Naturetrek's Reserve
in Ecuador

For over a decade we have been working to protect a threatened cloudforest corridor in the Ecuadorian Andes, which has been classified by WWF as one of the 200 most important wildlife corridors in the world due to its high levels of biodiversity. Through the World Land Trust and their Ecuadorian partner Fundación EcoMinga, we support direct purchase of the forest as a public nature reserve, open to the local people for no-impact ecotourism and protected from hunting, plant collection, and any other extractive activities.

In order to fund our land purchases in Ecuador, we set aside £15 out of our own profits for every person booking on a long-haul holiday and £5 for those booking a short-haul tour. Since 2007, up to the end of 2021, Naturetrek has raised over £445,000 in this way, and our reserve has reached 1,715 acres in size. The area saved includes a large block of forest in the corridor, and an additional block of forest connecting the Llanganates National Park with a different kind of lower-elevation forest. We are already working on our next land purchase to further extend our reserve, with the ultimate ambition of creating a Naturetrek reserve that provides a cloudforest wildlife corridor linking the Sangay and Llangantes National Parks.

If you have booked a Naturetrek tour recently, our reservations team will have asked you if you’d like to match our donation to further reduce the environmental impact of your holiday and increase the size of our reserve. By matching our donation, you will be helping us to grow our reserve, both locking up carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere, and preventing the national parks from becoming isolated cloudforest islands, thereby protecting this valuable, extremely biodiverse habitat and its endangered wildlife. If you offered to match our donation, we greatly appreciate your generosity, thank you!

An international biodiversity hotspot under threat

The Río Pastaza valley cuts through one of the world's biodiversity hotspots, the eastern Andes of Ecuador. To the north of this valley, the high mountains are protected by a large national park, Los Llanganates National Park, where the treasure of the last Inca emperor, Atahualpa, is supposedly buried, but the vulnerable (and agriculturally valuable) lower slopes leading into the valley were left out of the park. To the south of the valley, another very large national park, Sangay, protects the highest mountains, but here too the more valuable and vulnerable lower slopes leading into the valley were left unprotected. These unprotected slopes were originally completely covered by rich cloudforest, full of locally endemic plant species, and rich in Andean wildlife such as the Spectacled Bear and endangered Mountain Tapir. The once contiguous forest provided a wildlife corridor between the two national parks, and hence between the north-east Andes and the south-east Andes of Ecuador, with only a shallow river separating them.

Because the Naturetrek Reserves connect higher altitude cloudforest to the vulnerable riparian forests along the valley floor, they not only provide vital river access for large mammals and other species but also extend protection to the more diverse lower elevations that are not protected by the highland national parks in this watershed. For example, a recently discovered and very rare tree, Blakea attenboroughii, is not known from any national park yet is present in the Naturetrek Reserve. The upper Río Pastaza watershed is home to nearly 200 additional species of plants found nowhere else in the world, and this number is steadily increasing due to botanical investigation. The birdlife here is also very special, with species such as the Andean Cock-of-the-rock, Giant Antpitta, and the endangered Black-and-chestnut Eagle, one of which has been spotted by EcoMinga staff carrying a capuchin monkey through the air!

Over the last few years students visiting EcoMinga’s reserves have focused on herpetological monitoring in the main unit of the Naturetrek Reserve. This has led to a new understanding of the diversity of frogs within the reserve. The most exciting result of these investigations has been the discovery of two new species of frog. In 2019, the Naturetrek Leaf Frog (Noblella naturetrekii) was described to science and named in recognition of our role in saving this species and its habitat. In 2022, another new frog species was described to science from the Viscaya unit of our reserve. Maryanne’s Robber Frog (Pristimantis maryanneae) has been named in recognition of our co-founder and co-director, Maryanne Mills’ role in helping to shape the industry’s approach to sustainable tourism 30 years ago, way before carbon-offsetting and sustainability were on the mainstream agenda.

In 2019, a lizard that is thought to be new to science was also discovered in our reserve. We eagerly await further news of this exciting discovery!

Ecotourism – a sustainable alternative to deforestation and farming?

It is also our aim to develop wildlife tourism, and an awareness of the value and importance of our Reserves and the two national parks, in the local town of Baños. Whilst it is already one of Ecuador’s major tourist destinations, Baños’ local tourism operators have yet to appreciate the value of the region’s unique potential for ecotourism. This is something that we hope we can influence – by demonstrating that the area’s forest and its wildlife have economic value, and that a more sustainable local economy is on the doorstep, providing a realistic alternative to deforestation and farming.

For more information on the Candelaria Reserve, how you can help fight climate change and about the rest of World Land Trust’s important conservation work, please visit their website at www.worldlandtrust.org

*Fundación EcoMinga was founded in 2005 and is based in Baños, Ecuador. The organisation’s aim is to efficiently preserve biodiversity in Ecuador. WLT and Naturetrek have been working with Fundación EcoMinga since 2007.