• 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.

• 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.

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.

The post The Jama-Coaque Reserve appeared first on TMA.

Extremely wet Chocó rainforests occupy the northern reaches of the Pacific Forest, giving way to Tumbesian dry forests in the south. Cloud forests cover the mountaintops of the coastal cordillera. Mangrove forests, much of which have been replaced by shrimp farms, can still be found along some coastal estuaries.

For a deeper dive into this bioregion, check out The Most Endangered Rainforest You’ve Never Heard Of: An intimate portrait of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador.

Mountains of the Jama-Coaque Reserve, with the Pacific Ocean in background. Photo by Ryan Lynch.

The Capuchin Corridor, named in honor of the critically-endangered Ecuadorian capuchin monkey, occupies the heart of the Pacific Forest. Here, all of the above forest types can be encountered over the course of a single afternoon’s hike. In ecological terms, it is the transition zone between the Chocó rainforest and Tumbesian dry forests.

The Jama-Coaque Reserve (JCR), which sits at the nucleus of the Capuchin Corridor, is the ecological midpoint of the entire Pacific Forest of Ecuador.

The Pacific Forest of Ecuador runs from Gulf of Guayaquil up to the Colombian border, straddling the coastal mountain ranges that run parallel to the Pacific ocean.

This long, narrow stretch of mountainous land contains the widest diversity of tropical forests in South America. It’s also the most threatened. Only 2% of the original forest remains. TMA’s mission is to preserve the last surviving remnants of the Pacific Forest and work with local communities to restore what has been lost.

The photo tour below provides a brief overview of this remarkable ecosystem. For a deeper dive, check out The Most Endangered Rainforest You’ve Never Heard Of: An intimate portrait of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador.

The Bamboo House headquarters of the Jama-Coaque Reserve. Photo by Ronald Gúzman Dávila (Vistazo)

Chocó Rainforest

The Chocó rainforest is one of the wettest forests on earth. It occupies the northern portion of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador. Prominent examples can be found at the Bilsa Biological Station and the FCAT Reserve, located within the Mache-Chindul Ecological Reserve, as well as Cerro Pata de Pájaro in the Capuchin Corridor.

Lush primary-growth rainforest in Cerro Pata de Pájaro (Capuchin Corridor)

Cloud Forest

The Pacific Forest of Ecuador is effectively a series of long and narrow coastal mountain ranges that rise up from the ocean and top out at about 850 meters (2780 feet) above sea level. The peaks of the mountains are shrouded in a thick blanket of clouds nearly every single night of the year. It is a forest that is fed by the clouds. Otherwise known as a cloud forest.

Cloud forest at the headwaters of Camarones River Basin (Jama-Coaque Reserve)

Visually, it is surreal. Almost all visible surfaces are covered in bright green. 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.

Moist Evergreen 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 a rainforest, but there’s a wider range of color tones, and the species are different. The trees are actually taller here, relative to the cloud forest. The canopy of the moist forest is formed by big native hardwood trees, some of them reaching heights of 45 meters (150 feet), often with massively buttressed roots.

Manager of the Jama-Coaque Reserve, Dany Murillo, standing in front of the buttressed trunk of massive strangler fig tree.

There is also a wealth of exotic palm trees with spiny trunks and nuts with the color and consistency of ivory, stands of giant bamboo, and countless little streams tumbling down steep slopes, alternating between waterfalls and itty-bitty swimming holes that are naturally stocked with freshwater prawns. All of this exists under the watchful eyes of loud-mouthed troops of howler monkeys, critically endangered capuchin monkeys, and ocelots that never appear except in pictures taken by infrared trail cameras fitted with motion sensors.

Ocelot photographed on a camera trap in the Jama-Coaque Reserve

Tumbesian Dry Forest

If you keep descending the mountain and walk toward the beach, you may notice that some of the trees are shedding their leaves. You have reached the semi-deciduous forest. Eventually, after another kilometer or two, you stumble into a full-blown deciduous forest. Otherwise known as tropical dry forest. More specifically, a Tumbesian dry forest.

The 3,450-hectare Cabo Pasado forest, just north of Canoa and currently unprotected, is now undergoing real estate development. You can see dry forest on the ridges and semi-deciduous forest in the valleys.

The tropical dry forest looks and functions like a rainforest during the rainy season. But in the dry season, the trees shed all of their leaves. From September until December, the trees are as bare as the North Woods in winter—although not because of temperature. The weather is always tropical. Leaf shedding is entirely a function of precipitation. At the base of the coastal cordillera, rainfall is almost nonexistent for half the year. But the moment the rainy season begins anew, the dry forest explodes back into life in a matter of days.

Tropical dry forest at Pacoche Wildlife Refuge in central Manabí.

Imagine compressing all of the life energy of springtime into one or two weeks, and then maintaining this feverish biological pitch for about five months, gradually transitioning into a long and leisurely autumn, without any wintertime. That’s the annual cycle of the tropical dry forest in coastal Ecuador. It is an incredible process to watch unfold.

Wildlife

The complete list of notable wildlife that inhabits the Pacific Forest is beyond the scope of this article. There are more endangered and threatened bird species in the Capuchin Corridor than any other Key Biodiversity Area in all of Ecuador—the country believed to have the most biodiverse bird population on earth.

White necked Jacobin. Photo taken in the Jama-Coaque Reserve by Scott Trageser (Nature Stills Photography).

The headline species is the Ecuadorian Capuchin Monkey (Cebus aequatorialis), which is officially listed as critically endangered on the IUCN red list.

Ecuadorian Capuchin Monkey in the Jama-Coaque Reserve, mugging for the camera.

We would be remiss to not include a frog photo. This one was photographed by TMA’s executive director, Ryan Lynch—originally a herpetologist.

Gliding leaf frog (Agalychnis spurrelli). Photo by Ryan Lynch.

Water

There are no glaciers in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador. Water is born along the peaks of the coastal mountain ranges, where the ample vegetation of the cloud forest effectively “harvests” moisture from the perpetual fog.

Water droplets on moss growing on the side of a tree in the cloud forest of Cerro Pata de Pájaro.

The water vapor is thus converted into drops of water which fall to the ground, enter inside the earth, and slowly make their way to the many watercourses that tumble down the mountains toward the sea. In waterfalls like the one pictured below, the water is so pristine that you can drink it while simultaneously swimming in it.

Water so clean you can drink it while simultaneously swimming in it. (Jama-Coaque Reserve)

Just because it’s so beautiful and tasty-looking, another picture of fresh, clean, water running through the rainforest. Water is the source of life, and forests—at least in this ecosystem—are the birthplace of water.

The Camarones River of the Jama-Coaque Reserve.

Fate of the Forest

The Pacific Forest of Ecuador has been badly fragmented over the course of the last century. Today, it is estimated that only 2% is left. The traditional driver of deforestation is a tripartite combination of logging followed by slash-and-burn cultivation of maize and then the long-term conversion to cattle pasture.

Slash-and-burn for corn/maize cultivation in the Capuchin Corridor.

In recent years, a rash of real estate development projects—in the form of high-end subdivisions along the beach—have eaten away at much of the tropical forest along the coast.

