This project will focus on tropical deciduous forests in Southwestern Ecuador. Tropical deciduous forests are special and unique ecosystems that are home to many different kinds of plants and animals.  The name of this type of forest means it is located in the tropics near the equator and that the trees lose their leaves during dry times of the year. Many of the species that live in these forests are endemic meaning they can’t be found anywhere else in the world!

The Cazaderos-Progreso area in southwestern Ecuador is a region of tropical deciduous forest that is 10,000 hectares. This is equal to about 136,000 football fields! Even though this area seems HUGE, it is a small fraction of what once was there. The entire tropical deciduous forest still standing in Ecuador is only about 1% of how big it used to be and this area is just one section. Imagine how much forest there used to be, and how much has already been cut down! The government in Ecuador has plans to build roads that threaten the last remaining tropical deciduous forests of Ecuador. Because of these plans, it is important to protect these beautiful, extraordinary and highly threatened forests from disappearing forever. Nature & Culture International needs your help to raise money to purchase this land and to design a project with local kids like you and families like yours to make sure this land remains protected forever.

The tropical deciduous forest is home to many large species of animal including the Sechura Fox and the Tumbesian Crocodile. The Sechura Fox is a nocturnal animal that sleeps during the day and hunts at night. They weigh about 4-5 kilograms and eat seed pods, beetles and rodents. The Tumbesian Crocodile, the same species as the American Crocodile, also lives here. The average adult crocodile is 4 meters long and weighs 382 kg ! The crocodiles mostly eat birds, fish, mammals, snails, frogs, but also eat many other animals.

The plants and animals in this forest depend on us to raise money. Lets help protect them!

If you’d like to run a project to help raise money then please get in touch. We can document your progress, put on blog posts with pictures from your project to inspire others to do the same. We’d love to have you help!

We stood on the huge tower, the sky gradually cleared and lightened as we scrutinised the myriad treetops and over the next three hours or so - while we swayed gently at the top of our tower – the Cristalino forest revealed an extravaganza of treasures.  We had a very lucky morning!

Jorge heard a little rattling noise in a very close emergent tree – and a smartly attired little tooth-billed wren responded to his imitation of its call. The members of the wren tribe normally sing stridently right down in the understory of the rainforest, hiding expertly, but our little bird has found itself a Darwinian niche as high in the forest as you can get.

The Cotinga family of birds are gorgeous and accommodating because, in the early morning, they like nothing better than to sit on the very topmost branches of the highest trees.  A dark blob when magnified sixty times was suddenly transformed into a vision adorned in electric blue with black trimmings. It suddenly turned its head and flashed a shining maroon throat – this was a spangled cotinga. Astonishingly, we saw six altogether.

But the highlight of a fabulous morning was the treeful of toucans – perhaps the New World’s most charismatic family for European observers from afar. Anybody of my age remembers the Guinness ads.

Perhaps fifty yards from our canopy platform there was a tree emerging from the 30 meter canopy level.  It was completely leafless – dead? dying? deciduous in all these evergreens? – and perfect for unimpeded views of birds. One minute it was completely empty – and the next it was full of toucans!  Just a little matter of four different species of one of the World’s most exotic bird families.

This was an experience which would be impossible without the existence of large tracts of unspoiled primary rainforest such as has been preserved at the Cristalino Jungle Lodge.

The toucans in the tree were a White-throated Toucan; a Gould’s Toucanet; a Curl-crested Aracari and a Red-necked Aracari.

I climbed gingerly back down the tower with my head spinning.

Dan Janzen has sent us an image he has taken of a Male day-flying moth Xanthocastnia evalthe in the family Castniidae, about 2 inch wingspan.

The Sector A work is currently looking for funding to extend the forest North and protect this area of rainforest for ever.

CTF is running a campaign to raise funds for the GDFCF work. We plan to raise £50,000 to help purchase this incredibly diverse habitat. The importance of this habitat is underlined by Dans comment on the picture he sent to us.

I attach an image of a day-flying large moth that I took in May on a property 14a in Sector A. It is Xanthocastnia evalthe (Castniidae) and this is the first one I have ever seen alive.

GDFCF have identified the owners of the land and they have all agreed to sell, we need to raise the funds to get the down payments made. Property 14a that Dan mentions above is 55 hectares and requires approximately $150,000 to purchase. You can see it in the map below.

If you you would like to help, use the donation button at the top of this page.

The Black Caiman (Melanosuchus niger) is the largest South American crocodile and the Amazon’s biggest predator. But despite its size and power it can be hunted with ease and the species has been
reduced in numbers by 99% over the last century.

The wild population is estimated to be between 25,000 and 50,000 and is restricted to slow-moving rivers, streams and lakes in rainforests and seasonally flooded savannas in the Amazon basin. It is now considered to be dependent on human conservation initiatives and occurs in the CTF UK supported reserves at Jatun Sacha in Eastern Ecuador and at Uwasu in Central Brazil.

