Availability of formal academic programs in conservation biology in Latin America.

Latin America (in our analysis, Brazil and the Spanish-speaking countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico) holds a disproportionate fraction of the world’s biodiversity (Myers et al. 2000; Olson & Dinerstein 2002; Lamoreux et al. 2006). The region depends heavily on natural resource exploitation and has high rates of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss (WRI 2003; Hassan et al. 2005). Environmental challenges in Latin America are further complicated by a lack of conservation capacity-building opportunities that encompass many levels, audiences, and contexts (Bonine et al. 2003; Rodŕıguez et al. 2005, 2006; Chek et al. 2007). Despite long-standing educational initiatives in several Latin American countries, significant effort would be required to match the supply of formal conservation education in a country like the United States (Rodŕıguez et al. 2005). Here we present an assessment of formal programs in conservation biology, including graduate and undergraduate degree programs focused primarily on conservation and conservationrelated classes in broader biology or environmental sciences curricula. Our goals were twofold. First, we sought to provide a current database