50,000 Additional Acres to be Added to Cofan Conservation Efforts

Thanks to generous individual donors and support from the MacArthur Foundation, a project to create five new municipal ecological reserves in the Ecuadorian provinces of Carchi and Imbabura is underway. This will add over 50,000 acres of wild mountains, paramos, and cloud forests to the 1 million acres we currently conserve in northeastern Ecuador. The mountain tapir is one of the many animals that will benefit from the additional acreage of conserved lands.

In the process of protecting the vital headwaters of both the Aguarico River flowing toward the Amazon and the Mira River flowing toward the Pacific Ocean, we will also protect many endangered species such as the spectacled bear and mountain tapir. This project will be a big push for the Cofan this year and next. CSF Executive Director Randy Borman is confident that by the end of next year, these new reserves will be both legal and practical realities.