Project News and Technical Support

Starting in 2023, with the support of its founding members, Rios Andinos established a pilot scholarship project to enhance young women’s access to college-level education (university degrees). Poor governance and political indifference undermine the County’s unique potential for promoting sustainable development in agriculture, nature-based tourism, and related job opportunities. The lack of public investment and incentives to support sustainable business development leads to increased poverty and worsens income inequality between men and women. Young women face limited or no opportunities to pursue professional degrees. As the top student of the 2021-2022 Promotion at Los Bancos High School, Ms. Jessenia Caicedo was the first recipient of our inaugural partial scholarship to further her education. She is currently completing her Economics degree at the Technical University of Loja. Jessenia secured a remote short-term internship at WWF in Ecuador as part of her course.

The University of Brighton (UoB) and Ríos Andinos (RA) Foundation have agreed to collaborate on establishing the first long-term bird monitoring and ringing site in northwest Ecuador, within the new municipal protected area “Peñón del Río Blanco” at RA’s Rancho Tangaré Nature Reserve. It involves collaborative research in: 

• Trends in recovering tropical bird populations in endemic and rewilded habitats across different ranges. 
• The impact of rewilding degraded habitats using high conservation value forest (HCVF) on biodiversity. 
• Subtropical bird migration and health patterns, and; 
• The economic value of rewilding subtropical hummed forest with HCVF management compared to unsustainable activities like intensive cattle farming, monocropping, or forestry. 

Additional research partners include British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and EURING trained ringers, who will conduct research with the appropriate permits and permissions. The UoB will provide in-kind support for the work and planning. Students will participate in the research projects to build local capacity. The institutions will share data and information on subtropical cloud forests and their biodiversity richness to enhance natural resource management in northwest Ecuador. The implementation of this project is starting in 2025.

The five-week research project "Flower Biomechanics and the Buzz Pollination Niche" started at Rancho Tangaré Nature Reserve in September 2023. The project supports a Ph.D. dissertation and university course credits of students of the University of Vienna, Austria, and the University of Colorado Boulder, US, Benjamin Lazarus (principal researcher) and Ash Kerber (researcher), respectively. The research is conducted in collaboration with Rios Andinos and at Rancho Tangaré Nature Reserve. The project aims to understand the plant-pollinator interactions in the buzz pollinator family Melastomataceae. The researchers started by identifying twelve different Malastomataceae flowers at Rancho Tangaré for the research. The University of Vienna (Division of Structural and Functional Botany) https://sfb.univie.ac.at/en/ and the Austrian Science Foundation https://www.fwf.ac.at/de/  provide financial support to this unique research project. Scientists of the National Herbarium of the Catholic University of Ecuador provide additional oversight. After completion, the project's results will be available through the dissertation and peer-reviewed scientific journal articles and to the public on the Rios Andinos webpage. Rios Andinos' member and scientist, Mr. Francisco Sornoza, supports and coordinates this new project. 

A combination of efforts between Ríos Andinos and a team of international bird ringers and ornithologists led to the setup of a ringing site located in the subtropical forest in the Choco Andino region in the Northwest of Ecuador, above the Rio Blanco at the Rancho Tangaré Private Reserve (RTPR). This pilot project aims to test if it is worth setting up a permanent bird ringing station and starting a bird inventory of the site. The 2024 Team members include British Trust of Ornithology (BTO) trained ringers Martin Flores and Graeme Dunlop as well as bird specialist Charlie Vogt.

The project involved selecting a range of habitats within the RTPR, including forest, grassland, and scrub, setting up ten nets, feeding stations, hummingbird feeders, ringing equipment, and using vehicles to access the more difficult areas. In addition, Charlie Vogt of Andean Birding, who led the species identification, conducted three days of bird surveys. Additionally, the team met with Ecuador's Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition (MAATE) members, who visited us to see how the ringing was being conducted. The teams also discussed the plans to establish a new municipal protected area called Peñón del Río Blanco (Rio Blanco Canyon).

The pilot effort resulted in a resounding success, with over 80 species observed and 21 species caught and ringed, including flycatchers, tanagers, euphonias, hummingbirds, cuckoos, and antbirds. Therefore, providing evidence that a permanent bird ringing site at this location would be worth the time and effort. The results of this pilot project bring the additional benefit of contributing to and informing the habitat management and reforestation plan of Rancho Tangaré. The following steps include planning and logistics to revisit and expand the initial ringing site further to increase the species list and officially establish a permanent ringing site in the country! All birds are ringed by BTO trained ringers with appropriate permits and permissions. 

