I’d like to start this report with a quick definition of three key terms.

• The Capuchin Corridor is a conservation area that aims to connect and protect 35,000 acres of rainforest in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador. By the numbers, this ecosystem is the most threatened tropical forest on earth: less than 5% of its original forest still remains.
• The Capuchin Collective is a group of people that are joining forces to make this project happen. It was initiated in 2023. Learn more at www.capuchincollective.org.
• Third Millennium Alliance (TMA) is the nonprofit organization that is implementing this project on the ground, in partnership with 36 rural communities that live on the edge of this forest. TMA began its work here in 2007 and currently manages 4,000 acres in two forest preserves in the Capuchin Corridor.

By the Numbers (2024-2025)

• Acres purchased and protected: 730 acres in the first two years
• Total upfront investment: $506,392
• Annual management fees: $32,826
• Net annual CO2 benefit: 2,440 metric tons*

*Calculated using the Forest Carbon Ledger (FCL) methodology, which quantifies forest carbon accumulation over time.

Current Acquisition Priorities

• Valle Profundo: 118 acres ($120,840) — 387 tons CO₂/year
• Tayra Pass: 227 acres ($159,456) — 760 tons CO₂/year
• Twin Falls: 29.7 acres ($34,200) — 91 tons CO₂/year
• Sapano Headwaters: 161 acres ($104,400) — 549 tons CO₂/year
• North Tabuga Headwaters: 158 acres ($104,640) — 510 tons CO₂/year
• Strangler Fig Grove: 74 acres ($46,241) — 241 tons CO₂/year

This waterfall sits at the confluence of two Capuchin Corridor properties: Cascada Grande (already acquired) and Valle Profundo (still seeking funding).

Historical Timeline

2007: The project began with Isabel Dávila, Jerry Toth, and Bryan Criswell camping in an abandoned cloud forest on a remote mountaintop in coastal Ecuador. They were armed with machetes, a few leaky tents, and $16,000 in cash. They purchased 100 acres, founded the Jama-Coaque Reserve (JCR), and created the nonprofit Third Millennium Alliance (TMA).

2008–2020: Over the next 13 years, TMA acquired 15 properties totaling 1,500 acres, growing its programs and raising its annual budget from about $25,000 to $250,000.

2021: TMA launched its Regenerative Cacao Program, soon recognized globally and featured in Smithsonian Magazine. This same year, the vision for the Capuchin Corridor started to emerge—shifting TMA from slow linear growth to an ambitious, landscape-scale strategy.

2022: A transformative $650,000 donation from a close friend of the organization provided TMA with the seed capital to expand its team, intensify its operations, and accelerate land acquisition.

TMA started by assuming command of the largely abandoned Pata de Pájaro (PDP) reserve—once 10,700 acres, now only 1,000 acres of standing forest—bringing its two caretakers into the organization. The plan: connect JCR to PDP across a 27-mile mountain range. This would effectively create the Capuchin Corridor.

To achieve this, TMA would first need to strengthen its work with the 36 communities that depend on this forest for their water supply. A Swiss foundation laid the groundwork for this with a $1.2 million grant over five years.

2023: But a key piece of the puzzle was missing. Success hinged on protecting and restoring tens of thousands of acres of threatened land along the top of the mountain range—at the headwaters of all the communities that lived below. This called for acquiring land from absentee or disinterested landowners throughout the mountain range and converting it into a vast protected area.

Led by Noah Knauf and John Anderson, the Capuchin Collective was born. The idea was to assemble a group of people dedicated to rapidly scaling the Capuchin Corridor by fractionalizing conservation and allowing funders to effectively adopt entire rainforested properties, which they commit to supporting over the long-term.

2024: By the end of 2024, JCR had nearly doubled in size—from 1500 acres to 2,700 acres—in just three years.

Meanwhile, TMA designed the Community Forests Program, which became the conceptual framework for co-creating the Corridor with 36 local communities. This system replaces the outdated 20^th-century model of “fortress conservation” with a more innovative partnership-based approach.

2025: The Capuchin Collective paved the way for TMA to add hundreds more acres to JCR. And thanks to Capuchin Collective sponsor Ian Shovlin, TMA finally initiated an endowment fund aimed at funding the ongoing management of the protected area over the long term. This is absolutely critical for the long-term sustainability of the Capuchin Corridor.

At the same time, TMA worked with Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment to legally re-establish protection for PDP and lay the groundwork for connecting it southward to JCR.

Call to Action

Growing the Capuchin Collective is how we fuel the next phase of expansion. The goal: create a contiguous rainforest of 35,000 acres across a 27-mile mountain range over the next decade. And, in the process, develop a regenerative economy throughout the 100,000-acre bioregion that this forest feeds and is sustained by.

The Capuchin Corridor takes its name from the critically endangered Ecuadorian Capuchin Monkey, which relies on these forests as its last refuge.

The post Capuchin Collective Annual Report (2025) appeared first on TMA.

Below is a brief explanation of what we’re about.

Hiking back to camp in the Jama-Coaque Reserve circa 2008.

The story behind the name

The name of our organization—Third Millennium Alliance (TMA)—reflects the idealism from which this project was born. We believed the world was badly in need of a radical course correction, and we wanted to be at the forefront of this transformation—literally on the front lines. So that’s exactly where we went. Our lofty dream was to restore the most endangered rainforest on earth and—in the process—help redesign the way that humanity manages resources, produces food, and pursues abundance.

In other words, we believed—and still believe—that the prevailing model of industrial development of the last few centuries is becoming obsolete. Humanity needs to upgrade its operating system for the coming millennium—which is the third millennium of the so-called Common Era.

Simply stated, the goal of this new operating system is to pursue human abundance in a way that increases our natural capital over time rather than depleting it. Our vision is a world teaming with life, culture, natural resources, and wilderness, but in a way that is aligned with the technological age in which we now live— a world where both people and nature are healthy and rich.

We also believe that building a new model of economic and ecological abundance along these lines can only be achieved with the collaboration of people across all walks of life. It will require architects and engineers, farmers and scientists, artists and entrepreneurs, thinkers and doers, leaders and technicians, governments and businesses. In other words, it requires an alliance. An alliance for the third millennium. Third Millennium Alliance.

Admittedly, Third Millennium Alliance is a bit of a mouthful in English and doesn’t translate well to Spanish. So now we mostly use the acronym TMA. It works equally well in Spanish as it does in English.

The “Bamboo House” research station in the Jama-Coaque Reserve (2024)

What we do

Despite the global ambition implied by our organization’s name, TMA is bioregional at heart. Its mission is to work with local communities to protect the last remnants of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador and restore as much of this ecosystem as we can. We do this through a combination of economic incentives, regenerative agroforestry and other forms of food-positive reforestation, and community-based conservation.

It starts with protecting and sustaining vital natural resources like forests and the abundant freshwater sources that they represent. Our flagship project is the creation and ongoing management of the Jama-Coaque Reserve (JCR), which was first established in 2007 and now protects 3,000 acres in partnership with the local community of Camarones.

We’re now in the process of rescuing and reviving an orphaned forest preserve—Cerro Pata de Pájaro (PDP)—which covers over 10,000 acres along the same mountain range. It also contains one of the most pristine relics of old-growth cloud forest in all of coastal Ecuador.

Both of the above are supported by TMA’s Regenerative Agroforestry program—a strategic alliance between conservation and commerce that uses chocolate as a tool for forest restoration and a sustainable source of local jobs and livelihoods. It is managed in partnership with local farmers and premium chocolate companies like To’ak.

Local park ranger Pablo Bermudez in the old-growth cloud forest of Cerro Pata de Pájaro (PDP).

Long-Term Vision

Our next major task is to create a conservation corridor that connects JCR and PDP. This will establish a contiguous protected area of 35,000 acres of rainforest that stretches 27 miles across the length of the coastal mountain range. All of this is located at 0° latitude. The equator line literally runs right through the middle of it.

We call it the Capuchin Corridor, which we are building in partnership with 36 agricultural communities that live along this mountain range and who depend on its forest for their year-round supply of freshwater. The entire area—which includes forest, agricultural land, and residential areas—is 100,000 acres (40,000 hectares).

TMA’s Community Forest Program is the framework we’re using to achieve this objective. It is supported by TMA’s Regenerative Agroforestry program and other innovative partnerships with local communities. TMA’s Food-Positive Reforestation strategy is the basis for our large-scale forest restoration work.

The Capuchin Corridor is named in honor of the critically endangered Ecuadorian Capuchin Monkey, a species whose existence is tied to this ecosystem.

Our work has been featured in Smithsonian Magazine and Mongabay.

Legal Status

TMA is a nonprofit conservation organization registered in both Ecuador and the United States.

The coastal mountains of the Capuchin Corridor in the heart of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador.

The post What Does TMA Stand For? appeared first on TMA.

But this works both ways. Food is the primary source of the problem and it’s also a key part of the solution. A prime example is the Pacific Forest of Ecuador. It was almost entirely forested about a hundred years ago. Since then, most of it has been converted to agricultural land—predominantly cattle pasture for beef production. Now it’s coming full-circle. TMA is using food-positive reforestation to reverse that process. For the sake of simplicity, we call it Food-Forestation.

The goal of Food-Forestation is to restore forest and biodiversity without sacrificing local food security. TMA does this using two different methods:

1. Regenerative agroforestry
2. Assisted natural regeneration paired with high-efficiency food production

Our pioneering work in this field has been featured in Smithsonian Magazine and Mongabay.

Food is the key to both rainforest conservation and restoration

Agricultural expansion is the primary driver of deforestation and the biggest barrier to reforestation. Until that issue is addressed, all other would-be solutions only serve as temporary and localized band-aids.

Unless food production is replaced, it will simply be displaced to another area. That’s rule #1.

This is why carbon credits, conventional reforestation initiatives, and even forest preserves aren’t long-term solutions when implemented in isolation. They attempt to tackle the problem downstream of the root cause. Those strategies only become truly sustainable when they are aligned with the needs and realities of food production.

This doesn’t only apply to the Pacific Forest of Ecuador. It applies to every single major tropical forest on earth, from the Amazon and the Congo to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

Humanity will always choose food over conservation and carbon. That is the problem that we have to solve on a global scale. TMA’s work in Ecuador is an example of how to do it on a local and bioregional scale.

“It’s food, stupid!”

Human food production generates 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions, occupies nearly half of all habitable land on the planet, accounts for 70% of all freshwater withdrawals, and drives 90% of tropical deforestation. It is the single biggest driver of ecological collapse and biological extinction throughout the world.

Yes, the overuse of fossil fuels is a major threat to the biosphere, but food is the bigger problem.

Simultaneously solving reforestation and food security

Converting cattle pasture back into forest is fairly easy—we’ve been doing that for over 15 years and the success speaks for itself. For details, check out how we rapidly reforest large tracts of land with minimal cost.

But there’s a catch. If you don’t replace the food production that was displaced by the forest here, then someone else will probably cut down the forest elsewhere and do the same thing.

Sadly, this happens all the time. Everyone who earnestly works in tropical forest conservation and restoration is aware of this—either consciously or subconsciously. It’s fair to say this is the status quo.

This is a problem for two reasons: 1) it doesn’t solve the problem, it just displaces it, and 2) it often threatens or destabilizes food security.

Fortunately, there’s a way to fix this. That is the basis of our forest restoration work in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador.

How we do it

When we reforest land, we also make sure that we’re replacing food production on the same property or right next to it. That is the meaning of food-positive reforestation (aka “food-forestation“).

There are two ways that TMA does this.

• Regenerative Agroforestry: We replace marginal cattle pasture with regenerative agroforestry in partnership with local farmers. Shade-grown cacao trees are intercropped with banana, plantain, multiple species of fruit trees, and a wide diversity of tall native hardwood species, which form the upper canopy. This design effectively mimics the structure and function of a native forest while also producing food and a sustainable revenue stream for farming communities. TMA’s Regenerative Agroforestry program has been featured in Smithsonian Magazine and Mongabay.
• Native Reforestation with Food Replacement: We replace marginal cattle pasture with native forest paired with high-efficiency food production. The latter exceeds the food output of beef production but uses a much smaller area of land to do so. This allows over 90% of the land to be returned to native forest without sacrificing local food security.

Before-and-after photos of cattle pasture converted to native forest by TMA (in partnership with ecological succession) in less than a decade. (Jama-Coaque Reserve, Ecuador)

Method #1: Regenerative Agroforestry

TMA works with over a hundred different farmers to convert deforested land into regenerative agroforestry farms that combine heirloom cacao trees with banana, plantain, and over 30 different species of food-producing and native canopy trees.

To trigger this transition, we use financial incentives combined with market access to premium chocolate companies like To’ak, which pay farmers the highest prices for cacao in the entire country. The result is the conversion of marginally productive cattle pasture or other forms of deforested land into highly productive and thriving agro-forests. Farmers increase their earnings, their communities have better access to local food, biodiversity is improved, and CO2 is removed from the atmosphere and stored in the biomass of the forest.

Our Regenerative Agroforestry program started in 2020 and continues expanding every year. TMA currently works with 110 farmers across six different rural communities in the Capuchin Corridor of coastal Ecuador.

Featured in:

• Smithsonian Magazine: The Quest to Save the World’s Most Coveted Chocolate
• Mongabay: Can agroforestry chocolate help save the world’s most endangered rainforest?

Method #2: Native Reforestation with Food Replacement

This particular approach can be applied on a local, bioregional, or even global scale. It belongs in the “land-sparing” section of the ecological restoration tool kit. The key is taking advantage of the extreme inefficiency of ruminant-based food production in ecosystems that are not meant to support them—especially tropical forests like the Amazon and the Pacific Forest of Ecuador.

Cattle can certainly play a constructive role in human food production in some parts of the world. In tropical forest ecosystems, however, cattle simply don’t produce enough food to merit the vast area of land they require. Moreover, they can easily be replaced with far more efficient forms of food production.

Generally speaking, we can produce the same amount of protein from most other animals or plant-based sources using less than 10% of the land required to produce beef in tropical ecosystems.

