Into the Amazon
By Howard Youth
Far east and over the Andes from Mindo and Río Silanche, the Amazon region of Ecuador contains some of the country’s worst poverty, most of its oil wealth, and its largest remaining indigenous communities and wilderness areas. Local communities have worked—and occasionally risen up—to force oil companies to provide them with better support and compensation for the environmentally damaging activities that draw and transport oil from their region. Meanwhile, far from the current oil hotspots, he the pristine lowland rainforests of the southeast, where a bold effort to protect nature and the Achuar indigenous culture has taken wing.
”As my Achuar friend Domingo Peas said, ‘We are not business people, we never did it in thepast. . .but we must learn in order to protect our territory and our forest” says Paulina Rodriguez, operations manager of the Kapawi Ecolodge and Reserve. The lodge bills itself as the Largest community-based project ever developed in Ecuador and helps protect 5,000 square kilometers of Amazonian rainforest. The late Ecuadorian entrepreneur and journalist Carlos Pérez Perasso, who founded Ecuador’s El Universo newspaper, started the lodge in 1993, working through his travel company Canodros and with the Federation of the Achuar Indigenous People. Perasso’s goal was to keep the Achuar people, their rainforests, and their way of life safe from oil development and other unsustainable and disruptive activities. Perasso invested more than US$2 million in the venture and hoped to hand it ah over to the Achuars. Today, more than 70 percent of the hotel’s staff of 32 are Achuar, including guides, cooks, housekeepers, waiters, canoe drivers, and maintenance workers. Combined, the Achuar staff receives US$70,000 in salaries each year.
The reserve remains free of roads; tourists arrive on chartered flights. For the privilege of staying and viewing pink river dolphins, squirrel monkeys, and other wildlife, each visitor pays between US$175 and US$290 a night. In addition, the community collects an average of US$16,000 per year in entrance fees, and Perasso’s company Canodros pays the federation more than US$50,000 per year to rent their land. Currently, the lodge reaches the break-even point each year but has yet to produce much in the way of revenue. Because goods only arrive via aircraft, costs are still too high. The Achuar Federation is now looking into creating its own small aircraft service to lower these costs and increase revenues—a pressing need, as the federation is about to give up its rental income from Canodros. “In 2011, the entire lodge with all it has inside will be transferred to the Achuar people without any cost for them,” says Rodriguez. “We are working to train the Achuar people to be able to manage the lodge by 201 1. ” The exact transfer process will be decided by the Achuar Federation’s assembly, which may choose to manage the property or hire a small professional team to help them handle the business.
There are other Amazon lodges in Ecuador, and many provide a primary source of income for local communities. The Napo Wildlife Center, owned by the Quito-based NGO EcoEcuador, is one. The local indigenous Quichua community of Añangu, which inhabits part of the vast and poorly patrolled Yasuní National Park in northeast Ecuador, receives 49 percent of net profits from the ecotourism Lodge, funds that are used to support education, health care, and other needs. At least 85 percent of the lodge’s employees hail from Añangu. In addition to their accommodation fees, ah lodge guests pay park entrance fees, which go to the Ministry of the Environment. The center, meanwhile, provides protection for 212 square kilometers of the park’s lowland rainforest, which in other sections is barely under surveillance. Not far off, the Sacha Lodge employs members of 100 local families and protects a private reserve of 2,000 hectares of rainforest. Small groups of well-paying foreign tourists visit many of these lodges, some of which now host more than 1,000 visitors a year. The future of this rising industry depends upon fair partnerships with local communities, ethical behavior within protected areas—and upon steady visitation.
Our day at Río Silanche ends as it began, with fleeting glimpses of the returning flock in the darkening tree crowns: more tanagers, a blue-whiskered here, a scarlet-browed there, barbets, warblers, honeycreepers. Sam Woods walks me past a 14-meter cinderblock and metal tower that, when fully constructed, will give visitors a bird’s-eye view of the daily feeding frenzy. ”They’ll charge $10 or $15 admission. That should cover the fruit that will be put out to draw in the birds, and other expenses,” Woods tells me. That admission price will be for foreign visitors; Ecuadorians will pay a lower fee, as is the case in many of the country’s parks.
Small creatures like the tiny dacnis, just 13 centimeters long, have the power to lure in visitors from around the world who crave glimpses and snapshots of Ecuador’s effulgent wildlife. This interplay may, with careful coaxing, help smooth Ecuador’s rocky road, drawing in a steady stream of foreign exchange that benefits local communities and fuels a growing appreciation of—and a firmer commitment to—the imperative to conserve the country’s irreplaceable biodiversity.
