Contact Name: Silvia Benitez Contact the project owner using: ConPro's Form Emailer Contact Organization: The Nature Conservancy

Project Start Date: January 01, 2001 Data Effective Date: January 15, 2005 Sharing Status: This project may be shared outside of TNC.

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Project Description:
The Nature Conservancy together with three local partners, Fundacion Antisana, EcoCiencia and Fundacion Ecologica Rumicocha, in close coordination with the Ministry of the Environment have been working in the Condor Bioreserve for several years.

The Condor Bioreserve (CBR) is an innovative conservation concept that seeks to link six protected areas and its buffer zones, under one management unit. This concept proposes to go beyond borders of protected areas, in order to capture biodiversity patterns. The areas under this unit share common environmental characteristics, and they comprise the upper watershed of the Napo river, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon river. The six protected areas are: Cayambe-Coca Ecological Reserve, Antisana Ecological Reserve, Cofn-Bermejo Reserve, Sumaco-Napo Galeras National Park, Cotopaxi National Park, and Llanganates National Park. The land that links these protected areas constitutes natural corridors which maintain connectivity of umbrella species like large carnivores.


Located in the North-eastern Andes of Ecuador, the Condor Bioreserve covers more than 21,000 square kilometers, and is located between 400 and 5,810 m. of altitude. The Condor Bioreserve holds an extraordinary biodiversity. Its location and environmental characteristics like altitudinal variation, climate patterns, the influence from the Amazon basin have resulted in an area with a very high concentration of biodiversity. Sixteen different vegetation types have been identified, ranging from paramo (high-montane grasslands), to cloud forests to foothill forests. More than 760 bird species, 150 mammal species and 110 amphibian species have been recorded. The area is very important for several threatened species that require large extensions of intact habitat for their survival, like the Andean Bear (Tremarctos ornatus) and the Mountain or Wooly Tapir (Tapirus pinchaque). With about 7% of the surface of the country yet holds almost half the number of species of birds and mammals found in Ecuador.

The Condor Bioreserve is a fascinating place, not only in terms of its biodiversity, but also in terms of the diversity of people and cultures found within it. Communities range from the peasant communities living on the highlands, to two ancestral communities "Oyacachi and Sinango"whose territory is within one of the protected areas of the CBR, to the colonos living in the lower part of the Condor Bioreserve. In the land between the protected areas several towns, villages and small communities are found, which approximately comprises 120,000 people. In addition to the people living inside the Condor Bioreserve, about 20% of the population (2 million habitants) of the country depend on environmental services and natural resources from this area, which makes a remarkable area for the welfare of the people and the economic development of the country.

The Condor Bioreserve has been chosen as a "Parks in Peril" site, a conservation program supported by USAID and The Nature Conservancy. Under this program TNC and its local partners within a close collaboration with the Ministry of the Environment have defined a common goal for this area for 2007: " To achieve a biodiversity conservation model based upon participative strategies that promote the sustainable development of human population".

The Condor Bioreserve project identified an array of conservation targets that represent biodiversity and threats of the area. The targets were chosen to represent different scales being careful to capture terrestrial as well as freshwater systems. Different scales of biological organization were captured by choosing ecosystems as the humid Paramo, as well as species as the Wooly Tapir. Also, different spatial scales were included

Project Goal Comment:
By 2007, achieve an integral management of four protected areas in the Condor Bioreserve ensuring conservation of biodiversity, reducing threats to conservation targets enhancing their viability in key areas outside protected areas and making sure that partners and key stakeholders are strengthened in their capacity of iimplementation of conservation strategies.

Team Info:
The Nature Conservancy:

Paulina Arroyo, Condor Bioreserve Project Coordinator, parroyo@q.tnc.org.ec
Silvia Benitez, Conservation Projects Coordinator, sbenitez@q.tnc.org.ec

Fundacion Antisana
Gustavo Mosquera, Technical Director

Fundacion Ecologica Rumicocha
Juan Colcha, PIP coordinator

EcoCiencia
Jaime Camacho, PIP coordinator

USAID
Douglas Mason

Results and Lessons Learned Summary:
By 2007, achieve an integral management of four protected areas in the Condor Bioreserve ensuring conservation of biodiversity, reducing threats to conservation targets enhancing their viability in key areas outside protected areas and making sure that partners and key stakeholders are strengthened in their capacity of implementation of conservation strategies.

^* For information on the common taxonomy of threats, see http://conservationmeasures.org/CMP/IUCN/.