This holds true even when accounting for protein quality by using measures like the Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score (DIAAS). This is a more effective way of assessing protein value than simply adding up grams. DIAAS measures both the amount of protein a food contains and how effectively our bodies can digest it and use its essential amino acids. This is particularly relevant when comparing protein yields of plant-based foods with animal-based foods, since the latter generally score higher.

This means that for every 100 hectares of cattle pasture, we can convert at least 90 hectares to native forest and use less than 10 hectares for more efficient forms of food production. This is how TMA reforests over 90% of pastureland without sacrificing food security.

The forest restoration Part

The forest restoration part of the equation is relatively easy and extremely cost-effective. The key ingredient is the natural process known as ecological succession, which is nature’s built-in mechanism for recovery. When humans walk away, landscapes gradually return to a wild state.

Ecological succession is the most efficient way to restore land at scale. It’s also the primary tool we use to reforest large tracts of cattle pasture in Ecuador. In severely degraded areas, we often accelerate the process with high-leverage reforestation techniques like assisted natural regeneration, enrichment planting, and applied nucleation. But for the most part, all humans have to do to restore land is step back and let Mother Nature do the heavy lifting.

In our experience, it generally takes us less than 10 years to convert pastureland into a secondary-growth forest.

The results speak for themselves. The photo below shows before-and-after photos of one of our pasture-to-forest restoration projects. The time range of the photos is 12 years, but in reality most of the work was completed by year 6. From then on, forest recovery is largely on autopilot. In some cases, we continue once-annual weeding and thinning to accelerate the process. But at that stage, the process of ecological succession is already well underway and continues by force of ecological inertia.

Another former cattle pasture restored to forest through assisted natural regeneration – rapidly and at low-cost.

The food replacement part

In the reforestation + food replacement method, the food system transition is initiated at the same time as forest restoration but only on about 10% of the land.

The mix of food production alternatives will vary according to the unique soil, climate, and socioeconomic conditions of the site and the objectives of the people who are executing the transition. TMA primarily uses high-density agroforestry as its primary production method, although we’re currently adding silvopastoral systems into the mix.

Even though only a small portion of the land is used for food production, its overall output and nutritional value is actually greater than what it used to be as an extensive low-intensity cattle pasture. This is better for the ecosystem and it’s also better for local food security.

The future of bioregional forest restoration

Food-positive reforestation is the future of ecological conservation and restoration. TMA is already doing this on a community scale of hundreds of hectares. The next step is to ramp this up to the bioregional scale of thousands of hectares throughout the Capuchin Corridor in partnership with 36 agricultural communities that live here. To learn more, check out: Community Forests Program (Bosques Comunitarios): A viable pathway to building the Capuchin Corridor.

The Capuchin Corridor is the heart of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador. (Jama-Coaque Reserve)

This is how we rewild the world

On a global scale, 3.8 billion hectares of land are used to feed livestock, which represents 80% of all agricultural land. This covers 36% of all habitable land on Earth. This means that more than one out of every three hectares of land capable of supporting vegetation—across the entire planet—is used to feed livestock. About 70% of that land (roughly 2.7 billion hectares) is used to feed ruminants — primarily cattle. That covers more area than the entire continent of North America including Greenland.

As a point of comparison, all urban and built-up land on Earth covers about 0.4 billion hectares — which is a mere 4% of all habitable land.

Numerous research studies have explored the capacity for dietary changes to open the door to reforestation and natural regeneration on a global scale without sacrificing food security. Several studies used integrated assessment models like GLOBIUM or biophysical accounting models like BioBaM. Another study used real-world farm-level data across 570 studies covering 38,700 farms in 119 countries.

I take a deeper dive into these studies in “How to Save the Planet with Food: A data-driven roadmap to global ecological restoration.”

Here’s the high-level summary:

Globally replacing beef and sheep meat with plant-based alternatives — even while maintaining consumption levels of all other animal-based food — would allow 1.9 billion hectares to be reclaimed by forests, grasslands, and wetlands. That is an area of land the size of the entire United States and China combined. Replacing beef alone would achieve the vast majority of those gains.

This single adjustment has the capacity to simultaneously:

• halt worldwide deforestation
• free up an entire continent worth of land for reforestation and natural regeneration
• offset the CO2 emissions of every single train, plane, automobile, and ship in the world
• lower near-surface air temperatures by up to 2°C across much of the planet.

And those are just the headline outcomes.

To learn more, check out “This is the Shortest Path to Fixing the Planet: How to do it in 30 years.”

The post Two Methods for Restoring Forests and Biodiversity Without Sacrificing Food Security appeared first on TMA.

• Wildlife & Ecology
• Reforestation & Agroforestry
• Carbon & Climate Change

Jacqueline Tliemat, PhD candidate at Texas A&M, installing a camera trap in the canopy of an emergent tree in JCR.

Wildlife & Ecology

Canopy-based wildlife monitoring : TMA together with Dr. Shawn McCracken (Texas A&M Corpus Christi) and his students Jacqueline Tleimat and Rebecca Davis installed camera traps, acoustic recorders (AudioMoths), and climate sensors high in the canopy of trees to study local wildlife populations, with a focus on the critically-endangered Ecuadorian Capuchin Monkey, the Black Mantled Howler Monkey, and other internationally threatened species. To date, our team has analyzed over 220,000 images and documented over 100 species (see Wildlife Insights).

• Publication: Monitoring the habitat and spatial associations of two threatened primates along a conservation area in western Ecuador.

Bird banding specialist Holly Garrod and her team at work in JCR.

Reforestation & Agroforestry

Active reforestation vs passive natural forest restoration: TMA joined forces with esteemed restoration ecologists Dr. Rebecca Cole and Dr. Leland Werden, from the Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich, on a long-term reforestation study that compare the efficacy of active tree-planting versus natural restoration. The study is being conducted in nineteen sites across Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, and Peru. One of those sites is the Jama-Coaque Reserve.

Cacao-Based Agroforestry Demonstration Site: TMA has been experimenting with cacao varieties and growing methods since 2008. JCR currently contains the single largest repository of DNA-verified pure Ancient Nacional cacao in Ecuador—featured in Smithsonian Magazine. We actively manage 9 experimental cacao plots with 5 different types of Nacional cacao, and we closely track the genetics of every single plot. This work was the precursor to TMA’s Regenerative Cacao program with over 100 farmers in the region.

Biodiversity of agroforestry systems: Sophie Roberts from Yale University used remote sensing techniques to assess farm-level diversity metrics in JCR and across 30 regenerative cacao farms in the region.

• Publication: Incorporating drone imagery and field-data to access geographic and social drivers of agroforestry biodiversity in western Ecuador.

Professor Shawn McCracken with a research team member sorting through canopy camera gear in the Bamboo House.

Carbon & Climate Change

Aboveground Biomass Inventory: Researchers from the Universidad Técnica de Manabí and Macalester College conducted aboveground biomass inventories by combining ground-based tree species plot data with allometric equations, drone and satellite imagery, and machine learning algorithms.

Carbon assessment: The Landscapes and Livelihoods Group (TLLG) used satellite imagery to perform a land cover assessment and then applied the data from the aboveground biomass inventories (referenced above) to estimate the carbon value of the Jama-Coaque Reserve and the entire Capuchin Corridor.

Forest Carbon Ledger: After being treated to a front-row seat to the limitations of REDD+ carbon accounting, TMA developed an alternative forest carbon accounting methodology called the Forest Carbon Ledger (FCL). FCL avoids the biggest pitfalls of REDD+. Namely, it uses objective data rather than speculative projections and subjective counter-facturals. It calls for performance-based PES payments according to the total amount of CO2 stored in the forest, which is amortized in annual increments and paid ex-post.

Future Research Opportunities

Margay (Leopardus wiedii) captured on a camera trap in JCR.

The post Research Highlights from the Jama-Coaque Reserve appeared first on TMA.

JCR was created by Third Millennium Alliance (TMA) in 2007 and is managed in partnership with the community of Camarones. The goal is to expand JCR to 5,480 acres (2,218 hectares) by the end of 2026.

JCR is also the nucleus and key anchor point of the Capuchin Corridor, which covers 100,000 acres (40,000 hectares) along the coast of the Pacific Ocean between the towns of Jama and Pedernales in the province of Manabí, Ecuador.

Pronunciation Note: The “J” in Jama sounds like an “H”—just like in the Spanish name Jose or the word Jalapeño. Jama-Coaque is pronounced Hama Koh-Ah-Kay. It’s actually a fun word to say. The acronym (JCR) is also commonly used.

At a Glance

• Current area: 2,900 acres (1,172 hectares)
• Location: Municipality of Jama, province of Manabí, coastal Ecuador
• Coordinates: -0.115098°, -80.121154°
• Founded: 2007
• Management: Third Millennium Alliance (TMA) in partnership with the community of Camarones
• Elevation range: 548 – 2,290 feet (178 – 698 meters) above sea level
• Topography: mountainous
• Forest types: premontane premontante cloud forest and seasonal moist evergreen forest
• Global Biodiversity Hotspot: Tumbes-Chocó-Magdalena
• Ecotone: Choc
• Bioregion: Pacific Forest of Ecuador
• Ecoregion: NT0178 Western Ecuador moist forests

The Jama-Coaque Reserve in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador.

Contents

• Ancient History
• Creation of the Jama-Coaque Reserve
• Funding & Technical Partners
• Geography
• Hydrology
• Climate
• Biodiversity Hotspot
• Ecoregion
• Cloud Forest
• Moist Forest
• Endangered Species Designations
• Research
• Agroforestry & Cacao
• Reserve Management
• Capuchin Corridor

The Bamboo House at golden hour (circa 2019).

Ancient History

The Jama-Coaque Reserve is named in honor of the ancient civilization (posthumously named Jama-Coaque) that thrived in this region from 355 BCE to 1532 CE. Tragically, the Jama-Coaque culture abruptly collapsed and almost entirely disappeared immediately following the arrival of Spanish explorers. No written or oral records from their culture have survived, but historians surmise that most Jama-Coaque settlements were concentrated at the base of the mountains close to the sea, whereas the rugged forested land that is now JCR was primarily used as wild hunting grounds.

The Jama-Coaque people did, however, leave behind an abundance of ceramic sculptures and iconography, which is well-regarded by archaeologists and art historians. Pieces of clay pots and other ancient artifacts from their civilization have been unearthed in the area surrounding the Bamboo House.

Clay pot from the ancient Jama-Coaque civilization unearthed in JCR in 2024.

Creation of the Jama-Coaque Reserve

In 2007, Isabel Dávila, Jerry Toth, and Bryan Criswell co-founded the Ecuador-based nonprofit conservation organization Third Millennium Alliance (TMA). Later that same year, they were introduced to the land that is now the Jama-Coaque Reserve (JCR). At the time, it was forested land that was owned by absentee owners and effectively abandoned. The three co-founders raised $16,000 from friends and family to purchase a 100-acre property at the very top of the mountain, where they spent the next few months living in tents, learning the land, and meeting their neighbors.

The following year, they purchased three more properties. On one of those properties, they began building a research station constructed primarily with native bamboo sourced from the site and using only hand tools. The research station—affectionately named the Bamboo House—became JCR’s field headquarters and visitor lodge. They, along with friends and other early visitors, planted a food forest with 50 different species of fruit trees in the one-hectare area of land immediately surrounding the house.

Over the years, both JCR and TMA continued to steadily grow. Thus far, TMA has purchased and integrated into JCR a total of 30 different properties, all of which were previously owned by absentee landowners, most of whom didn’t even live in the same region. As of 2025, JCR covers nearly 3,000 acres (1,200 hectares).

You can read the entire origin story of JCR in How We Made a Rainforest Preserve.

Funding & Technical Partners

The people and institutions that have been the most important in the creation, expansion, and ongoing management of the Jama-Coaque Reserve are the Richard and Nancy Arnoldy Foundation, IUCN-Netherlands, the “5-year Sponsorship” Group, Saving Nature, the world-renowned muralist Youri Cansell (aka Mantra), the artisanal design company Craftspring, and the Capuchin Collective, with invaluable support and guidance provided by Lookfar Conservation.

Overall, several hundred sponsors, reseachers, interns, and other professionals have financially and technically supported the Jama-Coaque Reserve over the years, both from within Ecuador and abroad.

Bamboo House research station in the Jama-Coaque Reserve (2024).

Geography

Across the entire length of coastal Ecuador, there are three major mountain ranges. The Mache-Chindul mountain range occupies the rainforested northern coast. The Chongon-Colonche mountain range is located in the mostly dry and semi-deciduous southern coast. The Jama-Coaque mountain range is located between the two, in the northwest corner of the province of Manabí. It represents the ecological transition between those two vastly different iterations of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador.

The Jama-Coaque mountain range is also the only stretch of coastal mountains where the peaks reach their zenith within a mere 8 kilometers of the sea. This elevational gradient, combined with its position at the midpoint of the Choco-Tumbes transition zone, has the effect of compressing an extraordinary degree of ecological diversity into a relatively small area.

Hydrology

JCR protects the entirety of the headwaters of the Camarones River, as well as the headwaters of numerous other small rivers and streams that support five agricultural communities, including Camarones, Tabuga, Estero Seco, Aguas Frias, and Purichime. All rivers empty out into the Pacific Ocean.

Waterfall in the Camarones River (Jama-Coaque Reserve)

Climate

The Jama-Coaque Reserve (JCR) is subject to a tropical monsoon climate, which is primary driven by two Pacific Ocean currents that clash immediately offshore. Typically starting in late December, a change in atmospheric pressure shifts ocean currents so that warm waters from the El Niño current come closer to shore and displace the cold waters of the Humboldt current. The result is warmer air temperatures and heavy rainfall that peaks in February and March and can linger into May and June. The dry season, which generally begins in June or July and can last into December or January, is characterized by cooler temperatures and more overcast skies.

The weather station at the Bamboo House records an average daily temperature range of 22–28°C (72–83°F) in the rainy season and 20–26°C (68–78°F) in the dry season. The year-round average temperature is 74°F (23°C).  

Annual rainfall in the lowland moist forest surrounding the Bamboo House ranges between 800-2,200 mm, with an average more in the range 1,000-1,500 mm. The total annual water intake of the cloud forest, however, is estimated to consistently exceed 2000 mm, owing to fog drip. Fog drip is the process by which vegetation strips moisture from clouds that shroud the mountain peaks, condensing it into water droplets that fall to the forest floor.

