Field Museum’s research helps convince Ecuador to conserve land
CHICAGO – Ecuador’s Minister of Environment, Hon. Lourdes Lugue de Jaramillo, is expected to sign a decree on Jan. 30 creating a globally outstanding protected area in the Andean foothills of Ecuador. The Ecuadorian government is taking this important action based on the results and recommendations of a rapid biological inventory led by The Field Museum in collaboration with the Cofán Survival Fund.
This marks the first time in Ecuador that federally protected lands have been placed in official custody of the resident indigenous people, in this case the Cofán. It could create a model for science-based stewardship of land by indigenous people.
“Finally, we are getting legal support for protecting one of the wildest, least explored, most beautiful regions left on the globe,” says Randy Borman, executive director of the Cofán Survival Fund. “Abundant wildlife, high mountains, thick forests, crystalline rivers, a culture living intimately with its environment: this is a major victory for conservation.”
The new 195-square-mile Reserva Ecológica Cofán de Bermejo lies in rugged terrain previously unmapped by scientists but familiar to the local Cofán residents. These are the Cofán foothills in northern Ecuador (Serranías Cofán), where the world’s most diverse mountain range rises out of Earth’s biologically richest lowland forests. The Serranías are a complex tangle of topography and biodiversity, with a mix of natural communities found nowhere else on the planet.
“The wet slopes of the Andes pack unique species of plants and animals all along their length from Venezuela south to Bolivia,“ says Debra Moskovits, PhD, director of The Field Museum’s Environmental and Conservation Programs, who coordinated the biological research that led to the government’s decision to protect the foothills. “The new Reserva Ecológica adds a vital link to the chain of protected, distinct communities along the Andes.”
The situation in these foothills is increasingly critical. A new, interoceanic highway that links the Atlantic to the Pacific and will be heavily traveled has split a once continuous expanse of forest. Waves of colonists already are following the highway, clearing and fragmenting the area. Illegal hunting and fishing have increased. Commercial logging companies have begun to cut hardwoods along the road, their chainsaws audible throughout the mountains.
Meanwhile, Colombia’s civil war and drug trafficking problems are spilling over into Ecuador.
“Between the colonists, guerillas, warlords, oil companies, loggers and miners, we are sitting on a bomb,” Borman explains.
Scientific Field Trip
Last summer, Dr. Moskovits, other Field Museum, Ecuadorian, and Peruvian scientists, the Cofán Survival Fund, and the Indigenous Federation of the Cofán Nation in Ecuador conducted a Rapid Biological Inventory (RBI) of the region’s plants and animals funded by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. This was The Field Museum’s third RBI, a program designed to catalyze effective action for conservation in threatened regions of high biological diversity.
The team found a spectacularly diverse mix of plants and animals, including at least 12 species new to science. In just three weeks in the field, the scientists identified:
- 800 species of plants, including 129 species in the coffee family alone;
- 42 species of large mammals, including 12 species of monkeys and eight species that are listed as globally threatened;
- 399 species of birds, including large populations of many that are rare or threatened elsewhere in the Andes; and
- 31 species of amphibians and reptiles, including one lizard new to science.
"The number of threatened and near-threatened bird species recorded from even this brief survey of the Serranías Cofán make this region one of the most important sites for bird conservation anywhere in the eastern Andes of Colombia, Ecuador, or northern Peru," notes Thomas Schulenberg, PhD., a Field Museum conservation ecologist.
Under this groundbreaking governmental decree, the Cofán residents will manage the reserve, collaborate with research, patrol against incursions, and monitor progress toward conservation goals.
The Cofán have long been conservation oriented. A recent documentary by Bill Kurtis, “American Chief in the Amazon,” aired on A&E’s Investigative Reports, portrayed how the Cofán successfully stood up to oil companies that were devastating their lands and rivers. Another example of the Cofán commitment to conservation is their Turtle Conservation Project, through which the Cofán have boosted the levels of dangerously declining populations of Amazonian river turtles.
Borman, who was raised among the Cofán by his American missionary parents, has helped focus international attention to the plight of this indigenous community. In 1998, The Field Museum awarded Borman the Parker/Gentry Award for Conservation Biology.
“The determination of the Cofán to protect the spectacular biodiversity that is central for their survival and their knowledge of the plants and animals in their backyard make the Cofán critical players in the effective, long-term conservation of this region,” says Dr. Moskovits. “The Reserva Ecológica will create a model of successful, science-based stewardship of ancestral lands by an indigenous community.”