Fundacion Jocotoco

Fundación Jocotoco was established in 1998 to protect globally threatened bird species of the Ecuadorian Andes. Since then, they have successfully created fifteen reserves, restored forests and wetlands, and achieved the establishment of a 60,000 km² marine reserve.

Funding from ERF will help two projects.

The first to increase the size of the Buenaventura Reserve by 450 hectares. Buenaventura is the only reserve protecting the unique cloud forests of southwestern Ecuador. Here, where the Tumbes and Chocó ecoregions integrate, species endemism is high. This region used to be a Pleistocene refugia and forms part of the Tropical Andes Biodiversity Hotspot. It remains a stronghold for many highly threatened species, including 15 globally threatened species of bird, such as the El Oro Parakeet.

Buenaventura is of high conservation impact for the threatened species these areas hold, reaching to protect new areas north of the existing reserve, linking existing parts of the reserve and targeting altitudinal expansion. Inclusion of large areas of Buenaventura within Ecuador’s protected area system will reduce the threat of mining operations.

The second, expanding Canandé Reserve: Safeguarding the Ecuadorian Chocó Rainforest

This project will support the acquisition and conservation of three separate properties, adding 206 hectares to the Canandé Reserve. By expanding this crucial reserve, the project aims to safeguard the exceptional biodiversity of the Ecuadorian Chocó forest, one of the five most threatened hotspots in the world and the second most biodiverse.

The Chocó, particularly the Canandé Reserve within it, is unique because 10% of its species cannot be found anywhere else on Earth. It is home to the largest raptor of the rainforest—the Harpy Eagle—and was, in 2018, the site where the Horned Marsupial Frog was rediscovered after being thought extinct in Ecuador for a decade.

The Canandé Reserve area likely harbours the most important population of the Critically Endangered Brown-headed Spider Monkey, one of the 25 most endangered primates globally, with 160-200 of the estimated 500 individuals left alive worldwide.

The project is part of the Choco-Tumbes-Magdalena Biodiversity Hotspot and the Chocó Endemic Bird Areas (EBA). A total of 51 bird species are endemic to this EBA, the second highest number of any EBA globally. This effort is part of the larger Chocó Initiative, which aims to protect and connect 500,000 hectares of Chocó Forest, stretching from the Chachi indigenous lands north of Canandé to Jocotoco’s Yanacocha Reserve just west of Quito.

With 98% of the Chocó rainforest already lost, mainly due to unsustainable logging for plywood, the remaining large areas near Canandé have never been more crucial.