The Status of the Panama Canal Watershed and Its Biodiversity at the Beginning of the 21st Century

Abstract

Panama is a small Central American country, but it operates a big canal and the world keeps an eye on developments there. Problems with the canal or ecological disasters in its watershed would attract a lot of attention. As Theodore Roosevelt planned, the Panama Canal is a major shipping corridor, transporting 37 ships a day and providing substantial income to the Panamanian government. Yet as Roosevelt could not have recognized—despite his interest in conservation—the canal sits in the center of one of the world's most biologically diverse areas (Myers et al. 2000): Southern Central America has more forest bird species than any other region in the world, except Amazonia and the northern and central andes, each of which is vastly larger than southern Central America (Stotz et al. 1996); and Panama has as many plant species per 10,000 km2 as any region in the world, more than Amazonia or the Malay Peninsula (Barthlott et al. 1996). Roosevelt may have suspected, though, that forests are crucial for protecting the water supply of the Panama Canal and for maintaining the plant and animal communities. Fortunately, the year 2000 still found extensive forests around the canal, protected largely thanks to military and shipping interests, but it also found the watershed adjacent to a large and expanding capital city. Maintaining the ecosystem integrity of the canal will pose a major challenge for conservation in the 21st century. Is urban and economic development compatible with a hydrologically functioning canal and conservation of an extremely diverse flora and fauna?