Amazon and Andes wildlife expedition in Ecuador

Planet

CARBON

For the main Amazon and cloud forest sections of this experience, all electrical power used is solar. Most food is locally sourced and some of it is produced on site, such as organic vegetables in the cloud forest.

Within the cloud forest, all transportation is on foot. Vegetarian and vegan eating options are available throughout.

The biggest positive carbon impacts of this trip is:

- Helping to prevent subterranean oil from being exploited, helping to finance Achuar legal rights over their land and legal rejection of efforts to drill for oil.
- In the Choco-Andean cloud forest, we have been supporting habitat regeneration on previously deforested sites. This helps to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and lock it back into living forest and the soil.

ENVIRONMENT AND WILDLIFE

The itinerary for this journey has been devised by a team of people who have been involved in exploration, research and conservation in Ecuador for three decades. Host, Ralph, formerly of the charity Rainforest Concern, will be joined by local guides on a journey through Andean plains amid volcanic peaks; cloud forests cloaking steep mountainsides filled with hummingbirds & orchids; & some of the most remote Amazon wilderness, searching for wildlife in forest preserves, guided by indigenous people to whom the lands we explore belong.

In addition to experiencing some of Latin America's best preserved forests, you will learn about the many pressures different areas are under and how different approaches have achieved long term conservation success. Indigenous land rights; oil exploration; agricultural expansion; illegal land sales; copper mining; Christian missions; boom and bust crops; the pet trade; protection of drinking water catchments; these issues and more will be presented first hand, as well as the bliss of seeing wildlife safe from the negative forces of change.

Your participation in this trip will not only provide you with unique insights into communities and conservation in the Amazon and Andes, but helps contribute to conservation of wildlife habitats long into the future.

People

LOCAL ECONOMY

Accommodation, transportation and local guiding is all 100% locally owned.

On the Amazon part of this journey, we will be in lands occupied by indigenous Achuar people. Over the years, this tribal group has taken the decision not to allow oil companies to enter their land. Oil companies provide incentives for quick financial benefits, but exploration and drilling results in an equally rapid loss of control of local people’s destiny and dramatic environmental impacts. Across the border in Peru, Achuar people have to live with river pollution, loss of the wildlife they rely on for food, significant loss of rainforest and the very difficult task of trying to redefine their place in a world they no longer control. Where we visit in Ecuador, the Achuar have maintained legal control of their lands. They still need some income; and ecotourism like this trip helps provide that. The Achuar use this to cover essential medical expenses and take legal action as needed to keep their land rights secure.

In the cloud forest, we stay in a community-owned reserve where settlers wanted to stop their cycle of slash and burn farming. Rainforest Concern helped them to do this by seed funding an ecotourism project which this journey helps to continue. Trip leader, Ralph, has been involved in this project since 1999 and on this visit, he will be able to explain community conservation projects in this area, and all the way along the Choco-Andean Rainforest Corridor. These include shade-grown organic coffee growing & silvopasture; and community-owned watershed projects which preserve both Nature and longterm water security for people.

EMPLOYMENT, INCLUSIVITY AND DIVERSITY

We only employ local people to help guide, transport and feed guests on this trip.

At the heart of this trip is the maintenance of diverse cultures in our World – in this case helping the Achuar to maintain their unique way of life, which respects intimately their place within a healthy rainforest environment.

As a company, we nurture equal employment without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation or nationality.

This trip is LGBTQ+ friendly. It is also suitable for people with reduced mobility, vision, hearing or cognition. We can discuss guest needs and make every effort to adapt in order to enable them to participate.