Beachside condos in Jama.

In the interior, large-scale teak and balsa plantations have been replacing native evergreen moist forest along the mountainsides.

This used to be a forest. Then came cattle ranching.

The Capuchin Corridor Project

TMA and its partners are building a 40,000-hectare conservation corridor that will protect and restore one of the last major remnants of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador. This project is underway. Here’s the roadmap:

• Protect all remaining tracts of old-growth forest through purchase and/or easement.
• Restore degraded forest in areas no longer suitable for farming and grazing.
• Connect isolated forest fragments through regenerative agroforestry with local farmers.
• All lands are managed by local communities.

Carbon Payments

With the help of a third-party carbon developer (The Landscapes & Livelihoods Group), we calculated the CO2 benefit of the Capuchin Corridor. We did so using both REDD+ and the Forest Carbon Ledger (FCL). The annual CO2 benefit of the entire corridor is 110,000 metric tons.  If we are able to secure carbon funding, the revenue will be distributed to local communities to protect the forest in their home watersheds. Payments are results-based and verified by aerial imagery.

Local cacao grower and forest ranger Edilberto Marquez harvesting a cacao pod.

Regenerative Agroforestry

We provide local farmers with start-up capital and financial incentives to convert deforested land into regenerative forests. Each acre of reforested land boosts local income, produces food, restores biodiversity, and removes CO2 from the atmosphere. This is a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) project with both social and ecological benefits. Here’s a 2-minute animated video that explains how we do it.

Thank You

…for taking the time to learn about the Pacific Forest of Ecuador. Protecting and restoring this ecosystem is big undertaking, but we’ve already made a tremendous amount of progress. We’re at a point where we are ready and capable of dramatically scaling up our work. To do it, we need help. If you feel inclined to support this project, please do. The future of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador depends on the actions of people right now.

With some help and a little bit of luck, this baby tree will live to see the next century—surrounded by a healthy forest and part of a thriving community.

The post Photo Tour of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador appeared first on TMA.

Shortly after the first-known scientific expedition to Cerro Pata de Pájaro, the world-renowned biologists who authored the report died in a plane crash in the mountains of coastal Ecuador. It was a tragic beginning to a conservation legacy that TMA is working to continue and dramatically scale up, hand-in-hand with our local partner organization Fundación Ecológica Tercer Mundo (FETMU). At stake is the 4,333-hectare (10,707-acre) forest of Cerro Pata de Pájaro.

It includes roughly 1,000 acres of old-growth cloud forest—arguably the most pristine remnant of Pacific Forest left in Ecuador. Yet the rest of it has suffered substantial deforestation during the decades before and after it was declared a forest preserve. Much work still needs to be done to protect the remaining forest and restore what has already been cleared.

Connecting Cerro Pata de Pajaro to the Jama-Coaque Reserve will be the core challenge of the Capuchin Corridor, spanning a 43-km stretch of Ecuador’s coastal mountain range.

Contents

• In Homage to Our Predecessors
• The 1990s in Coastal Ecuador
• The Historic 1992 Expedition
• Primary-Growth Pacific Forest
• Local Residents Taking Action
• An Ambitious Legal Strategy
• The Plane Crash
• Eating Away at the Forest
• Meeting Rosario Castillo and Carlos Robles
• Another Tragedy
• The Dream of the Capuchin Corridor
• Luis Madrid and the Birth of FETMU
• The Marriage of TMA and FETMU
• Where It Stands Today

The perpetual cloud layer cloaking the peaks of Cerro Pata de Pájaro

In Homage to Our Predecessors

Among conservationists working in coastal Ecuador, the ground-breaking work completed in the 1990s is considered legendary. The fact that these pioneering studies occurred less than thirty years ago attests to how neglected this region once was. Since then, it has been declared the core area of a global biodiversity hotspot.

This timely shift in scientific attention is primarily due to the work conducted by a small cadre of world-renowned biologists in the 1990s—namely Ted Parker, Alwyn Gentry, Calaway Dodson, John Carr, David Neill, and John Clark. Likewise, conservation organizations like The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, EcoCiencia, and Fundación Natura were the first institutions to fund and support these studies. Those are the shoulders on which our work, at TMA, is able to stand.

The 1990s in Coastal Ecuador

The 1990s was the last decade of a century during which the vast majority of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador was lost to agricultural expansion and cattle pasture. In a country in which deforestation has touched all parts, the western coast of Ecuador has undoubtedly suffered the most.

The wave of human colonization and agricultural expansion that occurred in the eastern US in the 1700s, and the western US in the 1800s, occurred in coastal Ecuador in the 1900s. Owing to its tropical climate, rich volcanic soils, and access to ocean-faring ports, the coastal lowlands quickly became the breadbasket of Ecuador and the source of its primary exports. By the end of the century, approximately 98% of the region’s original forest had been degraded or deforested.

Deforested hillsides on the southern flank of the Bosque Protector

Calaway Dodson and Alwyn Gentry’s seminal report from 1991, “Biological Extinction in Western Ecuador,” provides details on how that process unfolded. It also sounded an alarm bell across the global conservation community. In response, Conservation International spearheaded a series of expeditions, under the auspices of their “Rapid Assessment Program” (RAP), to evaluate the extent of and threats to biodiversity throughout the region. The result was a report titled “Status of Forest Remnants in the Cordillera de la Costa and Adjacent Areas,” published in 1992.

One of the little-known sites surveyed in this report was an old-growth forest at the top of one of the highest peaks of the Ecuadorian coastal mountain range, looming over a bustling, somewhat ragtag town. The name of that peak is Cerro Pata de Pájaro—often simply called Pata de Pájaro (PDP).

It was the first-known biological survey of the area. Indeed, it was the first time PDP was even mentioned in academic literature. The result of this report was the creation of a protected area covering 4,333 hectares (10,707 acres)…at least, on paper. 

Reality tells a more nuanced story.

The lush, stratified cloud forest in Cerro Pata de Pájaro

The Historic 1992 Expedition

The Rapid Assessment expeditions of 1991 and 1992 were led by Ted Parker, widely considered “the finest field birder / ornithologist that the world had ever seen,” in addition to the great botanist Alwyn Gentry and the herpetologist John L. Carr, among others.

Of all the entries in the report, the most intriguing description was that of PDP. It begins, unassumingly enough: “The small (nearly 800 masl) but conspicuous mountain of Cerro Pata de Pájaro stands by itself not far from the coast near the equator…just east of Pedernales (00°02′ N, 79°58′ W). It is apparently the highest mountain of the northern coastal range between Portoviejo and Esmeraldas.”

For the sake of comparison, the peaks of PDP are 20% taller than even the highest peaks of the Jama-Coaque Reserve. As you may recall from our previous article that describes the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, a high elevation forest in close proximity to the Pacific Ocean, in the neighborhood of the equator, means one thing: cloud forest.  

Says the RAP: “Cerro Pato de Pájaro is enveloped in clouds most of the year, even through the dry season… This results in a ‘cloud forest’ 20-30 m tall at higher elevations, heavily laden with moss, epiphytes, and hemiepiphytes.”