Cloud forest along the peaks of the in Jama-Coaque Reserve

Biodiversity Hotspot

The great Chocó rainforest runs along the Pacific coast of Colombia and extends into northwestern Ecuador, bounded by the western slopes of the Andes and the peaks of the coastal mountain range. The Colombian Chocó is among the wettest rainforests on earth. It competes with the upper Amazon as the most biodiverse place on earth.

As the Chocó moves southward into coastal Ecuador, it gradually transitions into the moist evergreen forests of Manabí until it is eventually subsumed by the dry and deciduous “Tumbiesian” forests of Santa Elena and Guayas, which ultimately extends as far as northern Peru.

The global conservation community has named this area the Tumbes-Chocó-Magdalena Biodiversity Hotspot. It describes the wildly dynamic ecoregion that stretches from the ultra-wet Chocó rainforest on the coast of Colombia to the Tumbesian dry forests on the northern coast of Peru.

The Pacific Forest of Ecuador is the central part of this biodiversity hotspot and contains within it both the wet and dry extremes, and many gradients in between. It is, thus, a medley of different types of tropical forests. To see what we mean, check out our Photo Tour of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador.

The Jama-Coaque Reserve (JCR), located in the heart of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, is the geographic and ecological midpoint between the Chocó and Tumbes extremes. This effect is accentuated by the sharp elevational gradients created by the rugged topography of the coastal mountain range. At higher elevations, JCR represents the southern-most extension of the coastal Chocó wet forest. At the base of the mountain (less than a kilometer below the lower limits of JCR), Tumbesian deciduous forest is present.

Chocó toucan (Ramphastos brevis)

Ecoregion

The Ecuadorian Coastal Forests & Flooded Grasslands bioregion is part of the Andes & Pacific Coast sub-realm in South America and is comprised of five ecoregions. One of them is called “NT0178 Western Ecuador moist forests,” which describes the Jama-Coaque Reserve (JCR). Interestingly, the official ecoregion map, published by One Earth and World Species, incorrectly places JCR just outside the border of NT0178 and instead places it inside the ecoregion named “NT0214 Ecuadorian dry forest.”

This understandable oversight serves to highlight the dramatic ecological transitions that occur across short distances in coastal Ecuador. These shifts are driven largely by elevation changes along the coastal mountains. In the Jama-Coaque mountains, the upper elevations are best classified as part of the “NT0178 Western Ecuador moist forests” ecoregion, while the lower elevations, extending down to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, are more consistent with the “NT0214 Ecuadorian dry forest” ecoregion. The ecological transition between these two ecoregions typically occurs between 650 and 950 feet (250 to 300 meters) above sea level.

The rich and complex ecological mosaic of coastal Ecuador is the reason why most conservationists in the region prefer the term Pacific Forest of Ecuador. This term invites all of the many different types of forest in this bioregion (including Chocó rainforest and cloud forest, moist seasonal evergreen forest, semi-deciduous forest, Tumbesian dry forest, and coastal mangrove forest) under one roof. Remarkably, all of those forest types can be encountered along the Jama-Coaque mountains, which is where all of these forests converge. JCR, which occupies the upper elevational half of the mountains, is premontane cloud forest and moist seasonal evergreen forest. The Regiones Naturales de Ecuador classification system by Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (PUCE) classifies both of these forests as Bosque Húmedo Tropical del Chocó (Chocó tropical rainforest).

Cloud forest in the Jama-Coaque Reserve

Premontane Cloud Forest

The Jama-Coaque Reserve (JCR) includes two different types of “Chocó” tropical forest. The peaks of the mountain, which are often shrouded by a thick blanket of fog, are characterized by premontane cloud forest.

It is, in a very real sense, a forest that is fed by the clouds. Almost all visible surfaces are covered in bright green vegetation of many different forms. The forest floor is carpeted with ferns, tree trunks are encased in moss, and epiphytes, orchids, and bromeliads hang from the branches. All of the above is watered on an hourly basis by clouds of fog that float up from the Pacific Ocean and condense into water droplets on the leaves of the trees. The droplets then drip down into the soil and form the basis of the waterways that sustain the life of all animals downstream—humans included.

Strangler Fig (Ficus sp.) in the Jama-Coaque Reserve.

Moist Seasonal Evergreen Forest

The elevation range of the cloud forest is 1,700-2,200 feet (515-698 feet) above sea level. At around 1,700 feet (515 meters), the vegetation transitions to what is most accurately called moist seasonal evergreen forest.

The terminology deserves a brief explanation. In their seminal 1991 report “Biological Extinction in Western Ecuador,” the famous botanical duo C.H. Dodson and A.H. Gentry referred to the mid-elevational forest of JCR as “moist forest.” This term was also used by the renowned cast of ecologists who authored another seminal report about the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, which was spearheaded by Conservation International, titled “Status of Forest Remnants in the Cordillera de la Costa.”

A few decades later, a team of national botanists in Ecuador, who were given the mission to classify every single forest type in the country, officially classified JCR’s lowland forest as “seasonal evergreen forest of the Pacific Equatorial coastal mountain range.” This term is certainly more descriptive, but not always practical in conversation. The authors of the Regiones Naturales de Ecuador, meanwhile, classify JCR’s moist forest as “Chocó rainforest.”

In this confusing miasma of forest terminology, the formal term we prefer is “moist seasonal evergreen forest.” In less formal occasions, we often simply use Dodson and Gentry’s term: “moist forest.”

The moist forest is an entirely different world than the cloud forest, even though the transition between the two is often less than 75 meters of elevation difference. The vegetation is evergreen like the cloud forest, but there’s a wider range of color tones, and there is also a somewhat different range of species. The trees are generally taller here, relative to the cloud forest. The canopy of the moist forest is formed by giant native trees like strangler figs, some of them reaching heights of 45 meters (150 feet), often with massively buttressed roots. Other trees, like Moral Fino (Maclura tinctoria) have wood that is so dense that it’s impossible to pound a nail into it without first greasing the nail with vegetable oil.

There is also a wealth of exotic palm trees, some of which have trunks armed with needles like a porcupine. Another endemic palm tree known as tagua (Phytelephas aequatorialis) produces nuts that taste like coconut when ripe but then later harden into the color and consistency of ivory. Stands of giant bamboo (Guadua angustifolia) intermingle with rubber trees (Castilla elastica) that ooze white latex when injured. Threading through this steep and rugged landscape are countless little streams that tumble down boulder-strewn slopes, alternating between waterfalls and quiant little swimming holes that are teaming with freshwater prawns. The water in these streams is so pristine that you can drink it straight from the river.

All of this exists under the watchful eyes of loud-mouthed troops of howler monkeys, critically endangered Ecuadorian capuchin monkeys, long and powerful members of the weasel family with yellow heads called tayras, and wild felines like ocelots and margays that are rarely seen except in pictures taken by infrared trail cameras fitted with motion sensors.

Margay (Leopardus wiedii) photographed on a camera trap in the Jama-Coaque Reserve.

Endangered Species Designations

The Jama-Coaque Reserve is designated as both a “Species Rarity Site” and “High Biodiversity Area” on Global Safety Net, an open-source science initiative that identifies “conservation imperative” sites that “harbor irreplaceable biodiversity.”

According to BirdLife International’s system of Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs)—formerly known as Important Bird Areas (IBAs)—JCR is part of KBA “Bosques de Jama-Coaque en Manabí.”

Among the long list of endangered and threatened species that inhabit JCR, some of the more notable species include the Ecuadorian capuchin monkey (Cebus aequatorialis), which is listed as critically endanged on the IUCN Red List; birds like the gray-back hawk (Pseudastur occidentalis) and Chocó woodpecker (Dryobates chocoensis), which are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List; the Mache glass frog (Cochranella mache), which is listed as critically endangered on the Ecuadorian Red List, and numerous critically-endangered plants and trees, including the rare hardwood species known locally as Amarillo (Centrolobium ochroxylum), which TMA is widely reproducing through its Regenerative Agroforestry program with local farmers.

Mache glass frog (Cochranella mache) in the Jama-Coaque Reserve. Photo by Paolo David Escobar.

Research

Over the years, numerous biologists, ecologists, and agroforestry practitioners have conducted research in and around the Jama-Coaque Reserve (JCR). Check out Research Highlights from the Jama-Coaque Reserve to learn more.

Agroforestry and Ancient Nacional Cacao

TMA has been experimenting with cacao varieties and growing methods in agroforestry micro plots in JCR since 2008. Most notably, JCR currently contains the single largest repository of DNA-verified pure Ancient Nacional cacao in Ecuador, which it developed in partnership with To’ak Chocolate.

In total, TMA actively manage 9 experimental cacao plots with 5 different types of Nacional cacao in JCR, all of which were planted on land that was formerly developed for agroforestry by the previous landowners. All of these cacao plots collectively occupy a total of 5.2 hectares (13 acres) of land, although only 3.5 hectares (8.6 acres) are actively managed. This represents 0.3% of the total area of JCR.

The cacao varieties managed in these experimental plots are the same genetic varieties that TMA distributes to farmers throughout the Capuchin Corridor in its Regenerative Cacao program—featured in Smithsonian Magazine and Mongabay.

Dany Murillo (Reserve Manager) harvesting a cacao pod in the Jama-Coaque Reserve.

Reserve Management

The Jama-Coaque Reserve (JCR) is a private reserve established by the nonprofit conservation organization Third Millennium Alliance (TMA) and managed in partnership with the community of Camarones. TMA’s operating entity is incorporated in Ecuador under the name TMA-Ecuador. TMA is also incorporated in the U.S. as a 501c3 organization to facilitate international fundraising efforts. The president of TMA-Ecuador is Carla Rizzo from Quito. The executive director of TMA-US is Ryan Lynch from Fremont, California.

Food forest/regenerative agroforestry demostration site surrounding the Bamboo House

Bamboo House

The headquarters of JCR is the Bamboo House Research Station, which is fully off-the-grid but equipped with solar power, satellite internet, and the purest spring-fed water that you’ve ever tasted. The Bamboo House, along with the adjacent “Casita,” has a total of 8 bedrooms that can sleep up to 22 people.

View from the balcony of the Bamboo House at dusk.

Capuchin Corridor

The Capuchin Corridor is a conservation initiative to protect one of the largest and least protected remnants of the Pacific Forest. It aims to connect the Jama-Coaque Reserve (JCR) to another forest preserve called Cerro Pata de Pájaro (PDP), which TMA also manages in partnership with local communities. This will create a contiguous 35,000-acre (14,000-hectare) rainforest preserve that spans the 27-mile (43-km) mountain range between the coastal towns of Jama and Pedernales at 0° latitude. It literally straddles both hemispheres, with the equator line passing through the center of it. 

The total area of the Capuchin Corridor, which includes the homes and farms of 38 rural communities that are participating in the project, is 100,000 acres (40,000 hectares).

TMA is building the Capuchin Corridor in partnership with local communities through its Community Forests Program (in Spanish, Bosques Comunitarios). It’s a framework that provides local communities with a financial incentive to actively protect the forest in their own watersheds.

The Capuchin Corridor is named in honor of the critically endangered Ecuadorian Capuchin Monkey, a species that depends on this ecosystem for its continued existence.

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TMA’s Community Forests Program is a realistic pathway to creating and managing a 35,000-acre (14,000-hectare) rainforest conservation corridor in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador.

It equips communities with the tools and financial incentives to sustainable manage the forests in their own watersheds. This will protect and restore one of the last major remnants of the most endangered tropical forest in the world. It’s also an opportunity to revolutionize how NGOs and local communities work together to conserve tropical forests.

Key Features

• Viable pathway to creating the Capuchin Corridor in Ecuador.
• Potential to protect and restore 35,460 acres (14,350 hectares) of rainforest.
• Replaces fortress conservation with a decentralized and participatory approach to conservation. 
• Network of 23 forest preserves created by TMA and managed as land easements by local communities throughout the corridor.
• Organized by watersheds, which is how communities have always geographically organized themselves in this region.
• Draws from the “life plan” framework used by indigenous communities in the Amazon, aimed at outlining and executing a long-term vision for sustainable development and resource stewardship.
• Sturdy guard rails provided by a strong legal framework with tight management and budgetary parameters—aimed at ensuring proper use of funds and faithful execution of project activities. 
• Fueled by performance-based financial incentives. Funds are only released when project goals are achieved—consistent with the Project Finance for Permanence (PFP) model.
• Results are monitored and verified by satellite imagery and other objective metrics—consistent with Terrasos protocol for biodiversity crediting.
• This is a scalable model that can be replicated throughout the tropics.

Local park ranger Pablo Bermudez in the old-growth cloud forest of Cerro Pata de Pájaro.

Contents

• Project Area
• Why Community Forests?
• A Conservation Model for the 21st Century
• How It Works
• Process for Establishing Community Forests
• Community Management with TMA Guidance & Oversight
• Investing in the Future
• Scalable Model That Can Be Replicated
• Budget Summary
• Funding Pathways
• Project Finance for Permanence (PFP)
• Third Millennium Alliance (TMA)

Project Area

The Pacific Forest of Ecuador is the most endangered tropical forest on earth: less than 5% remains. It sits at the heart of the Tumbes-Chocó-Magdalena global biodiversity hotspot. 

The Capuchin Corridor is a conservation initiative to protect one of the largest and least protected remnants of the Pacific Forest. It aims to connect the Jama-Coaque Reserve to two other protected forest preserves. This will create a contiguous 35,000-acre (14,000-hectare) rainforest preserve that spans the 27-mile (43-km) mountain range between the coastal towns of Jama and Pedernales at 0° latitude. It literally straddles both hemispheres, with the equator line passing through the center of it. 

The Capuchin Corridor is designated as both a “Species Rarity Site” and “High Biodiversity Area” on Global Safety Net, an open-source science initiative that identifies “conservation imperative” sites that “harbor irreplaceable biodiversity.”

The Capuchin Corridor is named in honor of the critically endangered Ecuadorian Capuchin Monkey, a species that depends on this ecosystem for its continued existence.

