and 2020. Of the 44, only eleven of those projects have jaguars as conservation targets, and seven of those eleven have a coherent plan for monitoring jaguar populations. While REDD+ projects promote forest cover and biomass conservation, tradeoffs based on limited financial resources at the onset and throughout the project may lead to limited monitoring capabilities and threat reduction, thus rendering co-benefit reporting deficient or absent. We suggest more rigorous baseline data requirements of fauna populations, greater collaboration between project developers, researchers and local communities to monitor wildlife and address human-jaguar conflicts, and clear requirements from national level REDD+ initiatives to ensure the conservation of a forest keystone species, the Americas’ largest felid.

中文翻译：

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提炼碳信用以促进大型食肉动物保护：以美洲虎为例

通过减少毁林和退化造成的排放 (REDD+) 实现的碳信用额为积极影响栖息地和生物多样性保护提供了独特的机会。美洲虎保护主义者很少有金融工具可以用来保护森林栖息地；因此，碳信用额很受关注。为了研究将美洲虎和生物多样性的保护影响纳入碳信用额度的机遇和挑战，我们回顾了 2011 年至 2020 年间注册的 44 个拉丁美洲经验证的碳标准 + 气候、社区和生物多样性认证的 REDD+ 项目，这些项目位于美洲虎分布范围内。在这 44 个项目中，只有 11 个项目将美洲虎作为保护目标，而这 11 个项目中的 7 个项目有一个连贯的美洲豹种群监测计划。虽然 REDD+ 项目促进了森林覆盖和生物量保护，但在项目开始时和整个项目期间基于有限财务资源的权衡可能导致有限的监测能力和减少威胁，从而导致协同效益报告不足或缺失。我们建议对动物种群提出更严格的基线数据要求，加强项目开发商、研究人员和当地社区之间的合作，以监测野生动物和解决人类与美洲豹的冲突，并明确要求国家层面的 REDD+ 倡议以确保保护森林关键物种、美洲最大的猫科动物。