Even though they’re only 20 km apart, the cloud forest of PDP is different than the cloud forest of the Jama-Coaque Reserve in several notable ways. In addition to reaching a higher elevation, PDP is one step further northward into the sphere of influence of the El Niño ocean current—which places it more squarely in the domain of the Chocó wet forest. Furthermore, the peaks of PDP had never been logged.  

As the report continues, Robin B. Foster, the lead plant ecologist who authored the botanical portion of the report, hits us with this tantalizing passage: “The cloud forest flora does not show any particular affinities to one region. Rather, it has a mixture of species known from the fog forests of the Chongón-Colonche mountains to the south, the wet forests of the Muisne mountains farther north, the low cloud forests of the western Andes, and a number of species we have not yet noted anywhere else (Appendix 15).”

Parker, Foster, and crew were especially struck by the predominance of one towering tree species in particular—Carapa guianensis, locally known as tangaré. “It is extraordinary to see such a large population of large trees of this valuable species, probably the largest—if not the only—stand remaining in the Cordillera de la Costa. At each site we visited in this mountain range, even if the rest of the forest remained intact, the mature trees of Carapa have been removed by axe or chain saw… The same is true on the wet western slopes of the Andes from Pichincha to Azuay and in the hills of the Río Santiago-Cayapas area of Esmeraldas.”

They went on to note various other endemic and extraordinary plants. “An unusual new species of Bauhinia with large, bright red flowers coming out of the trunk, was found in a small, monospecific grove on the ridge here, and nowhere else. Other species of Bauhinia with these characteristics are known only from Africa (R. Fortunato, pers. comm.). A one-hectare clearing made within the next few years would wipe out the known population. Further investigation of the flora on these slopes is urgently needed.”

A bauhinia flower in the hands of Carlos Robles (2022)

Primary-Growth Pacific Forest

From the perspective of any conservationist familiar with the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, the most exciting revelation from the RAP was the fact that the forest on the mountaintop had never been logged. Even thirty years ago, this was unheard of in coastal Ecuador.

As a point of reference, the Jama-Coaque Reserve has substantial swaths of tall, majestic forest with minimal evidence of selective logging in the past—a class of forest that we call “mature forest.” But PDP, according to this description, was still endowed with its primeval structure.

Previously, the term “primary-growth forest” was used to describe a forest that has never been logged, let alone cleared. In recent years, “old-growth forest” has become regarded as the more appropriate term. In the RAP, they explicitly describe it: “Except for the tiny clearing on the eastern peak and an old boundary line cut on the western ridge, there is no indication of any tree-cutting in the cloud forest that covers the top of the mountain.” This was further corroborated by the presence of undisturbed stands of giant tangaré trees in the cloud forest.  

The logical next question is: how could this be? Why would a mountaintop forest, close to a relatively large population center, be spared the fate suffered throughout the rest of coastal Ecuador?

The answer is found in a topographical anomaly. Whereas the mountaintop itself is relatively flat—a plateau, if you will—the slopes that lead up to it, on all sides, are forbiddingly steep. As explained in the RAP: “The last third of the climb from 550 m to 750 m is very steep and slippery, prohibitive to mules and requiring the use of all four human limbs.”

The only way to haul logs out of a steep forest is with mules. And if the ascent is too steep for mules, there is no logging. That’s what saved the cloud forest from timber extraction. Unfortunately, this doesn’t prevent the clearing of a forest for purposes of agriculture or cattle…

In any event, the mere suggestion of an unlogged old-growth forest in TMA’s extended area of operations was, to say the least, thrilling. Eventually seeing it with my own eyes, nearly twenty years later, was even more thrilling.

From the from the lowland forest of PDP, with the shores of the Pacific Ocean in the distance (photo by Carlos Robles)

Local Residents Taking Action

One of the key passages in the RAP spoke to the encroaching deforestation surrounding PDP and the apparent apathy of nearby communities, particularly of Pedernales—a large town of 75,000 people immediately downriver of PDP. “This isolated mountaintop wet forest of ca. 800 ha is said (by local people) to be protected, but is obviously being cleared continuously around the entire lower periphery. The watershed importance of this forest to surrounding communities, especially to Pedernales, is obvious to us, but apparently not well understood by local residents.”

This statement, however, is not entirely true. There were a handful of local Pedernales residents that clearly did understand PDP’s importance, both as a reservoir of biodiversity and a factory of fresh water, among other benefits. They were led by Luis Madrid, a local bird enthusiast who recently graduated from high school, and Rosario Castillo, a woman who ran a local hardware store, along with a handful of others. It was a humble collection of local conservationists with no institutional backing or funding source. Their only asset was passion and commitment.

The bustling town of Pedernales, pre-earthquake (photo by Victoria Nicodemus, 2015)

One year after the publication of the RAP, this team of local conservationists created a nonprofit organization under the name Fundación Ecológica Tercer Mundo (FETMU). It took three years to legally constitute the organization—a process that was completed in 1995. Impressively, that same year they succeeded in registering the PDP mountaintop and a vast swath of surrounding land as a forest preserve. The official name was “Bosque Protector Cerro Pata de Pájaro,” with FETMU granted the responsibility of managing it.  

“Bosque Protector” was a legal designation for private forest preserves that are formally recognized by the Ecuadorian government as such. The government, however, was not under any real obligation to help fund or manage it—leaving FETMU to fend for itself. As a local organization with limited access to international funding sources, this was a problem.

To make matters even more complicated, much of the land included in the Bosque Protector declaration was already—at the time of declaration—being actively farmed by people who didn’t own legal title to the land but did (and still do) have possession rights.

A homestead on the flanks of Cerro Pata de Pájaro

An Ambitious Legal Strategy

Here’s how the authors of the RAP described the extent of the intact forest in PDP in 1992: “We did see or pass through several large patches of forest on the upper mountain flanks…. They represent a sizeable area of wet forest around the mountaintop. By combining these wet forests with the approximately 2 km2 of cloud forest, the total area for a reserve of intact forest could be as much as 8 km2.” This equates to 800 hectares (nearly 2,000 acres).

That may not sound like a large area, but for an old-growth forest in coastal Ecuador, it’s massive.  

Luis Madrid, who was only 23 years old when FETMU was founded, agreed with this assessment. He explained to me that, from the beginning, FETMU’s most urgent goal was to protect the 800 hectares (nearly 2,000 acres) of primary-growth forest on the mountaintop. But they were keenly aware that if the surrounding forest was lost, the forest at the top of the mountain would not be viable as wildlife habitat nor as an ecosystem capable of sustaining its moisture and water cycle, and the system would collapse.

The authors of the RAP were clearly worried about this. They wrote, “It may be just a matter of time before the colonists on the lower slopes work their way up. On the side of Atahualpa, the clearings already extend up to 600-650 m along the trail, only a few hundred meters distance from the ridge crest at that point.”

Cattle pasture inside the Bosque Protector and creeping up into the cloud forest at the mountaintop

It should also be noted that the forest of PDP generates 100% of the freshwater supply to all 75,000 residents of Pedernales and surrounding communities. Losing this forest would be a social and economic catastrophe for the region, let alone an ecological one.  