Why Community Forests?

The so-called Fortress Conservation model is a top-down approach that excludes local communities from the process. It’s outdated not only because it’s ethically problematic; it’s also risky and inefficient.

• Risky because local communities lack an incentive to support and comply with conservation projects. There’s no buy-in; on the contrary, there is often resentment and the potential for persistent conflict.
• Inefficient because the centralized authority (whether it’s a government or an NGO) is tasked with managing distant areas that it doesn’t know as intimately as local communities do.

A Conservation Model for the 21st Century

The Community Forests Program (in Spanish, Bosques Comunitarios) integrates local communities in the conservation process and provides them with a financial incentive to actively protect the forest in their own watersheds. In other words, they have skin in the game. This reduces the risk of local actors undermining conservation goals and also reduces the resource strain on NGOs or governments. It’s a decentralized and participatory approach to forest conservation. We believe it’s the wave of the future.

How It Works

The Community Forests Program empowers local communities to protect and manage large tracts of native forest in their own watersheds. 

• Under TMA’s guidance, each community creates a local governing body—called a Community Trust—through a local democratic election process. The Community Trust is composed of local community members but girded by a specific framework with tight parameters.
• TMA and the Community Trust then jointly create a Community Forest Preserve at the headwaters of their own watershed. TMA purchases the land and then grants a conditional land easement to the Community Trust.
• The Community Trust is responsible for protecting the Community Forest Preserve—albeit with extensive support and oversight by TMA.
• The Community Forest Preserve is sustained by annual funding incentives that are tied to objective performance measures. Funding only continues if the forest remains intact.

The Camarones Watershed – emblematic of geo-social organization in the Capuchin Corridor – provides the template for TMA’s Community Forest Program.

Process for Establishing Community Forests

• The Community Trust indicates to TMA the properties it wishes to include in its Community Forest Preserve.
• Priority is given to contiguous forested properties at the headwaters of each watershed and along the upper elevations of the coastal mountain range. Riparian areas can also be included.
• TMA offers a standardized market price to the owners of selected properties, purchasing only those in which a fair deal is made.
• TMA places a conservation easement on the land, legally requiring it to be conserved in perpetuity.
• TMA empowers the Community Trust to protect and actively manage the Community Forest Preserve through a management agreement. 

Community Management with TMA Guidance & Oversight

• TMA provides funding to the Community Trust to 1)  actively protect their forest preserve, and
  2)  invest in education and socio-economic improvements for the community as a whole. This framework draws from the “life plan” framework used by indigenous communities in the Amazon, aimed at outlining and executing a long-term vision for sustainable development and resource stewardship.
• Funding disbursements are only made if the forest remains intact and all management provisions are adhered to. This provides the community with the funding and financial incentive to protect their own forest and, in turn, their supply of freshwater.
• The Community Trust, operating within strict parameters, decides how funds should be distributed and then implements the activities that are funded.
• The use of funds is carefully audited and transparently reported to all stakeholders, including the funders and the community at large.
• TMA guides the Community Trust at every step of the process. A greater share of management responsibilities are transferred to the Community Trust as it gains experience and demonstrates success over time.

TMA’s Director of Community Programs, Carla Rizzo, with the next generation of conservation leaders in Camarones.

Investing in the Future

The Community Forests Program is predicated on the following understandings and approach:

• The future of the Capuchin Corridor ultimately rests in the hands of the people who live there.
• Conservation is easier when local communities are engaged and committed to its success.
• Conversely, communities that are poor, uneducated, and disengaged represent the biggest risk to long-term forest stewardship.
• The Community Forests Program will invest in the next generation of local conservation leaders and in the community as a whole.
• This means improving quality of and access to education at all levels.
• It could also include modernizing IT and energy infrastructure through satellite internet and off-grid solar energy.
• It also means strengthening local governance structures and capacity.
• This is not an overnight process; the program we build today is aimed at achieving long-term and sustainable forest conservation for many generations to come.

Scalable Model That Can Be Replicated

• The Community Forests Program draws inspiration from the Land Trust model in the US, AESMO’s community-based watershed conservation model in Honduras, and the conservation funding model known as Project Finance for Permanence (PFP) in Costa Rica, Brazil, and Canada.
• The key features of our model are a strong legal framework combined with tight management parameters and performance-based incentives.
• The framework, parameters, and incentive system can be replicated in other regions of Ecuador and throughout the rural tropics, wherever conditions are optimal.
• Optimal conditions for this model are areas with relatively low population density and relatively high percentage of land area that contains forest and/or unproductive agricultural land ripe for restoration. Preferably in a global biodiversity hotspot.
• It requires an NGO with proven field experience combined with willing local communities and a long-term funding source.

For a deeper dive into the carbon numbers, refer to the Carbon Assessment of the Capuchin Corridor.

Budget Summary

• Years 1-2 (2025-2026): $3.6 million
• Years 3-5 (2027-2029): $8.6 million
• Years 5-10 (2030-2034): $18.3 million
• Total 10-year establishment cost (2025-2034): $30.5 million
• Total establishment cost per acre (2025-2034): $983
• Annual cost after year 10 (2035 onward): $1.03 million

*Monetary values are in US$

Funding Pathways

• Capuchin Collective is a private group of philanthropists that are dedicated to funding the creation of the Capuchin Corridor. Members sponsor the purchase of specific properties, TMA places a conservation easement on the properties, and communities manage them as community forest preserves—albeit with TMA’s close guidance and oversight.
• Carbon or biodiversity credits generate revenue that is invested in the purchase of land for community forest preserves and covers ongoing management costs.
• Endowment fund funded through grants, philanthropists, the Capuchin Collective, and/or a PFP. It’s not enough to simply purchase the land. Management is long-term and funding needs to be sustainable.
• Project Finance for Permanence (PFP): see below.

Chocó cloud forest at the headwaters of the Camarones watershed in the Jama-Coaque Reserve.

Project Finance for Permanence (PFP)

The PFP approach was conceived in 2011 by a group of conservationists, former bankers, and management consultants who imported ideas from the mainstream financial sector to create a new model to protect and finance large ecosystems over the long term. 

It was built from experiences and lessons learned from three successful large-scale conservation initiatives: Amazon Region Protected Areas (ARPA) in Brazil, Forever Costa Rica, and the Great Bear Rainforest in Canada. PFP is a “performance-based” conservation model tied to financial incentives. The Community Forests Program adheres to this framework. Features include: 

• A large-scale, specific, and charismatic conservation goal (in our case, building the Capuchin Corridor).
• A plan that details all activities to achieve and maintain the goal (Community Forests Program).
• A long-term funding plan to cover all costs and sustain the conservation goal for at least 20 to 30 years. (“Permanence” is the core objective.)
• A clear set of annual disbursement conditions or milestones that must be met by implementing partners in order for funds to be released at each stage. (Funding based on performance.)
• The disbursement conditions act as an incentive for all partners (both TMA and Community Trusts) to uphold the mutually agreed vision over time. Incentives are crucial for aligning interests and sustaining long-term commitment.

Ecuadorian Capuchin Monkey {Cebus aequatorialis) is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN red list. The Capuchin Corridor is one of the last remnants of its native habitat. Photographed in the Jama-Coaque Reserve.

Third Millennium Alliance (TMA)

TMA has been working to protect and restore the last remnants of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador since 2007. We created the 3,000-acre (1,200-hectare) Jama-Coaque Reserve with the community of Camarones, and we jointly manage the 10,706-acre (4,333-hectare) Cerro Pata de Pájaro Reserve with another community conservation organization. 

The Capuchin Corridor would connect these two protected areas, spanning a 43-km-long mountain range in coastal Ecuador. TMA’s Community Forest Program is a viable pathway to achieve this objective. 

TMA’s work has been featured in Smithsonian Magazine and Mongabay. TMA is a nonprofit conservation organization registered in both Ecuador and the United States.

Cascada Grande “double waterfall” in the Jama-Coaque Reserve

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In 2012, we were given the opportunity to reforest 89 acres of cattle pasture. Today, that property is densely forested with a canopy height over 60 feet tall—and growing taller every year. But it didn’t quite happen the way we expected. Our initial approach was flawed.

A few years later, we were tasked with reforesting a 188-acre property that had recently been clear-cut to harvest balsa. Again, we got a similar result: the forest rapidly recovered, but in a way that surprised us.

Thus began a sequence of reforestation projects in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador that fundamentally transformed our understanding of what it means to reforest land.

At the core of this understanding is nature’s ability to heal itself. The corollary to this understanding is the revelation that planting trees is not the key to reforestation—especially when it comes to cattle pasture, which is notoriously challenging.

It took us about 20,000 seedlings, and a few seasons of slopping around in the mud, to learn that lesson. We were making the same mistake that many token reforestation projects do—which is to attack the problem the way your average military general approached warfare in the 19^th century, in which soldiers blindly march into the direct fire of the opposing army.

The trick is to let Mother Nature drive the process. Deforested land wants to be forest. All it needs are the right conditions for recovery. That is the secret to the whole thing.

Thus far, we’ve reforested over 427 acres across ten different reforestation projects over the course of 15 years in coastal Ecuador. By “we”, I mean a group of people in partnership with Mother Nature. Below are some of the most important lessons we’ve learned throughout that process.

1. After-care is more important than planting.
2. Methodology is determined by initial conditions.
3. Mother Nature is better at planting trees than humans are.
4. Harness the power of natural forest succession.
5. Think about what to subtract before thinking about what to add.
6. Weeds are your best friend.
7. Your friendship with weeds is conditional.
8. ANR is the best bang for your buck.
9. Apply the principles of judo to reforestation.

As a companion piece to this article, you can also refer to our catalogue of reforestation methods, which provides a brief explanation of all eleven different reforestation methodologies that we’ve put to use since 2008.

Note: this article primarily discusses native forest restoration. For more about our extensive work in regenerative agroforestry, check out Smithsonian Magazine’s feature article about our regenerative cacao project (“The Quest to Save the World’s Most Coveted Chocolate“) our own article on the same subject (“How TMA and To’ak are Using Chocolate to Restore the Rainforest“).

The “A Block” of the 87-acre cattle pasture property before planting vs today. (Finca de Madera)

Lesson #1: After-care is more important than planting

After-care is not only an important part of love-making and psychedelic therapy. It’s also a critically important feature of any reforestation project. Unfortunately, it’s also the feature that is most often ignored or underestimated.

In the grand scheme of most forest restoration projects, planting trees is only a small part of the work that needs to be done. In most cases, planting is merely one of the first steps in a multi-year process of caring for the trees until they can fend for themselves.

Underestimating the importance of after-care is one of the biggest problems with some of the feel-good tree-planting programs associated with retail carbon offset platforms or corporate sponsorships. It’s easy to pop a seed or even a seedling, into the ground. If that’s all you do, you’ve done almost nothing. The real questions are: what did you do to prepare the land ahead of time, and what are you doing to care for the plant for the next three to five years? If you don’t have a strong answer to those two questions, don’t even bother putting anything into the ground—it will just be a waste of everyone’s time and of someone’s money.

Lesson #2: Methodology is determined by initial conditions

The most important tactical decisions of a reforestation project are driven by the conditions of the land at the starting point. Pre-planting, planting, and post-planting protocols will vary based on the type of land you’re working with.

The key variables are slope, climate, soil, existing vegetation, and proximity to native forest. The latter two variables are probably the most important. Cattle pasture, an old corn field, fallow scrubby land, or a recently harvested balsa plantation all call for different approaches. Their proximity to native forest adds another layer to the equation.

For example, the worst way to reforest a cattle pasture is to actively plant trees in the first year. As a baby seedling planted into a cattle pasture, your task is to outcompete an invasive pasture grass on compacted soil while nakedly exposed to the sun. It’s not a fair fight.

The only way to keep those seedlings alive in the first year is through a tremendous infusion of labor—namely, the constant and seemingly futile efforts at manually weeding pasture grass, mulching, and possibly hand-watering individual seedlings. The labor investment is needlessly high, and the survival rates will still probably be low. Especially at larger scales, it’s not worth it.

We learned this lesson the hard way.

When it comes to cattle pasture, it’s far more efficient and effective to use methodologies such as Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR), Nurse Cropping (NC), Delayed Planting (DP), and/or Applied Nucleation (AN), depending on the land’s proximity to native forest.

Below is a glossary of terms followed by a methodology recommendation matrix based on reforestation conditions that we’ve worked in. Definitions of each term can be found in our Brief Summary of Reforestation Methodologies.

• natural regeneration (NR)
• assisted natural regeneration (ANR)
• enrichment planting (ER)
• plantation-style reforestation (PS)
• delayed planting (DP)
• nurse cropping (NC)
• applied nucleation (AN)
• farmer managed natural restoration (FMNR)
• permaculture
• regenerative agroforestry (RA)
• syntropic agroforestry

Lesson #3: Mother Nature is better at planting trees than humans are

During the first years of our project to reforest the cattle pasture, we mistakenly believed that the return of the forest depended on the seedlings we planted. In truth, the seedlings helped. But they were only part of the story.

In Year 1, we planted many thousands of trees, plantation-style, at a density of 3m x 3m. As expected, about half of these died in the harsh conditions of a sun-scorched pasture of elephant grass during the first year.

In Year 2, we planted more trees—filling in all the gaps left from Year 1. The following year, we planted still more trees. Slowly but surely, they gained a foothold.

By the end of Year 3, the trees we planted were finally healthy and growing taller by the month, which was exciting to watch. But what was more interesting to see is that they weren’t alone. Suddenly they were joined by thousands and thousands of other trees that we didn’t plant.

By Year 5, it was apparent that the project would be a runaway success. The cattle pasture was entirely replaced by an early successional forest. Roughly ten years after the first trees were planted, the canopy is already over 50 feet tall.

The speed of this recovery surprised everyone. Just as surprising was the composition of the trees that were growing. Even in the section that was actively planted with native timber trees, only half of the trees currently growing were planted by humans. The other half of the trees were planted by birds and other animals.

Land that was once forest never ceases to be forest in the fabric of its being. The seed of its true nature is always sitting just below the surface, waiting for the right conditions in which to germinate. Our role, as humans, is to create those conditions. The forest itself will do the rest. 

