Los Visionarios – Articles and Publications

Ecuador's variety of ecological habitats supports a biological diversity unparalleled by any country of its size in the world. It is essential that we act quickly, as our first priority, to preserve areas with the highest biological diversity that are in danger of destruction.

South America is said to have the richest botanical diversity in the tropics. (14) The Amazon Basin is the largest, most diverse tropical rain forest in the world. The Andean zone is said to have the highest diversity of plant and animal life on the planet. (15) 'Many scientists consider Ecuador to have more plants per unit area than any other country in South America.' (16) with a very high level of endemism. (16)(17)(13) 'The country perhaps features as many as 20,000 plant species, compared with an estimated 20,000 for all of Central America including southern Mexico, and 25,000 - 30,000 for all of Brazilian Amazonia.' (13) But it's estimated that Ecuador will almost certainly be completely deforested in a mere 10 years. (26)(11) Widespread extinction has already occurred in Ecuador's coastal lowlands after it was almost completely deforested in a mere 10 years, and may contain more acutely threatened species than any other part of South America.(13)

Traveling from the tropical lowlands to Ecuador's snow capped highlands is equivalent to a much longer trip of about 4,600 miles (7,400 km), from the equator to the Arctic Circle. Traveling up the mountains through different levels, you pass through examples of practically every kind of plant community found in the world at large, from tropical forest and desert savanna, to alpine scrub above tree line, and 'alpine tundra vegetation in the permafrost belt. (18) Similar changes in plant-life-zones occur as one travels from the equator to the poles.

High equatorial mountains are of considerable biological interest, since they support biota which in many respects resemble those of temperate mountains and even arctic regions, but under conditions without an alternating winter and summer. (19) 'The compaction of so many distinctive vegetational zones into such a small area makes the Andean slopes especially important for conservation.' (11) It's estimated that about half of all the plant species of the American tropics are found above 500 m (1,640 ft.) (including species that also range into the lowlands), and that this high diversity is concentrated in Ecuador, Peru, and Columbia. (11)

A typical four square mile (2,560 acre) area of rainforest normally contains up to 1,500 species of flowering plants and as many as 750 species of trees. (20) In Ecuador's deforested coastal lowlands, a tiny remnant of almost extinct Pacific lowland rain forest, at what is now the Río Palenque Science Center, contains over 1,350 species from 136 families, recorded from only 100 hectares (247 acres) of tropical rain forest. (16) About 20 % of the Río Palenque species are endemic to Ecuador and another five percent are endemic to Ecuador plus extreme south-western Columbia. (11) Forty-three are known only from this sight, (16) including the Rio Palenque Mahogany (Perseatheobromifolia), one of the 10 most endangered plants in the world, of which only 12 mature trees exist. (21) Rio Palenque probably has the highest recorded plant diversity in the world. (22)(13)

'The Andean region became an important center for domestication of crop species because of its striking geographical contrast.' (2) Twelve major world centers of diversity for our food and economic crops are recognized. (23) The Andean region of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia is one of the most important and diverse of these centers. The Incas cultivated as many as 70 crop species, almost as many species of plants as the farmers of all of Asia or Europe. (2) Twenty-two percent of the world's palm genera are found in Ecuador, more than on the entire continent of Africa. (17) North-western Amazonia is the richest area of diversity for tropical fruit germplasm in South America, and is being recognized as an important new center of crop diversity, with previously undescribed cultivated species being found by
researchers studying the remaining Amerindian groups in the region. (24)(25)

References for the above two papers