To forestall this scenario, FETMU pushed to register as much land as they could as part of the Bosque Protector—even land that was already being farmed. Protecting a larger area would also increase the likelihood that the application for Bosque Protector would be approved by the government and respected by the country’s National System of Protected Areas (SNAP, in Spanish). They effectively drew a map that included all mountainous land starting from an elevation line of about 325 meters above sea level (1,066 feet) up to the peak at 840 meters (2,700 feet). This demarcation covered an area of 4,333 hectares (10,707 acres).

Again, this was a theoretical designation. The Bosque Protector declaration didn’t guarantee that the forest would be protected in practice. And despite the best efforts of FETMU, deforestation continued.

As this all unfolded, tragedy struck. Twice.

The Plane Crash

As reported in the New York Times on August 6, 1993, less than one year after the publication of the RAP:

“Two Americans ranked among the world’s leading field biologists were killed on Tuesday when an airplane they were using to make a tree-top survey of the Ecuadorian coast crashed into a cloud-shrouded mountain. They were Theodore A. Parker III, a 40-year-old ornithologist and senior scientist for Conservation International, and Alwyn Gentry, 48, a botanist and senior curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden…”

The fledgling international campaign to conserve the Pacific Forest of Ecuador lost two of its leading voices, suddenly and without warning.

Eating Away at the Forest

Even by 1992, much of the forest on the flanks of the mountain had already suffered degradation and/or deforestation—mostly in the form of “clearings for bananas, coffee, cacao, and cattle” (as stated in the RAP). This was prior to the declaration of Bosque Protector status.

In the years following the accident and the subsequent Bosque Protector declaration, deforestation continued. This was not for lack of effort on the part of FETMU. Without access to international funding sources and without any assistance by local or national government, even the most committed conservation organizations face an uphill battle. FETMU was never allowed enough of a runway to develop alternative revenue sources nor properly develop as an organization, let alone conduct the conservation and restoration activities it desperately wanted to conduct.

“The powers that be” didn’t help the matter. One year after the Bosque Protector was established, a highway was built that cut through the northern part of the forest—effectively slicing it into two sections.

Meanwhile, the relentless momentum of agricultural expansion continued up the mountain from all sides. This was spurred onward by interest-free loans offered to farmers in exchange for converting land—including forest—into coffee plantations.

Numerous paved roads now cut through the Bosque Protector, opening the door to more deforestation

There was no way for people to purchase legal titles to land inside the official boundaries of the Bosque Protector, but this didn’t stop people from simply claiming land, cutting it down for coffee, corn, or cattle, and even building homes. Possession rights for these properties were bought and sold and handed down to hereditary descendants.

Although the forest on the flanks of the mountain was getting chewed up, the forest on the mountaintop remained unlogged—thanks, again, to the topography. But the mountaintop wasn’t immune to hunting. And, in one case, a small section was cleared for agriculture. It was only a matter of time until the inevitable march of low-intensity agriculture first degraded and then eventually deforested the old-growth forest at the top of Cerro Pata de Pájaro.

FETMU kept working. Importantly, they purchased the possession rights to 400 hectares (nearly 1,000 acres) at the very peak of the mountaintop—effectively, the heart of the old-growth forest. But they had no resources with which to protect the land, and their personnel was limited to a handful of locals who volunteered their time—including a man named Carlos Robles.

Another homestead within the legal bounds of the Bosque Protector

Meeting Rosario Castillo and Carlos Robles

Shortly after we created the Jama-Coaque Reserve, in 2007, we started hearing stories about this other forest called Cerro Pata de Pájaro. It was located at the northern end of the same mountain range as the Jama-Coaque Reserve—a mere 20 km away but very difficult to access. Occasionally when we came to Pedernales to buy supplies, and the clouds parted to the south, we could see its peaks far in the distance.

We started asking around about it. Most people in town had no information. At one point, someone told us to go into a hardware store called Zurita and ask for the lady who managed it. And so we did. Standing behind the counter was Rosario Castillo (affectionately known as “Charito”). She was an exceptionally kind and sweet older lady who ran the largest hardware store in a roughneck pioneer town.  

TMA co-founder Isabel Davila and I—barely a year into our conservation career—told her about the Jama-Coaque Reserve, which protected a mere 110 hectares (270 acres) at that point. She was delighted by the news and warmly welcomed us into the small club of conservationists in a little-known bioregion that we would later call the Capuchin Corridor. That’s when she first told us about FETMU and the Bosque Protector. And then she said, “You need to meet Carlos Robles.”

The following day, we did.

Carlos Robles in the cloud forest (2021)

An utterly singular and charismatic figure, Carlos Robles has an interesting backstory. He was born in Pedernales, raised in the Amazon rainforest, and then returned to Pedernales as a young man. Trained as a hunter, he underwent a quasi-religious conversion to become the most passionate and outspoken conservationist in all of Pedernales. At one point in his career, he was called in to speak in front of the president of Ecuador on the subject of mangrove restoration—and addressed the president by his first name. He’s the kind of guy who other hunters don’t want to mess with. And he absolutely loves plants and snakes.

We immediately hit it off with Carlos. Together we hiked up to the cloud forest at the top of the PDP, and a few weeks later we returned the favor by showing him the cloud forest at the top of the Jama-Coaque Reserve.

That was in 2009.

During the years that followed, we stayed in close touch with both Carlos and Rosario. We wanted to help FETMU as much as we could, but—strapped for cash and short-handed with our own project—there wasn’t too much TMA could do, other than stay in contact. 

Carlos visited the Jama-Coaque Reserve numerous times during that span—proving himself to be our most important regional conservation ally. And, with the perpetual construction and repairs to the Bamboo House, we became loyal customers at Zurita. Rosario gave us a friends-and-family discount. Her kind face behind the counter was the nicest part of our visits to Pedernales.

Pedernales a few weeks after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake, 2016

Another Tragedy

On April 16, 2016, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake rocked the coast of Ecuador. It was the worst natural disaster to hit Ecuador since 1947. Pedernales, which was 40 kilometers south of the epicenter, was hit the hardest. According to official statistics, over 16,000 people were injured and 676 people were killed. Among the people who lost their lives was Rosario.

The Dream of the Capuchin Corridor

The dream of building a conservation corridor that connects PDP to the Jama-Coaque Reserve was born on that first day we hiked up into the old-growth cloud forest with Carlos Robles in 2009. But at first, this dream felt like an impossible one. It was something to which we aspired—something to shoot for in the distant future, if ever.

Our attitude, at the time, was: first things first. We knew that we first needed to expand the Jama-Coaque Reserve and strengthen TMA as an organization. Over the next 10+ years, that’s exactly what we did.

The turning point for us came during the pandemic. For a series of related and unrelated reasons, we felt an increasing sense of urgency. As an organization, TMA had also crossed a threshold of maturity. Our team was strong, we had greater access to funding sources, the Jama-Coaque Reserve kept growing, and we had over a decade of experience under belt. We had learned—through many years of trial-and-error—how to efficiently manage forest conservation and restoration projects on an increasingly larger scale.