View inside the “Finca de Madera” property 12 years after initial planting into the cattle pasture.

Lesson #4: Harness the power of natural forest succession

When I refer to “Mother Nature” in the previous section, I’m not referring to something supernatural. I’m referring to the scientific process known as ecological succession—also called natural forest succession.

This is the ecological process by which the structure and composition of a forest change in a somewhat predictable manner as time progresses. This process occurs as different species of plants and animals colonize and alter the environment, making it more suitable for other species to follow. This creates a “succession” of species, which tends toward bigger trees and greater diversity over time.

With the exception of very badly degraded areas, this process will proceed on its own without any human intervention. Indeed, removing human intervention is often the only action required to trigger natural forest succession.

For this reason, natural forest succession is usually the star of the show. It is an indomitable force of nature and the real engine of any forest restoration project. All we can do, as humans, is coax this process along, make sure nothing is impeding it, and occasionally accelerate or even redirect it. Methods to accelerate the process include assisted natural acceleration (ANR), enrichment planting (EP), applied nucleation (AN), and nurse cropping (NC). Methods to redirect the process include syntropic agriculture and permaculture.

The left side of this road was excavated and mined for gravel to build another road in 2018. All soil was stripped, leaving nothing but rock. Six years later, the forest is already coming back – with zero help from humans. This is a testament to the power of natural forest succession and the tenacity of early-successional pioneer species. All of that vegetation is literally growing in rocks.

Lesson #5: Think about what to subtract before thinking about what to add

Like most of the tropical lowlands of Latin America, the Pacific Forest of Ecuador was once entirely forested. The natural “steady state” of this land is forest. That’s what the land wants to be.

The land only becomes a cattle pasture when humans slash and burn the native vegetation, plant grass, and introduce cattle onto the scene. From that point on, the humans and the cattle continually work together to actively repress the resurgence of the native vegetation in favor of the grass.

This is a key lesson that we learned through experience. At the outset of any forest restoration project, before you think about what needs to be added to the land, the first order of business is to think about what needs to be subtracted. In other words, if you remove the barriers to natural forest succession, in most cases Mother Nature will take care of the rest.

The main barriers to natural succession are:

• cattle
• cyclical slash-and-burn activities by humans
• other extractive activities like logging
• more generally, machetes and chainsaws
• invasive species
• chemical pesticides and herbicides and synthetic fertilizers
• lack of biodiversity (i.e., lack of natural seed dispersers)

Likewise, the most important actions to encourage forest recovery are:

• Remove cattle
• Stop slashing and burning
• Stop logging—or, at the very least, only log selectively
• Remove invasive species, if necessary or possible
• Stop using synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers
• Stop hunting and/or eliminating habitat for wildlife (especially seed dispersers)

Map of TMA reforestation projects. The Jama-Coaque Reserve is outlined in green; native forest restoration projects are in red; Regenerative Agroforestry parcels are in orange. (Note: this map only includes Regenerative Agroforestry parcels in two out of the six communities where it is being implemented).

Lesson #6: “Weeds” are your best friend

I put “weeds” in quotes because it’s a derogatory term for an extremely important element of any ecosystem and a crucial tool in forest restoration. So-called “weeds” are merely the first wave of native vegetation that help initiate the process of natural forest succession.

There is a tendency among gardeners to view weeds as enemies. To reforestation practitioners, weeds are your best friend—at the very least, for the first few years.

The initial condition of a cattle pasture is a sea of elephant grass, owing to the efforts of humans and cattle. As soon as the humans and cattle are removed from the land, the “weeds” (i.e., native vegetation) fight back. The elephant grass can maintain dominance for the first year, but by the second year, the native vegetation begins to naturally appear. Natural forest succession has begun.

By the third year, the native vegetation continues to surge, as shrubs and pioneer trees multiply and then suddenly exceed the height of the elephant grass—thus starting to shade it out. The elephant grass is still present at this point, but its fate is sealed.

Once the native vegetation begins to block out the sun, the elephant grass recedes. By the fourth year, the battle is over. Natural succession has firmly taken control of the land. At this stage, the recovery of the forest continues by force of inertia—in much the same way that a ball rolls downhill. The only thing that can stop it is fire, humans, or ruminants.

In this scenario, the “weeds” have naturally achieved something that would have required a massive investment in human labor to achieve—namely, stifling the growth of elephant grass.

Nurse trees and pioneers (left) beginning to shade out elephant grass (right). Photo from the Crowther Study site in the Jama-Coaque Reserve.

Lesson #7: Your friendship with weeds is conditional

Natural forest succession is a long-term process that unfolds over the course of a century or more, but the initial years are arguably the most important.

A key catalyst of this process is what ecologists call “volunteer trees,” which appear during the first few years of regrowth. To the untrained eye, they may look like “weeds.” In fact, many of them are weeds. But some of them are trees, and you need them.

Volunteers are native trees (or shrubs) that sprout and grow naturally without being deliberately planted by people. They typically emerge from seeds that are dispersed by animals, wind, water, or other natural means.

Some of these volunteer trees are “early successional” species that specialize in colonizing degraded or deforested areas. Another term for early successional species is “pioneer species.” Typically, they are hardy trees that are adapted to survive in difficult conditions, grow quickly, and die young.

But some of these volunteer trees may be “mid-successional” or even “late-successional” species. Meaning that they are trees that will grow tall, form the canopy of the forest, and potentially live many decades if not centuries.

As you walk through an early successional forest, be on the lookout for seedlings or saplings of desirable species that have naturally sprouted. Once you find them, your next move is to give them a helping hand. The main way to do this is to selectively remove any other vegetation that may compete with them for sunlight, water, and nutrients. In other words, chop and drop the weeds that surround the desirable volunteers.

That is the basis for the method known as Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR), which is among the most cost-effective approaches to reforestation.

ANR in action: selective removal of weeds at the base of desired trees. (Finca de Madera)

Lesson #8: ANR is the best bang for your buck

There are several benefits of ANR compared to conventional tree-planting and other approaches to reforestation.

First and foremost, ANR is much more cost-effective than other reforestation methods because it relies heavily on natural processes and requires fewer inputs like nursery-raised seedlings and labor. Nature does the heavy lifting—humans just support the process.

In our experience, assisted natural regeneration is about 5–15% of the cost of plantation-style reforestation, and pure natural regeneration is 0–5% of the cost. This aligns with global findings from 138 low- and middle-income countries, where natural regeneration generally costs less than 4% of plantation-style reforestation but typically delivers greater carbon storage, biodiversity benefits, and ecosystem services.

The other benefit of ANR is that it encourages the growth of native species that are already adapted to local conditions, which tend to have higher survival rates than nursery-raised seedlings. Even if a nursery-raised seedling is native to the broader region, it may still have difficulty adapting to the microclimate and soil conditions of the specific river valley that you’re working to restore.

Moreover, trees raised in a nursery are often not as hardy as volunteer trees that naturally sprout on-site. Some nursery-raised seedlings suffer transplant shock when planted into the field. Other nursery-raised seedlings may have spent too much time in the nursery, such that their taproot gets deformed at the bottom of the grow bag.

There are two caveats to ANR. If you’re working with highly degraded land that is far from patches of existing forest, you will probably need to actively plant trees. This could come in the form of enrichment planting (EP), nurse cropping (NC), or even plantation-style (PS) planting.

The other caveat is that ANR only applies if your objective is the restoration of native forest. If your objective is a native timber plantation or agroforestry production, other methodologies will be needed.

Natural forest succession doesn’t always look pretty, but there is order to this madness. (Ochoa Property approximately 9 years after it was clear-cut).

Lesson #9: Apply the principles of judo to reforestation

In judo, you use your opponent’s energy and force against them, rather than directly opposing it with your own strength. You also minimize personal effort while maximizing the effect of movements, using skill and technique over brute strength. Knowing when and where to apply force can be more important than the amount of force applied. Small, well-timed movements or shifts are often more effective than offensive strikes.

The philosophy of reforestation outlined in this article is analogous to judo, especially in the context of reforesting cattle pasture. In addition to ANR-EP, the other reforestation methodology that typifies this approach is what we call delayed planting (DP). This is the method we’re using in three of the experimental plots of the Crowther Study, which compares active tree planting vs passive natural regeneration in cattle pasture.

The “delayed planting” method is, in a sense, a hybrid of the active and passive approaches. The key is the timing.

In the “delayed planting” plots, we do absolutely nothing for the first two years. Rather than fight the elephant grass with human tools, we sit back and allow Mother Nature to do the hard work. In other words, we let the natural process of forest succession begin to unfold.

It typically takes two or three years for the first wave of native vegetation to gain a sufficient foothold in cattle pasture and begin to shade out the elephant grass. Once that phrase begins, we begin planting trees.

The delayed planting approach significantly reduces the labor spent on battling weeds, and this significantly reduces the overall restoration cost. In terms of the speed of forest recovery, the initial delay of two to three years ultimately proves to be negligible. We’re already starting to see signs that the delayed planting approach may be faster than the immediate planting approach, because natural succession is more efficient at restoring vegetation than labor-intensive human-induced weed suppression.

The seedlings that are eventually planted in the delayed planting plots also have higher survival rates than seedlings in the immediate planting plots. After a few initial years of natural restoration, the formerly dry and sun-scorched cattle pasture now has the benefit of dappled shade formed by the many volunteer trees that naturally sprout and take root.

This nascent canopy protects the soil from direct sun and also generates abundant leaf litter, which helps lower the ground temperature, preserve moisture, improve nutrient cycling, and generally provide a more fertile habitat for soil microbiota. All of these conditions are favorable to the growth of baby tree seedlings. Indeed, these are the conditions that later-successional tree species are accustomed to during the first few years of their lives.

In short, immediate tree planting has high labor costs and high mortality rates. The delayed planting method reduces labor costs and creates better conditions for the success of the seedlings that are eventually planted.

This is our judo approach to reforesting a cattle pasture. We allow the force of natural succession to overcome the pasture grass, rather than wear ourselves out with an onslaught of planting and manual weeding at the outset. The volunteer trees and pioneer species do the heavy lifting. We augment the process with well-timed planting of strategic species in subsequent years, minimizing our effort and maximizing the impact.

Another view of the “Finca de Madera” property (formerly 87 acres of cattle pasture).

The post 9 Practical Lessons for Reforesting the Tropics appeared first on TMA.

TMA has restored 427 acres of forest in coastal Ecuador since 2008, both in and around the Jama-Coaque Reserve. We did not do it alone. Our greatest ally in the process was Mother Nature. Along the way, we’ve had the opportunity to implement and experiment with a full quiver of different reforestation methodologies, each of which we summarize below.

We also go into detail about the art and science of these methodologies in Judo Principles of Tropical Reforestation: 9 lessons learned from reforesting 427 acres in Ecuador.

The list of methodologies covered in this article includes:

• natural regeneration (NR)
• assisted natural regeneration (ANR)
• enrichment planting (ER)
• plantation-style reforestation (PS)
• delayed planting (DP)
• nurse cropping (NC)
• applied nucleation (AN)
• farmer managed natural restoration (FMNR)
• permaculture
• regenerative agroforestry (RA)
• syntropic agroforestry

Map of TMA reforestation projects. The Jama-Coaque Reserve is outlined in green; native forest restoration projects are in red; Regenerative Agroforestry parcels are in orange. (Note this map only includes Regenerative Agroforestry parcels in two out of the six communities where it is being implemented).

Summary of Methodologies

The following is a brief summary of each reforestation method, along with an explanation of the difference between rewilding and reforestation.

Natural Regeneration (NR)

Natural Regeneration is a forest recovery process where trees and plants regrow naturally without human intervention, using existing seeds and sprouts in the area. It is the most cost-effective method for forest restoration because it relies on the innate ability of ecosystems to heal themselves through the process known as natural forest succession.

Sites most suitable for natural regeneration are those where the ecological conditions remain relatively intact, with minimal presence of invasive species that could compete with native growth. It is greatly facilitated by the presence of a nearby forest, which serves as a seed bank. Animals such as a birds, bats, and other mammals play a critical role in dispersing seeds from nearby forest into the natural restoration area.

We’ve used NR to restore slash-and-burn sites, cattle pasture, and part of the ex-balsa plantation.

Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR)

Assisted Natural Regeneration is a forest restoration method in which humans merely give Mother Nature a helping hand, Humans accelerate the process of natural forest succession by actively removing obstacles to forest recovery.

One way to do this is by strategically chopping-and-dropping any vegetation that threatens to stifle the growth of desirable tree seedlings and saplings that have naturally sprouted. It also may be necessary to shield the young seedlings from damage caused by herbivores or trampling.

Whereas NR basically requires no human effort, ANR usually only requires minimal human effort. For this reason, it is much more cost-effective than conventional tree-planting methods of reforestation.

ANR is best suited to areas where the natural seed bank is still viable but hampered by overgrowth, disturbances, or other stressors that prevent successful seedling establishment and growth. It may not be effective in heavily degraded areas that are far from existing tracts of mature forest.

ANR is partially responsible for the success of our finest section of the Finca de Madera reforestation project.

Enrichment Planting (EP)

Enrichment Planting is an optional add-on component of ANR. In cases where the quantity or diversity of volunteer trees is insufficient to restore the forest on its own, you can also plant additional trees from targeted species. This helps enhance biodiversity, fill in spatial gaps, and restore key ecological functions.

In this case, planting densities still tend to be quite low. Whereas some conventional plantation-style reforestation projects plant trees with spacing of 2×2 meters or 3×3 meters, the spacing for enrichment planting may be 10×10 meters or even as wide as 25×25 meters. Although EP trees usually aren’t planted according to a grid. Rather, they are planted wherever there happens to be gap without promising volunteer seedlings or saplings.

In a few of our ANR-EP sites in and around the Jama-Coaque Reserve, we generally plant native timber species that have suffered significant population loss due to logging.

The “Finca de Madera” reforestation project, before and after.

Plantation-Style Reforestation (PS)

Plantation-style reforestation is what most people think of when they think of reforestation. You plant rows and rows of trees, usually with standardized spacing, into deforested land. This is by far the most time-consuming and expensive form of reforestation. For this reason, it should only be used at sites where less labor-intensive methods like NR, ANR-EP, or AN would not be effective. In other words, in severely degraded sites where the process of natural forest succession is greatly hindered.