Rios Andinos started collaborating with the Municipality of San Miguel de Los Bancos (MSMB) and the Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition (MAATE) to establish the new Municipal Protected Forest "Peñón de Río Blanco". In October 2022, the MAATE started the site-level work, i.e., topographic surveys and engaging with local landowners to map the protected area's boundaries. The MAATE estimates that the PA will run along a 15 km stretch of the Río Blanco Canyon, starting at San Miguel de Los Bancos. The new PA will extend the Choco Andino Bosphere Reserve in its buffer zone. It will secure the conservation of the primary forest and biodiversity shelters in the Rio Blanco Canyon and preserve ecosystem functions along the banks of the Rio Blanco for generations. The MSMB will provide essential seed funding to support the new PA during the first three years. 

Rios Andinos' is committed to supporting the design and implementation of the PA management plan, financial sustainability strategy, and selected market and non-market-based financial mechanisms. The Rancho Tangaré Private Reserve is proudly a part of the new municipal protected forest's restoration and rehabilitation area.

Rios Andinos is supporting Ceiba Foundation for Tropical Conservation www.ceiba.org to advance the revision and approval of the new regulatory framework for conservation easements (CE) in Ecuador. Ceiba presented a revised draft regulatory framework to the Ministry of Environment, Water, and Ecological Transition (MAATE) in March 2022. The MAATE carried out an initial revision with GIZ support in 2017. The new regulatory frame is currently under the revision of MAATE, and it is expected that the new CE regulations will be in effect in the first quarter of 2024. Ríos Andinos also facilitates interinstitutional coordination with WWF, CI, TNC, and UNDP in Ecuador to mobilize institutional support and promote civil society participation.

A conservation easement is a power invested in a qualified private conservation organization or government (municipal, county, state, or federal) to constrain, as to a specified land area, the exercise of rights otherwise held by a landowner to achieve specific conservation objectives. The CE's purposes will vary depending on the character of the particular property, the goals of the organization or government, and the needs of the landowner. CE may include one or more of the following objectives:

• Maintain and improve water quality, forests, soil, wildlife habitat and migration corridors;
• Protect scenic vistas visible from roads and other public areas; or
• Ensure proper land management to support sustainable agriculture and forestry.

CE in Ecuador is a powerful tool to promote and improve conservation in private lands or private reserves. CE may benefit from fiscal incentives such as exempting certain property taxes on the land under easements and payments for ecosystem services.

In September 2020, Rios Andinos provided technical support for developing the Green Choco Alliance  (CGA). The Alliance implements innovative reforestation and land restoration models to support more environmentally, financially and socially profitable tourism in the northwest of the Biosphere Reserve Chocó-Andino. Bellavista Cloud Forest Lodge (https://www.bellavistacloudforest.com), Kapari Natura Lodge (https://kapari.com.ec) and Rancho Tangaré lead this initiative with technical support of the World Resources Institute (WRI)/Land Accelerator Program (LAP) https://www.wri.org/our-work/project/land-accelerator 

The "Green Choco" is a registered trademark under Ecuadorian trade laws. 

The Alliance's business model was selected y the LAP to be part of the Latin American Cohort amongst other entrepreneurship from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Peru. Throughout April 2021, the Alliance members participated and completed the Land Accelerator's business mentorship program. The Green Choco Alliance is aligned with the Initiative 20X20 https://initiative20x20.org/news/meet-15-entrepreneurs-restoring-latin-americas-farms-and-forests 

In May 2020, to support the post-COVID19 reconstruction of the tourism sector in the northwest of the Chocó-Andino Biosphere reserve, Rios Andinos designed and implemented the first socioeconomic survey of the members of the Chamber of Tourism of the Chocó Andino (CTCA) and other tourism establishments and agricultural producers in the area.  This survey provides critical information to understand the financial and socioeconomic impact of COVID19 in the tourism sector in areas such as net revenue, jobs, income and employment, and the financial needs for the recovery effort. The membership of the CTCA is now using the resulting data to formulate recovery project proposals to reactivate the area's tourism sector. The survey was implemented in collaboration with the CTCA.