Meanwhile, forest throughout the rest of the region continued to dwindle. There was a distinct “it’s now or never” feeling about building the region-wide conservation corridor that we first started dreaming about with Carlos Robles a decade earlier.

Luis Madrid and the Birth of FETMU

This is when Luis Madrid re-enters the story. With some interesting parallels to that of Carlos–they both spent their formative years in the Amazon–Luis also has an interesting backstory. He was born in the Andean city of Loja and moved to the Amazon with his family at a young age. As an 11-year-old boy, he remembers shooting rocks with a slingshot at military helicopters, as they hovered low over the Amazon treetops, during the Ecuadorian-Peruvian War of 1981.

As a teenager, his family moved across the country to Pedernales, where his father worked as a land surveyor. Indeed it was his father who first planted the seed of forest conservation inside young Luis’s head. As a land surveyor, his father knew the forest of PDP and saw, first-hand, what was happening to it. He told Luis—a young man just starting out in life—that this rare forest would quickly be lost if nothing was done about it.

Luis took the hint. With his friend Luis Duenas, a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer named Andrew Perleberg, and a few other people, together they created FETMU and quickly established the Bosque Protector. 

Shortly thereafter, his lifelong obsession with birds having firmly taken root, Luis decided to go to university and eventually pursue a Ph.D. in ornithology in—of all places—the Central Asian steppe. He spent the next decade and a half of his life in Eurasia.

During that time, Rosario Castillo and Carlos Robles did their best to keep FETMU afloat and the forest of PDP alive. 

Luis Madrid (left) and Carlos Robles (right) in the cloud forest of PDP (2022) 

The Marriage of TMA and FETMU

Shortly after the earthquake of 2016, Luis Madrid returned to Pedernales–this time as a professor at the local university. Rosario had passed away, and Carlos Robles–as passionate as ever about conservation–was busy managing a beachside hotel with his wife and raising their daughter. With an annual budget of zero dollars, and no staff, FETMU’s capacity to manage PDP had reached its lowest point. By 2020, the prized old-growth cloud forest on the mountaintop had been reduced to 400 hectares (nearly 1,000 acres).  

TMA, meanwhile, was hitting its stride as a conservation organization–thanks, in large part, to its access to international funding sources. It was time for the dream of a region-wide conservation corridor to become reality.

Beginning in 2020, TMA and FETMU began a series of strategy meetings. Typically they took place at either a ceviche restaurant on the beach in Pedernales or sitting on a log in a cloud forest. 

Over time, the two organizations collectively designed a strategy to connect Pata de Pajaro to the Jama-Coaque Reserve via a 43-km conservation corridor named in the honor of the critically endangered Ecuadorian Capuchin Monkey, which is found in both forest preserves and in very few other places anywhere else on earth. TMA also offered to co-manage PDP with FETMU and to provide PDP–for the first time–with the resources and personnel it needed to be a viable forest preserve over the long term.

The collaboration between FETMU and TMA was formalized in October of 2022. Our collective goal: protect the entirety of the old-growth forest in PDP and work with neighboring farmers to guarantee the restoration and protection of all land within the 4,333-hectare boundary that was originally declared a Bosque Protector in 1995. And to connect this forest preserve to the Jama-Coaque Reserve via the Capuchin Corridor. 

Ryan Lynch, executive director of TMA, and Luis Madrid, executive director of FETMU, formalizing the cooperation agreement in the Bamboo House of the Jama-Coaque Reserve (2022)

Where It Stands Today

FETMU now has a small but growing team of trained professionals who are actively working in PDP, funded by TMA and led by Luis and Carlos. TMA also provides additional personnel, equipment (i.e., camera traps, signs, uniforms), and administrative resources to fill in the gaps. PDP is finally being allocated the resources needed to protect it. 

Taking into account all of the Bosque Protector and the projected expansion of the Jama-Coaque Reserve, TMA is working with over 6,000 hectares (15,000 acres) of Pacific Forest. It is characterized by large tracts of intact forest surrounded by patches of deforested or degraded land that we’re reforesting through a combination of assisted natural regeneration and community agroforestry.

But if we’ve learned anything from the past, it is this: in the absence of government support, conservation projects in places like coastal Ecuador only succeed when they are managed by a dedicated team of people that work year-round. This requires financial resources. Creating an endowment fund to manage the Capuchin Corridor is of critical importance for the long-term viability of conservation in this region.

This is just the beginning, and we know there is a long way to go. In any event, we’d like to believe that the late Ted Parker, Alwyn Gentry, and Rosario Castillo would be pleased. And to all of the other conservationists out there—weathered veterans and rising stars alike—we cordially invite you to join the effort. We still need help.

Help Protect The Pacific Forest of Ecuador

Field teams from FETMU and TMA together at the top of Cerro Pata de Pájaro, June 2022. From left to right: Eliana Mera, Luis Madrid, Carlos Robles, Jerry Toth, Pablo Bermudez, Dany Murillo, and Moises Tenorio.

The post Saving the Old-Growth Cloud Forest of Cerro Pata de Pájaro appeared first on TMA.

In coastal Ecuador, at zero degrees latitude, a few kilometers inland from the Pacific Ocean, on a densely forested mountain range shrouded in fog, is one of the most extraordinary and vulnerable ecosystems on planet Earth – the Pacific Forest of Ecuador. Future generations may never get a chance to see it. Hopefully they will.

For a brief visual synopsis of this article, you can also take a quick photo tour of Pacific Forest of Ecuador.

Contents

• An Unidentified Forest
• A Rainforest Preserve is Born
• The International Community Weighs In
• Defining an Ecoregion that Defies Definition
• At the Nexus of Mountains and Sea
• The Mountain Ranges
• Chocó Rainforest & Premontane Cloud Forest
• Moist Evergreen Forest
• Tropical Deciduous Forest
• Global Biodiversity Hotspot
• Conservation Priorities
• Final Analysis

The cloud forest of the Jama-Coaque Reserve on the Pacific Coast of Ecuador, province of Manabí.

An Unidentified Forest

In the year 2007, a few newly-hatched rainforest conservationists stepped foot inside the Pacific Forest of Ecuador without knowing anything about it. We had devoted much of the year to exploring every tract of wilderness we could find in Ecuador—from Amazon to Andean cloud forests, and everything in between. But this impromptu expedition to the Pacific coast was somewhat of an outlier. As far as we knew, none of the forest was left.

As it turns out, we were wrong. Nothing we had seen in the entire country compared to what we saw that day. On the crest of Ecuador’s coastal mountain range, about midway between the towns of Jama and Pedernales, we found ourselves in a cloud forest that had never been surveyed by science. Surrounding us in all directions was a sea of deforestation.

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

A Rainforest Preserve is Born

From that very first day, it was apparent that this forest was desperately in danger of entirely disappearing—probably in the next generation, possibly even in a single decade. Even as novice conservationists—which is what we were at the time—we recognized that the conservation value of this cloud forest was higher than anything we had ever seen.