We made the mistake of attempting PS in year 1 of our first cattle pasture reforestation project. The survival rate was about 50%. In our study with the Crowther Lab, which also called for active tree planting into a cattle pasture, we paired PS with Nurse Cropping (NC), and this time the initial survival rates were well over 80%.

Delayed Planting (DP)

Delayed Planting is a strategy where the planting of trees is postponed for a few years to allow the first wave of natural forest succession to establish an initial layer of native vegetation. This helps create more favorable soil and microclimate conditions for tree seedlings that are eventually planted into the site.

This method is particularly advantageous when attempting to reforest a cattle pasture—as we have learned through many tough years of trial and error. Plant inherently vulnerable tree seedlings directly into the dry and sun-scorched conditions of a cattle pasture is akin to asking soldiers to walk into a line of enemy fire. Even if some of the seedlings don’t die, they will require labor-intensive support (primarily in the form of manual weeding) every three months for the first few years.

In the delayed planting approach, you wait two or three years so that pioneer species begins to shade out the pasture grass and create a more suitable growing environment for the seedlings. This greatly reduces labor costs and increases seedling survival rates. In effect, you outsource the crucial first few years of work to Mother Nature herself. She handles that part of the job much more efficiently than humans.

We’re using the delayed planting method in three out of the 13 experimental plots in the Crowther Lab study. We discuss this method in greater detail in The Judo Approach to Reforestation: 9 lessons learned from reforesting 427 acres in Ecuador.

Nurse Cropping (NC)

Nurse Cropping is a reforestation method that plants fast-growing pioneer species alongside slower-growing target species. This is yet another way of hacking the natural process of forest succession. The fast-growing pioneer trees pave the way for slower-growing, longer-lived species that will eventually become the backbone of the forest.

Nurse cropping is similar to delayed planting, in the sense that fast-growing (early successional) species are used to create more favorable growing conditions for slower-growing (later-successional) species. In delayed planting, you wait for nature to generate her own crop of pioneer trees, in the form of volunteer trees that naturally seed and/or sprout on the site. With nurse cropping, you go ahead and actually plant the pioneer trees yourself.

It is possible to use nurse cropping in the context of delayed planting. With that approach, you would allow native vegetation to regrow on its own for a few years. And then you can plant additional pioneer trees as well as slower-growing target species at the same time. Or you could plant pioneer trees and wait a few years before planting slower-growing target species. Or you can simply plant everything together right at the outset.

In all cases, the concept is the same. Slower-growing and longer-lived tree species are generally accustomed to spending the first few years of their lives in the dappled shade of a forest. In this relatively stable and comfortable environment, the young seedlings and sapling patiently bide their time until a nearby tree falls and creates a gap in the canopy. At this point, they have deep enough roots to tap into subsurface waterflow. They are also usually tall and strong enough to outcompete so-called weeds and grasses that would have otherwise stunted their growth as baby seedlings. Thus, they are now capable of taking advantage of the sunlight and can quickly grow skyward.

By this point, the nurse trees have fulfilled their function. In accordance with natural forest succession, the nurse trees would inevitably die on their own, to make way for the next wave of succession. Humans can accelerate this process by cutting them back or thinning them. This provides a fresh supply of decomposing organic material on the forest floor, which helps cycle nutrients, protect the soil, and improve soil fertility—further enhancing the growth prospects of the target trees.

Our preferred nurse tree is balsa (Ochroma pyramidale), a pioneer species native to this region. It’s a short-lived tree that can outcompete pasture grass and grow more than 15 feet per year. We used balsa trees as nurse crops in six out of the 13 experimental plots in the Crowther Lab study. We’re now using balsa as nurse crops in some of our regenerative agroforestry sites with local farmers.

Balsa trees (native to this region) employed as nurse crops to longer-successional species. (Finca Nueva – Crowther Study Plot)

Applied nucleation (AN)

Applied nucleation (AN) is a reforestation technique that involves planting small clusters of trees to serve as focal points for natural forest succession. These clusters (or “nuclei”) attract birds and insects and other animals that act as seed dispersers and pollinators, which accelerates forest recovery. Over time, these nuclei grow and merge, gradually restoring the forest ecosystem across a broader area. Applied nucleation can be preferable to plantation-style tree planting because it uses a lot less labor and inputs to achieve comparable results.

This method was an important feature in the large-scale reforestation efforts in Auroville, India in the 1970s and 1980s. Applied Nucleation has been extensively studied by Doctors Karen Holl, Rakan Zahawi, and their colleagues in Costa Rica. We’re applying AN in the ex-balsa plantation.

Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR)

Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration is a low-cost, sustainable land restoration technique that encourages the natural regrowth of trees and bushes from existing roots and stumps, which farmers manage by pruning and protecting new shoots. This approach enhances agricultural productivity, improves soil health, and increases biodiversity. It was specifically developed for the cultural and climate conditions of the arid tropics of sub-Saharan Africa as a tool to combat desertification.

We’ve experimented with FMNR in a few of the regenerative agroforestry parcels with local farmers—particularly on properties with large populations of existing Guazuma ulmifolia trees.

Permaculture

Permaculture is a holistic agricultural system that integrates land, resources, people, and native ecology in a synergistic way. It imitates the no-waste, closed-loop systems observed in diverse natural environments, but reoriented in pursuit of sustainable production of food, shelter, and other needs. It places a premium on conscious design and seeks to achieve human prosperity and well-being in a way that is aligned with nature. It also emphasizes social aspects like community building and fair resource distribution. Permaculture is guided by three core ethics: care for the earth, care for people, and fair share.

Permaculture, as a system, was first coined in Tasmania in the 1970s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. They were inspired by a combination of Tasmanian Aboriginal practices, the “natural farming” method of Japanese farmer and philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka, the “mulch gardening” methods of American gardener and writer Ruth Stout, and the writings of Stuart Brand, and other influences.

The philosophy of permaculture was an important contributor to the creation of TMA and the founding of the Jama-Coaque Reserve. It was also the framework we used to design the food forest and production zone surrounding the Bamboo House.

Permaculture/regenerative agroforestry surrounding the Bamboo House.

Regenerative Agroforestry (RA)

Regenerative agroforestry combines tree crops alongside other agricultural practices to simultaneously restore ecosystem health, increase biodiversity, and achieve sustainable food production.

A key feature of agroforestry, in general, is diversity in the elements that are cultivated. Whereas conventional agriculture and conventional plantations tend to be monocultures of one species, agroforestry includes a mix of different species, ranging from fruit trees and timber trees to perennial or annual crops, and may also include nitrogen-fixing species and even livestock.

Another key feature is a multi-strata system, in which trees and plants of different heights are cultivated together—somewhat mimicking the structure of a forest.

Agroforestry is considered “regenerative” if it is used as a tool to restore tree cover and improve the biodiversity and/or soil fertility of land that was formerly used in an unsustainable fashion—for example, a cattle pasture or monoculture crop plantation.

Regenerative agroforestry prioritizes soil management through practices like mulching, no-till farming, and the use of organic fertilizers to promote a healthy soil ecosystem. Water conservation techniques such as contour planting, swales, and other water-harvesting methods can also be used. This helps manage water efficiently, reduce irrigation needs, and increase resilience in times of drought.

In some cases, livestock is also incorporated in the system. In addition to producing food, livestock can be used for “weed” management, pest control, and manure production. The latter supports crop health and growth by cycling nitrogen and other nutrients back into the soil.

If implemented well, regenerative agroforestry has the capacity to enhance biodiversity, rejuvenate soils, combat climate change, and sustainably produce food, timber, and other human needs.

Our Regenerative Cacao program, which has now extended to 80 different farms across the region, is built on these principles. The photo below illustrates the results after just three and a half years.

One of the inaugural members of Regenerative Cacao program standing in his farm three and a half years after initial planting. Native hardwood in the foreground, followed by banana and cacao.

Syntropic Agroforestry

Syntropic agriculture is a distinct form of regenerative agroforestry that is built upon a specific theory with a specific methodology. It is predicated on leveraging ecological succession for the sake of building soil and producing food. Different trees and plants are grown together in planned stages that mimic the natural progression of an ecosystem. However, syntropic agriculture is most often planted in straight lines on flat land.

Pruning and biomass recycling are key drivers of the process, in a way that goes beyond conventional notions. In syntropic agriculture, pruning is meant to mimic the natural disturbances that drive ecological succession in native forests, in this case augmented by conscious human intention.

Pruning is strategically used to manage plant growth, redirect energy to targeted areas of the system, and stimulate the development of other plants by enhancing light penetration, reducing competition, and other mechanisms. Biomass generated from pruning is cycled back into the system as mulch, which decomposes to enrich the soil with nutrients, improve soil structure, and support microbial activity. This stimulates growth and production throughout the system, and generally promotes a healthy, self-sustaining agricultural ecosystem.

Ernst Götsch, a Swiss farmer and researcher, developed the concept of syntropic agriculture after moving to Brazil in the 1980s. The method has been widely replicated in other parts of the world. Our friend Lucas Oshun is its leading practitioner in coastal Ecuador.

We’re managing a 1-hectare syntropic agriculture demonstration site right next to our cacao processing facility in Camarones.

Rewilding vs Reforestation

What’s the difference between these two terms? It’s a fair question. Rewilding and reforestation are both environmental restoration strategies, but they have distinct goals and methods. Rewilding focuses on restoring natural ecosystems and processes—in some cases including the reintroduction of native wildlife—to create self-sustaining environments with minimal human intervention. Reforestation, on the other hand, specifically involves planting trees to restore deforested or degraded forest lands. While rewilding aims to restore an entire ecosystem, reforestation primarily targets increasing tree cover and forest health.

Permaculture, regenerative agroforestry, syntropic agriculture, and FMNR can all be considered reforestation tools, but not rewilding. Although they contribute to restoring nature and biodiversity, they’re also designed to produce food and other products for human consumption.

Natural Regeneration, Assisted Natural Regeneration, Enrichment Planting, Applied Nucleation, Nurse Cropping, Delayed Planting, and even plantation-style reforestation can all be considered tools for rewilding if their goal is simply to restore natural ecosystems to a native state. In other words, if the forested land that results from these methods are not used to produce material goods for human consumption, like food or timber.

The post Brief Catalog of Reforestation Methods by TMA appeared first on TMA.

TMA has been experimenting with cacao varieties and growing methods since 2008. The Jama-Coaque Reserve currently contains the single largest repository of DNA-verified pure Ancient Nacional cacao in Ecuador. We actively manage 9 experimental cacao plots with 5 different types of Nacional cacao, and we closely track the genetics of every single plot. This is the same range of cacao varieties that TMA distributes to farmers throughout the Capuchin Corridor in our Regenerative Cacao program—featured in Smithsonian Magazine and Mongabay. In fact, the Jama-Coaque Reserve is the breeding ground for Capuchin Cacao. If you are a chocolate maker interested in sourcing cacao from this project, check out Capuchin Cacao.

Top row: Ancient Nacional, Heirloom Nacional, and two Hybrid Nacional pods. Bottom row: Porcelana Nacional with Criollo influence, red Nacional Hybrids with Amelonado influence, and a slightly orangish Nacional Hybrid.

Introduction

TMA created a forest preserve in 2007 called the Jama-Coaque Reserve (pronounced Hama Ko-Ah-Kay). It protects one of the last remnants of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador—the most endangered rainforest on earth.

We started experimenting with cacao in the Jama-Coaque Reserve (JCR) in 2008. Our objective was to inform our reforestation efforts in the degraded land that surrounds JCR. Since that time, we’ve planted 9 experimental plots of cacao, each with different genetic profiles, different levels of shade coverage, and different irrigation and fertilizer regimes. Every single cacao plot is a polyculture of numerous tree species, including a combination of fruit trees and native canopy species—i.e., an agroforestry system. All are managed organically.

In addition to the experimental plots that we’ve planted ourselves, there are also four legacy cacao plots that were planted by previous owners many decades ago and later abandoned. These plots are now overgrown and effectively integrated into a secondary-growth forest, but we continue to monitor them as study plots. We’ve also taken DNA samples from these cacao groves and used them as seed sources for planting in our actively-managed plots.

The average size of each cacao plot is only 0.32 hectares. Collectively, all the above plots occupy 5.2 hectares (13 acres) of land, although only 3.5 hectares (8.6 acres) are actively managed. This represents 0.3% of the total area of JCR.

Our genetic data comes from three different rounds of DNA testing on cacao trees in both JCR and Piedra de Plata—thanks to a collaboration with To’ak Chocolate, the Heirloom Cacao Preservation Fund (HCP), the USDA Genetic Lab (under Dr. Lyndel Meinhardt and Dr. Dapenz Zhang), and the Cocoa Research Centre in Trinidad (under Dr. Lambert Motilal).

Quick Primer on Cacao Genetics

Before we get to the genetic composition of JCR cacao—and, by extension, Capuchin Cacao—here’s a quick primer on cacao genetics in general and Nacional cacao in particular.

The earliest evidence of cacao used by humanity dates back to 3300 BC in Ecuador, in the area now called Zamora-Chinchipe. From this general area it is believed that cacao then migrated to coastal Ecuador and presumably traveled northward as far as Mexico on ocean-faring rafts made of balsa wood—a tree that is native to the Pacific Forest of Ecuador and grows wild in JCR.

For most of the 20th century, cacao was crudely divided into three broad categories: Trinitario, Criollo and Forastero, the latter of which Nacional was clumsily considered a sub-category. In 2008, Juan Carlos Motamayor classified cacao into ten genetic clusters—i.e., primary varieties. The USDA and other genetic researchers have subsequently added one more. As of today, the list of primary varieties/genetic clusters includes:

1. Nacional
2. Amelonado
3. Boliviano
4. Contamana aka Ucayali/Scavina
5. Criollo
6. Curaray
7. Guiana
8. Iquitos aka Iquitos Mixed Calabacillo (IMC)
9. Marañon aka Parinari
10. Nanay
11. Purús

These eleven “genetic clusters” are considered the primary varieties of cacao. It should be noted that Contamana, Curaray, IMC, Parinari, Nanay, and Purús are often collectively referred to as “Upper Amazon Forastero.” Amelonado is sometimes referred to as “Lower Amazon Forastero.”

