Saving the most important forest you’ve never heard of
A vital remnant of rainforest in South America – one of the world’s most significant biodiversity hot-spots – will disappear forever unless it’s protected from logging operations. Katie Ford-Thomas of the World Land Trust explains why the Chocó Forest is
Alittle-known rainforest is in peril. By 1988 – over a period of just 50 years – 95% of South America’s Chocó Forest had disappeared. With no pause to think of the ecological impacts of deforestation, logging and agriculture ploughed on, and now only 2% of the most important rainforest you’ve never heard of remains.
This month, World Land Trust (WLT) is launching a new campaign, Saving Ecuador’s Chocó Forest. The aim is to raise £500,000 in order to purchase 1,334 ha of this remnant rainforest at the Canandé Reserve in the Esmeraldas
Province of north-west Ecuador, on behalf of long-time WLT partner, Fundación Jocotoco (FJ).
Like all other tropical lowland rainforests, warmth and humidity cling to the air in the Chocó, where the trees and flora support more species of bird than North America and Europe combined. A forest where careful eyes will discover as many reptiles and amphibians per acre as in the Amazon. A forest where, unfortunately, just a fragment of its original area remains standing.
Unique opportunity
This new WLT campaign is in support of FJ’s Save the Chocó. This conservation project is seeking to raise a total of $5 million to take advantage
of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase 38,586 ha of the last remaining western lowland Chocó rainforest in north-western Ecuador.
The scale of this project is virtually unprecedented. The area to be protected constitutes the largest surviving remnant of the Chocó still controlled by logging companies. The land purchase dwarfs the surrounding reserves and protected areas, but is connected to several of them.
Once the project is completed, the entire area will connect 10 already protected conservation areas, creating a fully contiguous protected area of more than 260,000 ha – kickstarting the incredible journey of habitat gain.
This is almost equal to the size of Yosemite National Park in California and significantly larger than any other protected area in western Ecuador. Creating this unique network of protected areas, which lie on the western slopes of the Tropical Andes, will provide impressive mitigation against climate change-induced extinctions. By connecting an altitude gradient that rises from 100 m to 4,900 m above sea level, species can safely shift to higher elevations as climate change advances, surviving against the odds.
Though sadly diminished, the Chocó Forest remains a place where you can hear the call of the Critically Endangered Brown Spider Monkey, be stalked by Jaguar and Puma in the darkest reaches of the broadleaf forest, and hear the wind whistle beneath the wings of Harpy Eagle. Canandé Reserve’s 6,880 ha don’t seem so small – while suffering, it is not done with living yet. Indeed, there are still new wonders to find here. The Endangered Horned Marsupial Frog, unseen for a decade, was rediscovered here, joining the newly described Neito’s Rainfrog – and five other as-yet-undescribed rainfrog species – in this enduring ecosystem.
One of the most significant markers of a healthy ecosystem is the prevalence of apex predators. If the species at the top of the food chain are surviving, there is still hope for conservation
❝This unique network of protected areas will provide impressive mitigation against climate change-induced extinctions❞
management to work its magic and combat the climate crisis, one hectare at a time. Perhaps the most impressive of these at Canandé is Harpy Eagle.
Home for Harpy
High in the emergent layer, glowing in the bright sunlight and raindrops, the wind is strong. It’s the perfect home for Harpy Eagle – the largest and most powerful raptor of the rainforest – which flies just beneath the upper canopy to conserve energy. Unfortunately, the species is listed as Near Threatened by BirdLife International (www.iucnredlist.org), with a rapidly declining population, predominately owing to hunting and habitat loss.
As part of a long-term solution, Saving Ecuador’s Chocó Forest is an opportunity to protect this incredible species from climate change and ensure its threatened status does not deteriorate further.
It is not hard to see why this stunning raptor was named after the harpies of Greek mythology. The species’ pale grey head – crowned with an impressive crest of feathers which is raised when the bird is threatened – and its expressive eyes are often anthropomorphised. In fact, in 2019, social media was abuzz with people trying to decide if a photograph of a Harpy showed a real bird or a person in an elaborate costume. Perhaps no other bird in this forest embodies the links of nature that hold us all together.
But wild they are, and ferocious too. Their slate grey wings reach up to 2 m, while their back talons are, at 13 cm, larger than a Grizzly Bear’s claws. They hunt within the canopy and understory, choosing to make their large nests – which can be up to 1.5 m wide – in areas where a clear path exists through the rainforest. To ensure that a breeding pair both eat regularly, the larger females opt for bigger prey such as sloth and monkey, while the agile males opt for smaller prey in larger quantities.
The Chocó eco-region represents one of the five most important and threatened hot-spots of biodiversity in the world. In addition to Harpy Eagle,
it also supports the largest surviving population of Brown-headed Spider Monkey, one of the 25 most endangered primate species on earth.
The area is critical for Mache Glass Frog and home to the last Great Curassows (listed as Vulnerable) in Ecuador and the county’s largest population of the Endangered Great Green Macaw. The Canandé Reserve has been identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) and serves as a refuge for more than 350 bird species, 37 of which are endemic to the Chocó eco-region.
The reserve also protects endangered plant species, as well as endemic and threatened reptile and amphibians.
Protecting people
Such is the power of biodiversity hot-spots, the miniature and the magnificent create ecosystems that work together for their survival, but also have a considerable impact on the health of nearby communities. That is of significant importance here, as the project area is one of Ecuador’s most impoverished regions; 95% of people are classed as poor in comparison to the nationwide level of 75%. As deforestation runs rampant, cultural identity is also lost. FJ works closely with seven communities of
5,000, including Mestizo people and the Chachi indigenous group. Until the 1970s, Chachi communities lived in relative isolation and used sustainable
agriculture, hunting, and fishing practices for sustenance. However, they now live on the borders of major logging operations and their livelihoods are threatened as forests on which they depend are cut to make way for oil palm plantations.
With economically viable choices in short supply, the people here were previously driven to sell their trees to industrial timber companies. With FJ’s new sustainable forest management system in place, their ownership of this land will restore opportunities for local people, offering employment to at least 80 people within the reserve.
There is more to be lost here than biodiversity. As land is cleared, often to make way for oil palm plantations, complications arise that intensify the climate crisis – affecting nature but also the people who will be hardest hit by the implications of rising global temperatures. Fundación Jocotoco’s ambitious land purchase will prevent industrial logging in the area and establish a buffer zone, protecting both the wildlife and indigenous peoples that rely on it. ■