We then hiked back down the mountain, hitched a ride on the back of a truck loaded with sacks of passionfruit, and began a full-time career in rainforest conservation. The first thing we did was create a nonprofit organization (TMA), raise $16,000, and purchase 100 acres at the top of that mountain. This is how the Jama-Coaque Reserve (JCR) was born. Our mission: keep this forest alive.

In our lofty hopes of generating global awareness, however, we faced a few key obstacles. To begin with, nobody really knew what to call this forest. The people who lived in its shadow simply referred to it as “the mountain.” Most Ecuadorians weren’t even aware of its existence.

We used satellite imagery to identify every single large tract of remaining forest in the PFE, and we ground-truthed this data by hiking through the majority of them. The natural range of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador covers 22,835 square kilometers. As of 2021, only 510 square kilometers of this forest are still intact. That’s 2.23%.

The International Community Weighs In

Shortly after the birth of JCR, we learned that the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) designated this region as the most threatened tropical forest in South America. They referred to it as the Chocó-Manabí Corridor—an ecoregion that connects the Chocó rainforest of coastal Colombia with the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, particularly in the province of Manabi.

It was an exciting turn of events, but CEPF’s proposal for a large-scale project to save this forest from extinction never came to fruition. The dream of a grand Chocó-Manabi Corridor was temporarily shelved. Once again, the Pacific Forest was largely forgotten.

In fact, the entire ecoregion was so far under the radar that ecologists hadn’t fully agreed on what to call it. The famous botany duo of the previous century—C.H. Dodson and A.H. Gentry—referred to it as the “Forests of Western Ecuador.” Their seminal paper “Biological Extinction in Western Ecuador” (1991) is largely responsible for putting this ecosystem on the global conservation radar.

As much as 98% of the Pacific Forest has been lost in just one century. Most of it has been converted to marginally-productive cattle pasture. Almost the entire ecosystem has been sacrificed to feed cows.

Defining an Ecoregion that Defies Definition

The Pacific Forest of Ecuador is not an easy ecosystem to classify, owing to the fact that it has so many different faces. Various names have been affixed to it, over the years, but none of them really stuck.

One of the most promising attempts came from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), who originally referred to it as the “Moist Forests of Western Ecuador.” The problem with this term is that it’s too broad and also too limiting. It aims to cover the entire western lowlands of Ecuador but restricts itself to only one of the many kinds of forest that are found in its range.

The western coast of Ecuador is, in fact, home to six different types of tropical forests. Chocó lowland rainforest, Chocó premontane cloud forest, moist/seasonal evergreen forest, semi-deciduous forest, tropical dry forest, and mangrove forest can all be found in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador. In one particular area—in the northwest of the province of Manabí, between Jama and Pedernales—all of these forests can be encountered over the course of a single day’s hike.

In this sense, the Pacific Forest of Ecuador can best be described as a melting pot of tropical forests. As C.H. Dodson and A.H. noted in “Biological Extinction Extinction in Western Ecuador,” coastal Ecuador harbors 12 distinct Holdridge life zones. The two factors that drive this ecological diversity are the Pacific Ocean and the coastal mountain range.

The Jama-Coaque Cordillera extends from the town of Jama and crosses the equator en route to the town of Pedernales, with views of the Pacific Ocean (top right) visible from the peaks.

At The Nexus of Mountains and Sea

Almost all of the remaining forest in western Ecuador is isolated to the peaks, slopes, and foothills of the coastal mountain range, which runs parallel to the Pacific coast for over 300 kilometers. This low-lying mountain range is the backbone of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador. The ecoregion, as a whole, is thus bounded by the Pacific Ocean and the eastern foothills of the coastal mountain range, from Mache-Chindul in the north to Chongon-Colonche in the south.

This long, narrow stretch of mountainous land contains the widest diversity of tropical forests in South America. It’s also the most threatened.

For these and other reasons, the Pacific Forest of Ecuador often draws comparisons to another one of the world’s great tropical forests: the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. Both forests are overshadowed by their much larger counterpart, the Amazon, but the Pacific Forest and the Atlantic Forest are actually more ecologically diverse, more threatened, and have higher rates of endemism.

The forest diversity of the Pacific Forest actually exceeds that of the Atlantic Forest, despite the fact that the Atlantic Forest covers 33x as much area. In any event, both ecosystems are under immense threat. Approximately 8% of the Atlantic Forest still remains and only 2% of the Pacific Forest remains. Together, they contain more endemic species than anywhere else in the world.

The Mountain Ranges

Across the entire length of coastal Ecuador, there are three major mountain ranges. The Mache-Chindul mountain range occupies the northern coast. It’s primarily located in the wet province of Esmeraldas. The Chongon-Colonche mountain range, on the southern coast, stretches from the southwest corner of Manabí into the dry provinces of Santa Elena and Guayas. The Jama-Coaque mountain range is located in between the two, located in northwest Manabí province. Ecologically, it is the transition between the two extremes.

None of these three mountain ranges are as tall as the Andes mountains, all run parallel to the Pacific Ocean, and all are host to a wide array of forests that have been badly fragmented. But the vegetation contained on the northern and southern ranges is, in some cases, diametrically different. The central mountain range contains elements of both.

There are two key gradients that define vegetation in coastal Ecuador. As a rule of thumb, as you move from north to south, and from mountaintop to beach, the overall level of precipitation decreases. As a result, the forest goes from wet to dry. Generally speaking, most of the forest along the Mache-Chindul mountain range is rainforest or moist forest, and much of the land along the Chongon-Colonche mountain range is either dry forest or semi-deciduous forest.

The Jama-Coaque mountain range is the centerpiece. It is distinguished by two factors: 1) its location at the mid-point of the wet-dry gradient that runs from north to south and 2) its unusually close proximity to the ocean. It is the only stretch of the coastal mountain ranges where the peaks reach their zenith within a mere 8 kilometers of the sea. This means that the wet-dry gradient is compressed into an extremely small area.

Let’s start with the wet part.

Chocó cloud forest in the Jama-Coaque Reserve.

Chocó Rainforest & Premontane Cloud Forest

Not long after the creation of JCR, a team of botanists was tasked with creating Ecuador’s national vegetation map. As part of their research, they visited our newly-established forest preserve to conduct a botanical inventory. In the cloud forest along the peaks of the cordillera, they were delighted and amazed by what they saw: premontane cloud forest. It was the southern-most coastal extension of what the Regiones Naturales de Ecuador classification system by Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (PUCE) classifies as Bosque Húmedo Tropical del Chocó (Chocó tropical rainforest).

It was something they had never seen this far south and this close to the ocean. Before they arrived, they didn’t believe it existed. And yet, here it was. It changed the way they mapped and classified the vegetation of western Ecuador.

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 forest of Manabí until it is eventually subsumed by the dry forests of Santa Elena and Guayas.

The Jama-Coaque Reserve is the geographic and ecological midpoint between those two extremes. Depending on where you stand on the mountain, you will see different faces of the Pacific Forest. At the top of the mountain, it’s the Chocó. And 20 km further to the north, at the top Cerro Pata de Pájaro, the Chocó is on full display.