Trinitario, a term commonly used in the past, is no longer considered a primary variety—per se. Rather, it is a hybrid of Criollo, Upper Amazon Forastero, and Amelonado.

In addition to these primary cacao varieties, there are countless hybrids and cultivars and the genetic profile of each of these varieties can now be determined through DNA testing. For example, the genetic composition of CCN-51, which is fast becoming the dominant cacao cultivar despite of its poor flavor reputation, is 45.4% IMC, 22.2% Criollo, 21.5% Amelonado, 3.9% Contamana, 2.5% Purús, 2.1% Marañon, and 1.1% Nacional.

“Fine Flavour” vs “Bulk” Cacao

From the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO): “The world cocoa market distinguishes between two broad categories of cocoa [aka cacao] beans: ‘fine flavour’ cocoa beans and ‘bulk’ or ‘ordinary’ cocoa beans.” It goes on to say that there are only three varieties/types of cacao that qualify as “fine flavour”: Nacional, Trinitario, and Criollo. The rest is generally considered “bulk” cacao. Ecuador is the largest producer of “fine flavour” cacao in the world. However, CCN-51 is classified as “bulk” cacao, and it is now the dominant cultivar in Ecuador…and spreading to other countries.

CCN-51 is the predominant “bulk cacao” variety in Ecuador. Only 1% of its genetic composition is Nacional.

The USDA genetic lab uses the term “Ancient Nacional” to describe cacao trees with genetic composition of 100% pure Nacional. Pictured above is one of the 9 mother trees in Piedra de Plata, from which many of the trees in the Genetic Bank were reproduced. What you get in flavor, you sacrifice in yield.

Quick Primer on Nacional Cacao

The world’s most storied and coveted cacao variety is Nacional, which is endemic to Ecuador and the northeast tip of Peru. Older than written language in South America, Nacional emerged sometime between 3300 B.C.E. and the arrival of the first Spanish explorers—the exact provenance is still not known for certain.

In the 1800s, Europeans referred to Nacional as “Arriba”, which was a reference to its appellation at the headwaters of the Daule and Babahoyo rivers in coastal Ecuador. The floral aromatics and complex flavor profile of Nacional cacao was world-renown.

But after achieving global fame in the nineteenth century, Nacional cacao—in its purest form—was nearly lost in the twentieth century. The initial culprit was the back-to-back arrival of two fungal diseases (frosty pod and witch’s broom) in 1916 and 1919, respectively. A hundred years of hybridization with foreign varieties, and the widespread conversion to CCN-51, followed suit in Ecuador.

(I relay this historical account in great detail in an article published on To’ak’s website titled “The Near-Extinction of Ancient Nacional Cacao,” which includes citations to all source material.)

As a result, pure Nacional cacao was believed to be extinct as recently as 2009. Around this time, a small pocket of relic trees was found in the Marañon valley of Peru. And then in 2014, another pocket of relic trees was found in the valley of Piedra de Plata in coastal Ecuador, in the province of Manabí.

Servio Pachard observing pure Ancient Nacional cacao seedlings in the Jama-Coaque tree nursery in 2018.

The “Mother Trees” of Piedra de Plata

The discovery of Ancient Nacional cacao trees in Piedra de Plata was spearheaded by Servio Pachard, myself, and Carl Schweizer from To’ak Chocolate. It was later corroborated through genetic analysis by the USDA Genetic Lab, under the leadership of Dr. Lyndel Meinhardt and Dr. Dapenz Zhang, in partnership with the Heirloom Cacao Preservation Fund (HCP). Their analysis revealed that these trees were, in fact, 100% pure Nacional—which the USDA genetic lab termed “Ancient Nacional.”

As of 2015, there were only 15 cacao trees in all of Ecuador that were DNA-verified to be Ancient Nacional. Nine of these trees were in Piedra de Plata, all of which were already over one hundred years old and at the end of their expected lifespan.

In the years that followed, To’ak and TMA embarked on a project to pull this ancient cacao variety back from the brink of extinction. I first wrote about this project in 2018 in the (rather long-winded) article called The Noah’s Ark of Ancient Nacional Cacao. I provided in an update in 2020 in a more succinct article called Heirloom Cacao Conservation Timeline.

Left: The average genetic profile across all 47 tree samples analyzed in Piedra de Plata in the 2015 survey. Right: Cacao pods from a tree in JCR’s “Del Rio Viejo” plot, grown from an Heirloom Nacional seed sourced from Piedra de Plata.

The Genetic Bank (aka the “Noah’s Ark”)

The largest round of DNA testing in Piedra de Plata, sponsored by HCP and conducted by the USDA genetic lab, took place in 2015. They analyzed leaf samples from 47 trees, of which only 16 were old-growth trees that matched the characteristics of Ancient Nacional cacao. Out of these 16 old-growth cacao trees trees, nine of them were confirmed to be 100% Nacional.

(To’ak later performed a field survey of all 32,000 cacao trees in Piedra de Plata, under the guidance of Servio Pachard. This survey identified 573 trees that match the morphological and color characteristics of 100% pure Ancient Nacional cacao.)

With few Ancient Nacional trees still in existence, and all of them nearing the end of their lives—TMA and To’ak joined forces to preserve this historic variety of cacao. Our mission was to reproduce the nine DNA-verified mother trees in a protected parcel of land in JCR—an ecological reserve about 90 kilometers north of Piedra de Plata. The plot of land assigned for this task was a defunct banana grove that was cultivated by the previous landowner and then later abandoned.

To graft the trees, To’ak worked with the local cacao growers of Piedra de Plata along with cacao specialists from the provincial polytechnic university ESPAM, under the guidance of Ing. Paul Cedeño.

Budwood was collected from each of the nine DNA-verified trees in Piedra de Plata and grafted onto hundreds of young seedlings (i.e., “rootstock”). This is the same process used to reproduce grape vines of a specific variety (e.g., pinot noir) for wine production.

In March of 2018, a total of 189 grafted “Ancient Nacional” seedlings were planted in the appointed plot in JCR. Specifically, we planted twenty-one individual seedlings grafted from each of the nine DNA-verified mother trees (189 in total). We grandly referred to this parcel as the “Noah’s Ark of Ancient Nacional Cacao.” In practice, we simply call it the “Genetic Bank.”

That same year, the baby seedlings from the Genetic Bank got their first taste of media notoriety. A film crew from National Geographic’s “Explorer” series visited the Genetic Bank as part of a feature story about the future of the world’s cacao supply. More recently, the joint TMA-To’ak project was featured in the article The Quest to Save the World’s Most Coveted Chocolate in Smithsonian Magazine. Shortly thereafter it was featured in a fantastic article in Mongabay titled Can agroforestry chocolate help save the world’s most endangered rainforest?

Dany Murillo (left) and Jerry Toth.(right) co-manage all of TMA’s cacao projects, including the Regenerative Cacao program.

Ancient Nacional vs Nacional Hybrids

As Nacional cacao suffered widespread casualties during the 1920s—owing to Frosty Pod and Witch’s Broom disease—foreign cacao seeds began to make their entrance into Ecuador, and a century of hybridization ensued. The foreign cacao varieties sexually paired with the remaining Nacional cacao trees through open pollination, producing offspring of mixed descent. Nacional was still the predominant variety of this next generation, but now other cacao varieties had also become part of the gene pool.

Thus, the first generation of Nacional hybrids were the result of open pollination. In the latter half of the 20^th century, Ecuador’s agricultural research institute (INIAP) began a breeding program that crossed old Nacional relics (for the flavor) with hardier and more productive foreign varieties. The “EET” series of cultivars released by INIAP toward the end of the 20^th century is the result of this breeding program. Most of these cultivars are 53-67% Nacional and contain lesser percentages of Criollo, Amelanado, Ucayali/Scavina, Curaray, IMC, Parinari, Nanay, and Purús.

For chocolate consumers out there, whenever you see a bar of chocolate that proclaims to be sourced from Nacional cacao, 99.9% of the time this means a Nacional hybrid. Unless it’s sourced from Piedra de Plata, Marañon, or—more recently, the Capuchin Corridor—it’s not Ancient Nacional.

Note: CCN-51—an ultra-high-yield variety with the reputation of poor flavor characteristics—is not a Nacional hybrid. It was developed by an independent Ecuadorian breeder and is only 1% Nacional.

Nacional Cacao in the Jama-Coaque Reserve

The genetic composition of the cacao trees planted in JCR can be broken down into the following five categories.

Grafted Ancient Nacional: This refers to trees that were grafted from one of the nine DNA-verified Ancient Nacional cacao trees in Piedra de Plata. Each of these nine trees were cloned and then planted in various micro-plots of JCR—most prominently in the so-called Genetic Bank.

Open-pollinated Ancient Nacional: This refers to trees planted from the seed of one of the nine DNA-verified Ancient Nacional trees in Piedra de Plata. In this case, we know that the mother of these trees is 100% pure Ancient Nacional, but we don’t know the genetic profile of the father tree (i.e., the tree that provided the pollen that fertilized the flower on the mother tree). We sent leaf samples from one open-pollinated Ancient Nacional tree to the Cocoa Research Centre in Trinidad and the DNA analysis registered 93% Nacional, along with 3.5% Criollo, 1% Contamana, 1% Curaray, and less than 1% of Guiana, Iquitos, Parinari, Nacional, Nanay, Purús, and Amelonado.

Heirloom Nacional: Heirloom Nacional trees are the progeny of surviving Ancient Nacional trees that naturally hybridized with the initial wave of Trinitario cacao trees introduced to Ecuador during the decades following the 1916 disease outbreak and before the earliest release of INIAP’s relatively higher-yield Nacional” cultivars in 1978. Generally speaking, Heirloom Nacional trees are the result of a pure Nacional tree naturally breeding (i.e., through open pollination) with a tree that is a Nacional x Trinitario mix. The genetic composition is typically in the range of 70-99% Nacional, with the remaining genetic markers comprised of the many cacao varieties that comprise “Trinitario” cacao—namely Criollo, Amelonado, and Upper Amazon Forestero varieties such as Ucayali/Scavina, Curaray, IMC, Parinari, Nanay, and Purús. Based on what I’ve seen on the ground, in combination with what I’ve read in numerous scientific and technical papers and confirmed through conversations with veteran Ecuadorian cacao specialists at institutions like INIAP and ESPAM, I estimate that “heirloom” Nacional cacao represents approximately 5% of Ecuador’s current cacao production.

Hybrid Nacional (aka “Complejo Nacional”): This is usually the result of an heirloom Nacional tree breeding with another heirloom Nacional tree or other cacao cultivar—either naturally through open pollination or intentionally through controlled pollination by INIAP (Ecuador’s agricultural research institute). INIAP’s breeding programs are aimed at developing cacao cultivars that maintain the flavor characteristics of Nacional cacao while also being more resistant to diseases and generating relatively higher yields for farmers. This includes the “EET” class of cultivars that were bred by INIAP during the latter half of the 20^th century. The genetic composition of these trees usually falls within the range of 40-70% Nacional. The Cocoa Research Centre in Trinidad analyzed the DNA of a few of our Hybrid Nacional trees in JCR and they ranged from 53-66% Nacional, with the remainder of genetic markers comprised of Trinitario varieties.

Porcelana (i.e. “White Bean”) Nacional: This is an interesting case. It has long been known that certain strains of cacao have a genetic mutation such that the interior of the seed (which is usually a deep purple color) is instead white. Porcelana Criollo cacao in Venezuela—another one of the most coveted cacao varieties on earth—is probably the most famous example of this. Shortly after we established the Genetic Bank in JCR, Servio Pachard told us about a cacao parcel in the Esmeraldas province with “white bean” Nacional cacao. I was skeptical but intrigued. Servio grafted about 50 seedlings and entrusted them to us. We planted them in a plot that we named—appropriately—”Porcelana.” In 2022, these trees produced their first fruits. And sure enough…we sliced open the seeds and the interior was white. We also sent a leaf sample from one of these trees to the Cocoa Research Centre’s genetic lab and it registered 52% Nacional, 20% Criollo, and 25% Marañon. Our hypothesis is that the “white bean” mutation comes from the Criollo side of the family. Interestingly, Nacional cacao and Criollo cacao are widely regarded to be the two best cacao varieties on earth. In an article on To’ak’s website, I compare the two.

Regenerative Cacao

We’re using heirloom cacao trees to reverse deforestation and help restore a threatened rainforest in Ecuador. It’s an example of how businesses, conservationists, and local farmers can join forces to help regenerate the forest rather than cut it down.

Here’s how TMA’s Regenerative Cacao program works:

• Farmers plant a diverse mix of native shade trees, fruit trees, and heirloom cacao trees on degraded land.
• TMA provides all the materials and covers the start-up costs. This includes direct cash payments to farmers during the crucial transition period until their tree crops start producing income.
• Native shade trees remove CO2 from the atmosphere and boost biodiversity, while fruit trees and bananas provide local food security, and cacao trees provide a sustainable source of income for families.
• Chocolate makers like To’ak play a key role by paying farmers at least 3x more than the standard market price for the cacao, which includes DNA-verified Ancient Nacional cacao.

From Regenerative Cacao to Capuchin Cacao

TMA’s Regenerative Cacao program is specifically designed for cacao farmers who live in the Capuchin Corridor of coastal Ecuador. The Capuchin Corridor is a 40,000-hectare conservation corridor that aims to connect JCR with the chocó rainforests of Cerro Pata de Pájaro.

A total of 38 families enrolled in the Regenerative Cacao program in 2021-2022, and another 31 families enrolled in 2023. TMA’s goal is to include 100 families by 2025. TMA buys the cacao produced by all participating farmers and ferments and dries the cacao in the community adjacent to JCR. This cacao—which we call Capuchin Cacao—is then sold to To’ak and other interested craft chocolate companies.

Capuchin Cacao is a combination of Ancient Nacional (Grand Cru), Heirloom Nacional (Primer Cru), and Hybrid Nacional (Second Cru).