Black Caiman, which can grow up to about 20 feet (6 meters) long, swim very well, mainly using their tails to propel themselves through the water. They are supremely adapted to aquatic life with eyes and nostrils at the top of the head. Mostly active at night, they hunt for fish, including piranhas and catfish, birds and turtles and even the largest Amazonian land animals like capybaras. Some 75 long, sharp conical teeth are used for catching prey – but not tearing it apart. They swallow their victims whole!

Females build a huge mound nest of soil and vegetation about 5 feet across and lay 50–60 eggs in each clutch. While the eggs are incubating, the females guard the nest and are dangerously aggressive at this time. The sex of the Black Caiman offspring is determined by the temperature in the nest rather than by genetics.

Black Caimans are found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guyana and Peru with unconfirmed reports from Venezuela. In reserves where it has substantial protection, most populations appear to recover well from previous heavy hunting pressure.

Thanks to Tom Snyder for the Caiman image

The common, or Humboldt’s, Woolly Monkey (Lagothrix lagotricha), one of the chunkiest and heaviest New World primates, lives in the rainforests of the Western Amazon river basin, including the CTF supported Reserves at Uwasu in Western Brazil and Jatun Sacha in Eastern Ecuador.

Reserves such as these are critical for the survival of these monkeys. They inhabit river edge gallery forest; palm woodland; seasonally flooded varzea and dry terra firma primary forest; and high altitude cloud forest. They prefer mature, continuous, undisturbed humid tracts – and will not live in secondary woodland which has re-grown after logging.

Covered in short, dense fur, they have large, round heads with a bare black or brown face. Their bodies are thick, with sturdy limbs, and their protruding bellies have given them the Portuguese name ‘barrigudo’ or ‘big belly’. They average 16–24 inches in length (40–60 cms), excluding their thick and prehensile tail.

They are active during the day – and gregarious – living in social groups of 10 to 70, often in company with capuchins, howlers and other species of monkeys. Rather slow moving, they generally travel on all fours, but often swing by their hands, feet and tail – or by the tail alone. On the ground, they can stand erect using their tail for support, but they are happiest in the forest mid-canopy at 7–12 metres (22–38 feet).

Their principal food is ripe fruit, supplemented by leaves, seeds and some insects. Seeds are most important early in the rainy season when ripe fruit is not readily available. Most intensively hunted Females reach maturity at 6–8 years and males any time after 5 years. Females bear single young after a 7–8 months gestation period and feed their babies for 9–12 months. The young are carried for the first month or so on the abdomen of the mother and climb onto her back after 6 weeks.

It is at this time that woolly monkeys are at their most vulnerable. They are the most intensively hunted primate species in South America – a mother normally being killed so that her infant can be sold on the pet market. Tragically, it is estimated that ten mothers are sacrificed for every live individual infant that actually reaches the market.

Groups of young woollies are very playful in the wild, while grooming is a common activity within a social group. Adult males receive the most grooming, whilst adult females are usually groomed by their juvenile daughters. Communication is by voice, facial expression and other visual behaviour and woollies can show subtle changes in mood and intention by employing a variety of expressions.

Restricted to the Western Amazon basin of Northern South America, common woolly monkeys occur in the upper Magdalena River valley in Colombia; throughout much of the upper Amazon basin of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia; in Brazil west of the Rio Negro; and in the foothills and Eastern slopes of the Andes up to 3,000 metres.

And Michael McColm considers ‘that the 3150 hectare Bilsa Biological Station continues to be the only sustainable and viable conservation initiative in the Mache-Chindul region’. The Foundation is seeking funding for forested properties within the Bilsa Boundary, which, all together, total about 250 hectares. But the 24 hectares that has just been secured by the CTF donation was the most urgent.

It is Pre-Montane Tropical Wet Forest – probably the rarest forest type in Western Ecuador with less than 1% remaining. The purchase will connect two existing important tracts of this type of forest inside the boundaries of the Bilsa Station. The forest is along the higher ridge-line of the Reserve and at this elevation provides habitat and protection for Jaguars, the exotic Long-Wattled Umbrella-bird and the rare, large and striking Banded Ground-Cuckoo as well as watershed protection for the Dogola River.

This river is one of the few in Western Ecuador still surrounded by forest habitat and protects a correspondingly high level of unique endemic fish species – species found in no other coastal river in the region.

Unique wildlife

The Bilsa Biological Station’s biodiversity credentials are certainly impeccable. Two thousand different plant species have been documented, including 30 species completely new to science. Abundant animal and bird populations indicate an intact ecosystem. To date, 24 mammal species are known to live in Bilsa, five of which are on international threatened species lists. Apart from the jaguar, these are the jaguarundi, oncilla, giant anteater and troupes of mantled howler monkeys.

More than 300 species of birds have been documented, amongst the highest totals for any Western coastal forest in Ecuador. But once again, it is the uniqueness of many of the birds which makes Bilsa so special. It is listed as a key area for the protection of birds in both the Choco and Tumbesian endemic bird areas (confined respectively to Ecuador and Colombia and Ecuador and Peru), which between them hold 96 species of birds found nowhere else in the World.