The daily shroud of clouds on the peaks of JCR

The cloud forest in the Jama-Coaque Reserve is the southern-most extension of Chocó rainforest vegetation along the coast of South America. Although this particular stretch of the coastal cordillera only rises 600-700 meters (2,000-2,300 feet) above sea level, its close proximity to the Pacific ocean accounts for the thick blanket of fog that descends upon the forest nearly every single night of the year. It is, in a very real sense, a forest that is fed by the clouds.

What does this unlikely cloud forest look like?

To begin with, almost all visible surfaces are covered in bright green. 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.

The Camarones River is born from “fog drip” in the cloud forest. The river flows down the coastal mountains and empties out into the Pacific Ocean. If the forest disappears, so does the river. When the river disappears, human settlements collapse.

Moist Seasonal Evergreen Forest

As you descend from the peaks of the coastal cordillera, down into the elevation range of 250-500 meters (820-1,650 feet), you enter into a different kind of forest.

The terminology of this forest 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, 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 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 “Bamboo House” research station, hidden in the lowland moist forest of the Jama-Coaque Reserve.

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 a rainforest, but there’s a wider range of color tones, and the species are different. The trees are actually taller here, relative to the cloud forest. The canopy of the moist forest is formed by big native hardwood trees, some of them reaching heights of 45 meters (150 feet), often with massively buttressed roots.

There is also a wealth of exotic palm trees with spiny trunks and nuts with the color and consistency of ivory, stands of giant bamboo, and countless little streams tumbling down steep slopes, alternating between waterfalls and itty-bitty swimming holes that are naturally stocked with freshwater prawns.

All of this exists under the watchful eyes of loud-mouthed troops of howler monkeys, critically endangered capuchin monkeys, and ocelots that are rarely seen except in pictures taken by infrared trail cameras fitted with motion sensors.

Ocelot captured on a camera trap in the Jama-Coaque Reserve. One of Mother Nature’s great works of biological art.

Tropical Deciduous Forest

If you keep descending the mountain and walk toward the beach—which you can easily do in an afternoon—you may notice that some of the trees are shedding their leaves. You have reached the semi-deciduous forest. Eventually, after another kilometer or two, you stumble into a full-blown deciduous forest. Otherwise known as “tropical dry forest” as well as “Tumbesian dry forest.” The latter term is explained in the next section.

Tropical dry forest at Pacoche in central Manabi.

The tropical dry forest looks and functions like a rainforest during the rainy season. But in the dry season, the trees shed all of their leaves. From October until December, the trees are as bare as the North Woods in winter—although not because of temperature. The weather is always tropical. Leaf shedding is entirely a function of precipitation. At the base of the coastal cordillera, rainfall is almost nonexistent for half the year.

But the moment the rainy season begins anew, the dry forest explodes back into life in a matter of days. Imagine compressing all of the life energy of springtime into one or two weeks, and then maintaining this feverish biological pitch for about five months, gradually transitioning into a long and leisurely autumn, without any wintertime. That’s the annual cycle of the tropical dry forest in coastal Ecuador. It is an incredible process to watch unfold.

The unprotected 3,400-hectare Cabo Pasado forest, just north of Canoa, is now undergoing real estate development. Here you can see the interplay of tropical dry forest on the ridges (leafless) and semi-deciduous forest in the valleys (still green) during the early stages of the 2021 dry season. (Photo taken by paraglider, courtesy of Peter Stromberg).

It is equally incredible that a tropical dry forest lives just a short walk away from a perpetually wet forest. In northwest Manabí, specifically between Jama and Pedernales, you can literally stand in the cloud forest on the top of the mountain and, looking westward, see a dry forest along the beach.

Because the highway runs along the coast, most motorists who cruise through northern Manabi wrongly assume that tropical dry forest is the dominant vegetation type. They have no idea that a cloud forest looms overhead in the mountains.

View from the peaks of the coastal cordillera in JCR, facing the beaches of Pedernales in the distance.

Global Biodiversity Hotspot

This brings us to yet another classification that deserves some attention. Just as the vegetation in the coastal Ecuadorian cloud forest is effectively “Chocó rainforest,” the dry forest near the shores of the Pacific ocean is considered “Tumbesian.” This latter term is derived from the so-called Tumbes ecoregion of northern Peru.

The global conservation community has designated a handful of regions throughout the world as “global biodiversity hotspots.” One of them is named 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 mercilessly deforested Tumbesian dry forests on the northern coast of Peru.

Those two vastly different ecosystems meet and intermingle in coastal Ecuador. But it is precisely in the northwest corner of the province of Manabí where these two extremes come together in a way that doesn’t happen anywhere else in the ecoregion.

Conservation Priorities

Both in terms of total size and percentage of remaining forest, the Pacific Forest of Ecuador sits at the top of the list of the most endangered tropical forests in the world. Here’s how it compares to a few of its high-profile counterparts.

Although the Pacific Forest is threatened across the length of its entire range, it is at least afforded some degree of protection in the far north and far south. The central section is under the greatest threat.

Northern Section: On paper, the Mache-Chindul Ecological Reserve protects a large swath of coastal Chocó rainforest. It is managed by the national government and, in practice, has suffered from budgetary limitations since its creation in 1996. Much of the land within the legal confines of the reserve is now occupied by farmers and ranchers. In 2019, Mongabay reported that only 61% of the forest in Mache-Chindul Ecological Reserve is still intact. Satellite imagery from 2019 reveals that only 51,000 hectares of contiguous forest are left, the vast majority of which is degraded.

Southern Section: Machalillia National Park protects a large swath of Tumbesian dry forest in addition to semi-deciduous forest and moist forest. Although its officially designated as a national park, the national government only provides support for the protection of the marine area. Forest protection is entirely provided by the well-organized ancestral community of Agua Blanca, which effectively uses ecotourism as a tool for conservation. Satellite imagery from 2019 reveals roughly 77,000 hectares of contiguous forest, although the vast majority of it was previously degraded before the establishment of the national park.

Central Section: The least protected part of the Pacific Forest is the central section: namely, the Tumbes-Chocó transition in northwest Manabí. There is no official government protection of any forest in this region. TMA is protecting the two largest protected areas in this section: the Jama-Coaque Reserve, which currently protects 800 hectares (2,000 acres), and Bosque Protector Cerro Pata de Pájaro.

The Jama-Coaque Reserve (JCR) currently protects 1,192 hectares (2,945 acres). TMA is actively trying to expand JCR by purchasing and protecting an additional 1,000 hectares (roughly 2,450 acres) of forest that is contiguous with the currently protected area. All of this land is owned by absentee landowners who are eager to sell. TMA is actively fundraising to achieve this goal.

Bosque Protector Cerro Pata de Pájaro (PDP) officially spans 4,333 hectares (10,707 acres), which includes 1,000 acres of old growth cloud forest—arguably the most pristine remnant of Pacific Forest left in Ecuador. Yet the rest of its area has suffered substantial deforestation during the decades before and after it was declared a forest preserve. TMA assumed management of PDP in 2022, in partnership with former members of a defunct local conservation organization that first established the struggling reserve in 1995.