On the left, photo taken on December 29, 2020. On the right, photo of the same area taken less than 3 years later – on Sept 19, 2023. The land inside the yellow polygon are Regenerative Cacao parcels cultivated by the farmers in our program. The rectangle in white is the “control” polygon, owned by the one farmer in the area who did not want to participate in the program.

Onboarding New Chocolate Companies

If you represent a chocolate company that wants to be part of this project and source cacao from this origin, please fill out this form and we will get back to you. You can find more details about Capuchin Cacao, including pricing information, here.

And for a look at the appellation in which Capuchin Cacao is grown, observe the beautiful coastal Ecuadorian mountains of the Capuchin Corridor below. Cacao trees, combined with many other tree species, are planted in the deforested hillsides. From a conservation perspective, this serves three purposes:

1. Replaces deforested land with productive and biodiverse food forests. These forests can help connect fragments of native forest, thus creating larger areas of contiguous wildlife habitat.
2. Stimulating economic development at the base of the mountains reduces the need for people to illegally log and clear native forest along the tops of the mountains, where the watercourses are born.
3. It’s an opportunity for conservationists, farmers, and businesses to work together for a common goal.

The partially-forested, partially deforested hillsides of the community of Camarones, a few kilometers downriver from the Jama-Coaque Reserve. TMA’s Regenerative Cacao program began here in 2021 and has since expanded to four other communities in the Capuchin Corridor.

The post Catalog of Cacao Cultivars in the Jama-Coaque Reserve appeared first on TMA.

We’re using heirloom cacao trees to reverse deforestation and help restore a threatened rainforest in Ecuador. It’s a real-life example of how businesses, conservationists, and local farmers can join forces to help regenerate the forest rather than cut it down—as featured in Smithsonian Magazine and Mongabay. 

Where: The Capuchin Corridor, which protects one of the last remnants of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador—the most endangered rainforest on earth.

What: A comprehensive regenerative agroforestry program. Local farmers combine cacao trees with a diversity of native shade trees, fruit trees, and other food-producing crops—all of which are planted on degraded land. The result is forest restoration + local food security + farmer income + CO2 removal from the atmosphere. 

Partners:

• TMA is a non-profit rainforest conservation organization working to protect and restore the Pacific Forest of Ecuador since 2007.
• To’ak is a luxury chocolate company based in Ecuador, known for making its chocolate like a vintage wine, aging it like a whisky, packaging it like a work of art, and sourcing from the rarest and most prized cacao variety on earth.

Who else wants to join? We’re opening this opportunity up to other chocolate companies who want to be part of this project and source their cacao from this origin. For those interested, please fill out this form. 

Why?

• Farmers earn a living and rehabilitate the ecosystem at the same time. 
• Craft chocolate makers gain access to one of the most coveted cacao varieties on earth, and have an extraordinary story to tell. 
• Chocolate consumers can feel good about the brands they support and the chocolate they eat.

How it Works

Here’s how TMA’s Regenerative Cacao program works:

• Farmers plant a diverse mix of native shade trees, fruit trees, and heirloom cacao trees on degraded land. 
• TMA provides all the materials and covers the start-up costs. This includes direct cash payments to farmers during the crucial transition period until their tree crops start producing income. 
• Native shade trees remove CO2 from the atmosphere and boost biodiversity, while fruit trees and bananas provide local food security, and cacao trees provide a sustainable source of income for families. 
• Chocolate makers like To’ak play a key role by paying farmers at least 3x more than the standard market price for the cacao, which includes DNA-verified Ancient Nacional cacao. 

Backstory

TMA created a forest preserve in 2007 called the Jama-Coaque Reserve (pronounced Hama Ko-Ah-Kay). It protects one of the last remnants of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador. To expand the size of the forest, TMA started working with local farmers in nearby properties to convert degraded land into regenerative cacao farms. In the course of this work, one of TMA’s co-founders, Jerry Toth, became obsessed with cacao farming and chocolate making, and eventually co-founded a chocolate company called To’ak in 2013.

To’ak went on to become the global pioneer of luxury dark chocolate—featured in Forbes, Fortune Magazine, Robb Report, The Guardian, Wine Spectator, Vice Magazine, TV channels such as CNBC, FOX, ARD, and over a hundred other media outlets across six continents. One of the reasons for To’ak’s success was unique access to old-growth cacao groves in the valley of Piedra de Plata. With the help of the Heirloom Cacao Preservation Fund and the USDA genetic lab, DNA analysis performed on some of the trees in this valley revealed them to be 100% pure Ancient Nacional cacao—a legendary cacao variety once believed to be extinct. These are the mother trees of many of the cacao trees that are now growing in the Capuchin Corridor. 

Limited edition To’ak chocolate bar aged in a Laphroaig whisky cask for 3 years: retail value $215 USD. Photo by To’ak.

The Capuchin Corridor is a large-scale conservation initiative to connect the Jama-Coaque Reserve to another threatened forest preserve in this region. This will create a contiguous forest that spans a 43-km mountain range that rises up from the shores of the Pacific ocean in coastal Ecuador. 

To’ak and TMA worked together to preserve this genetic line of cacao by grafting the old-growth trees of Piedra de Plata onto young seedlings planted in a protected parcel of land inside TMA’s forest preserve. This so-called “Noah’s Ark of Ancient Nacional” now contains 189 cacao trees cloned from nine mother trees that are DNA-verified to be 100% pure Ancient Nacional.  

DNA-verified Ancient Nacional tree in Piedra de Plata – over 100 years old. Photo by To’ak.

TMA uses these trees as budwood to graft onto thousands of young cacao seedlings every year—effectively cloning the DNA-verified Ancient Nacional trees from Piedra de Plata. TMA then distributes these seedlings to farmers in the Regenerative Cacao program that are working to restore forest in the Capuchin Corridor.

In the Capuchin Corridor, the famously-aromatic (but relatively low-yielding) Ancient Nacional cacao trees are interplanted with heirloom Nacional varieties that have been growing in these mountains for over half a century, in addition to Nacional hybrids developed by INIAP that offer farmers relatively higher yields. More details on the genetics of Capuchin Cacao are provided below. 

The Capuchin Corridor is named in honor of the Ecuadorian Capuchin Monkey, which is listed as critically endangered on the IUCN red list and depends on this forest for its survival. 

Two of the first farmers to enroll in the TMA’s Regenerative Cacao program: Alinda Murillo and her brother Wulvio Murillo. Photo by Liz Kimbrough.

Cacao Farms that Mimic the Tropical Forest

TMA works with two categories of farmers:

• Farmers who are converting degraded land into regenerative agroforestry farms.
• Farmers who are rehabilitating old cacao farms into regenerative agroforestry farms.

In both cases, farmers intercrop cacao trees with other kinds of trees and food-producing crops like bananas. In other words, they cultivate a food forest that mimics the structure of a natural forest. That’s the basis of agroforestry.

TMA provides farmers with all the materials and covers the start-up costs for converting to regenerative agroforestry. This includes direct cash payments to farmers during the crucial transition period until their tree crops start producing income. These bridge payments range from $3,000-4,500 per hectare over a 5-year period. 

Planting Design & Biodiversity Metrics

On average, TMA’s Regenerative Cacao have over 30 different species of food-producing and native canopy trees. To satisfy biodiversity requirements, each farm needs to have at least: 

• 100 shade trees per hectare
• 15 tree species per hectare
• of which at least 30% are native species
• Shannon Diversity index of 2.0 or greater
• Non-organic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers cannot be used

Monitoring

TMA’s field coordinators visit every single farm twice a year to audit the farm’s management in accordance with organic principles and best practices for regenerative agroforestry. 

These same coordinators also perform a tree census—they manually count every single tree in the cacao parcel, identify which species it is, and classify it according to height.  

The data from the tree census is fed into a database that analyzes the biodiversity value of each farm. Aerial imagery is used to corroborate the results. 

Farms with high biodiversity scores receive the highest prices. Farms with moderate biodiversity scores are paid lower prices and are given one year to make necessary adjustments. Farms that do not satisfy TMA’s biodiversity requirements are ineligible to sell their cacao to TMA.

Genetics of Capuchin Cacao

Capuchin Cacao is sourced entirely from cacao cultivars within the Nacional genetic family, including 100% pure Ancient Nacional—once believed to be extinct. The breeding ground for Capuchin Cacao are the experimental cacao plots in the Jama-Coaque Reserve. For a deep-dive into the genetics of Capuchin Cacao, check out Cacao Varieties of the Jama-Coaque Reserve. Below is a brief summary:

• 10-20% of the cacao trees planted in this program are 100% pure Ancient Nacional trees cloned from old-growth trees in Piedra de Plata, verified by DNA-testing. As of 2015, there were only 15 cacao trees in all of Ecuador that were DNA-verified to be Ancient Nacional. Nine of these trees were in Piedra de Plata, all of which were already over one hundred years old and at the end of their expected lifespan. In the years that followed, To’ak and TMA embarked on a project to pull this ancient cacao variety back from the brink of extinction. I first wrote about this project in 2018 in the (rather long-winded) article called The Noah’s Ark of Ancient Nacional Cacao. I provided in an update in 2020 in a more succinct article called Heirloom Cacao Conservation Timeline.
• 40% are Heirloom Nacional cacao trees that have been growing in this region for half of a century.
• 40-50% are Nacional Hybrids developed by INIAP during the latter half of the 20th century, with the objective to maintain the flavor characteristics of Nacional cacao while increasing the productivity of the trees. The specific cultivars are EET-19, EET-62, EET-95, EET-96, EET-103, EET-575, EET-576, EET-800, EET-801.

Important Note: the bulk cacao cultivar known as CCN-51 is categorically excluded from this entire program.

Origin / Appellation

The Capuchin Corridor is a 40,000-hectare conservation corridor along a coastal mountain range that runs parallel to the Pacific Ocean at 0° latitude—literally straddling the equator line. It is bounded to the south by the town of Jama and bounded to the north by the town of Pedernales. Within its boundaries are 38 small rural communities nestled in the foothills. 

The Capuchin Corridor is distinguished by an extraordinary degree of ecological diversity in a relatively small area of land. The peaks of the mountains—quickly rising 840 meters (2,700 feet) above the ocean—are the domain of cloud forests, shrouded in fog most of the year. Moist evergreen forest occupies the mid-elevational band of the mountains, giving way to tropical dry forest along the shores of the Pacific ocean. This region represents the core of the Tumbes-Chocó global biodiversity hotspot.  

Roughly half of the Capuchin Corridor’s original forest has been replaced by a mixture of cattle pasture, corn fields, and other forms of agriculture. 

Annual precipitation ranges from nearly 2,000 mm along the mountaintops to less than 500 mm along the shoreline, with a pronounced dry season from June through December. The soil is predominantly clay with slightly acidic pH, naturally rich with calcium, magnesium, manganese, and potassium. 

Within ten years time, the Capuchin Corridor will be to the world of chocolate what the French province of Burgundy is to the world of wine: unparalleled.

The Capuchin Corridor in coastal Ecuador—one of the last surviving remnants of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador. Photo by Ryan Lynch.

Post-Harvest

TMA is building a post-harvest facility in the community of Camarones, to be managed by local residents trained by To’ak and TMA. 

The post-harvest facility will be built in the style of To’ak’s original post-harvest facility in Finca Perezoso. Wet cacao will be harvested on each farm, immediately transported to the post-harvest facility, and fermented in Spanish Elm fermentation boxes for 4-6 days, depending on the specific flavor objectives of each cacao buyer. The cacao will then be dried in an open-air marquesina with transparent roof and elevated drying racks. 

The first phase of construction will be completed by February of 2024, which will allow for the fermentation and drying of up to 2 tons of wet cacao every two weeks. 

The second phase of construction will be completed by December of 2024. 

The first cacao lots will be available as early as April of 2024, with more production coming online during 2025.

To’ak’s cacao drying facility in Sarampion. TMA is replicating this model in the Capuchin Corridor. Photo by To’ak.

Pricing

Standard market prices for cacao simply don’t provide an incentive for farmers to shift away from current practices (namely, cattle ranching and slash-and-burn corn cultivation) in favor of regenerative agroforestry. They provide even less of an incentive to cultivate high-quality Nacional cacao rather than the lower quality CCN-51, which is roughly 3x more productive than Nacional cacao. 

The entire Capuchin Cacao program only works if cacao growers are paid enough money to incentivize them to make the change to regenerative agroforestry. And the only way to economically justify the cultivation of Nacional cacao rather than CCN-51 is if the price for Nacional cacao is 3x the price for CCN-51. This is the economic reality of the matter. Here’s how this looks to the farmer:

To put it bluntly: if a chocolate maker insists on buying Nacional cacao instead of CCN-51, but isn’t willing to pay a farmgate price that justifies cultivating a lower-yield variety, he/she is basically asking the farmer to sacrifice family income. This break-even price (paid to the farmer) equates to about $2.20 per kg of wet cacao (equivalent to $6.17 per kg of dry cacao). This assumes a standard market price of $0.73/kg of wet cacao ($2.45/kg of dry cacao), which is the average price paid for CCN-51 cacao in Ecuador over the past 10 years.

For us to be able to pay Capuchin Corridor farmers a price of $2.20/kg of wet cacao, we need to sell this cacao for a price of $7,465 per ton of dry cacao. With this pricing model, 83% of the sales price goes directly to farmers, leaving 7% for post-harvest costs, and 10% to be reinvested back into the Regenerative Cacao program.

We’re looking for craft chocolate companies that acknowledge this economic reality and embrace the opportunity to properly compensate cacao growers for the work they do. In exchange, we offer:

• Access to one of the most progressive cacao appellations in the world
• With an utterly unique genetic lineage
• A truly compelling story to share with your customers
• Biodiversity metrics and a robust monitoring system to ensure quality 
• A steady stream of videos, photos, and publicity at your disposal

Interested in Becoming a Partner?

If you’re a craft chocolate maker interested in being a part of this project and sourcing your cacao from the Capuchin Corridor, please fill out this form and we will get back to you. The inaugural lots of cacao will be available as early as April of 2024, considerably ramping up in 2025. 

The post Capuchin Cacao = Regenerative Chocolate appeared first on TMA.