Connecting PDP with JCR is the core undertaking of TMA’s Capuchin Corridor project, spanning a 43-kilometer stretch of the coastal cordillera—covering 40,000 hectares (nearly 100,000 acres) of land.

Gliding leaf frog (Agalychnis spurrelli). Photo by Ryan Lynch.

Final Analysis

The Pacific Forest of Ecuador is a name that attempts to describe an ecosystem that defies classification. This kind of thing highlights one of the curious habits of our species. We are constantly trying to categorize our reality, to put everything in tidy little boxes—each one with a label.

But everything in nature exists on a gradient. That’s one of the many lessons that this ecosystem teaches us. The Pacific Forest is a melting pot of tropical ecosystems, a veritable showcase of eccentric forests that aren’t found anywhere else on earth.

This thinly-veiled love letter to this forest is overshadowed by the daunting reality of the present era. At the current rate of deforestation, these forests probably won’t even exist by the time the next generation comes of age. They will be gone from this earth.

It brings to mind an honest question that the children of this generation have already begun to ask their teachers. What does the sixth mass extinction look like?

It looks like this:

An ordinary afternoon in coastal Ecuador. This much forest is lost every 2 seconds across the planet. Every day of every year.

Is it too late?

No.

As I type these words, sitting on the open-air balcony of the Bamboo House in the middle of the Jama-Coaque Reserve, I am surrounded by wilderness as far as the eye can see. All I can hear is the sound of thousands of different life forms singing in the night air. This great forest has been reduced but it’s not gone. There is still time to protect what is still here and begin the task of restoring what has already been lost.

The same applies to the entire planet.

Taken from the balcony of the Bamboo House at dusk.

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1. It allows us to measure performance. Payments to farmers are based on the survival and growth rates of the trees they plant.
2. It allows our sponsors to verify the legitimacy of this project and also to follow its progress over time. Our commitment to reforestation sponsors is absolute transparency. We also believe that re-growing a forest is an endeavor worth watching, and we want to bring people along for the ride.

The GIF below is a real-life example of our work. The parcels to the left and toward the bottom of this image were cattle pastures up until 2013, at which time we started planting over 10,000 trees. The GIF covers the six-year period from 2013 to 2018. This is just a taste of what people plus Mother Nature can do. It’s also a good example of how aerial imagery can be used to monitor and verify results.

Cattle pasture converted to forest adjacent to the Jama-Coaque Reserve over a six-year period: 2013 – 2018.

The Four Monitoring Methods

We monitor every single reforestation parcel three times per year using four overlapping methods, to ensure that nothing goes unnoticed.

1. Boots on the Ground: First and foremost, we are physically present during the actual planting of the trees—indeed, we do a fair amount of the planting ourselves. Once all the trees are in the ground, we manually tabulate every single tree that is planted and add this to our database.
2. Digital Tracking: We also use a new digital technology platform called FARM-TRACE to measure and verify our reforestation impact and performance. Here’s how it works: FARM-TRACE independently creates sample plots within each of the reforestation parcels. Our field team visits these plots and enters the diameter and height of every tree in the sample plots into FARM-TRACE’s smartphone application. FARM-TRACE uses this data and runs a series of algorithms to assess how many trees and how much carbon is being stored across the entire parcel. In addition, FARM-TRACE uses a machine-learning algorithm to “truth” this information from satellite imagery. The results are relayed to the program’s desktop interface on our computer in real-time. Reforestation has entered the 21st century!
3. Remote Sensing: Separately, we capture and analyze high-resolution satellite images from another service provider at the end of every year and store these images in our archive. We do this for every single parcel.
4. Drone Fly-Overs: Last but not least, at the end of every year we take aerial photographs of each parcel using a drone. Again, we analyze and archive these images for every single parcel. We also share these images with the people who sponsored the reforestation of that particular parcel. This is how sponsors can literally watch these forests grow over time.

How We Do It

To learn more about how our Community Reforestation Program works, check out our 2-minute animated video below.

The post How We Monitor and Verify Forest Restoration appeared first on TMA.

Farmers use their land in accordance with whatever generates the most income. This is the basis for an innovative ecological restoration strategy known as “Payments for Ecosystem Services” (PES). Think of it as an economic solution to an ecological problem. Here’s how we’re applying this model in Ecuador, and why we believe it’s the wave of the future.

What does “Payments for Ecosystem Services” (PES) mean?

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are financial incentives offered to landowners in exchange for managing their land to provide some sort of ecological service—for example, planting trees that remove carbon from the atmosphere. That’s the most common example.

Another example is paying landowners to preserve forest at the headwaters of a river that provides drinking water to a large city downstream. In this case, the people downstream quantify the value of a clean and consistent water source, and then pay the people upstream to manage their land accordingly.

PES Projects Around the World

PES projects were pioneered by Costa Rica in the 1990s. Since then, they’ve become increasingly popular in the realm of conservation and reforestation. Technically, most carbon offset projects are also PES projects.

The world’s largest landscape restoration project is a PES program implemented by China, nicknamed “Grain for Green”. Cash incentives to 32 million households have triggered the restoration of over 28 million hectares over two decades.

In the US, there are numerous ongoing PES programs aimed at watershed protection—ranging from Florida and San Antonio to Vermont and Oregon. Germany and the U.K. host a number of PES programs aimed at climate change mitigation and watershed protection. In countries like Mexico and Vietnam, PES programs are also used for biodiversity protection.

How does PES work?

Think of PES as an economic solution to an ecological problem. When applied properly, the PES model has a proven track record in shifting land-use patterns. But there are a few factors that determine the success or failure of a project that employs this model.

For PES payments to be effective, the payment levels have to exceed the opportunity costs of alternative activities. If not, farmers will choose to continue business-as-usual. This seems obvious, but this is where some PES projects fail.

For the project to generate legitimate carbon benefits, it must also satisfy two key criteria: additionality (i.e., without the payments, the trees would probably not have been planted) and permanence (i.e., the trees will remain alive and well for many decades, faithfully storing carbon in their wood).

Last but not least, it is our opinion that a PES project is truly successful if it also protects or restores biodiversity and improves the livelihoods of people. Our Community Reforestation Program is carefully designed to check all of these boxes.

PES in Ecuador

TMA’s Community Reforestation Program is a PES project. TMA pays farmers $1,821 per acre over a 5-year period to reforest their own degraded land. This equates to $4,500 per hectare. The most quantifiable benefit of this service is the net removal of 78 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, over a period of 30 years, for each acre that is reforested. In terms of hectares, net carbon removal is 191 tons of CO2.

But that it’s only one benefit. Just as important, but harder to quantify, are benefits like habitat restoration for endangered species, significantly reducing extraction pressure on the most threatened rainforest on earth, watershed protection, erosion control, and regional water cycle sustenance. In terms of socioeconomic benefits, this project increases farmers’ earnings by 300% per acre. On average, earnings from this project account for over half of the farmers’ total annual income.

How We Do It

To learn more about how our Community Reforestation Program works, check out our 2-minute animated video below.

The post What Is “Payments for Ecosystem Services” (PES)? appeared first on TMA.