Restoration of a Tropical Forest: The Orchid and Botanical Garden of Puyo, Ecuador

Abstract

E stretches from the Pacific coast up and across the Andes Mountains and back down to the headwaters of the Amazon. The country contains roughly 5% of the world’s biodiversity in just 0.17% of its land area (Pearson and Beletsky 2005). Clearing of tropical forests is driven by a multitude of geopolitical factors, but the leading causes in the Amazon are harvest of valuable timber species and subsequent development of cattle pasture. Owing to low soil fertility, tropical regions often support only two head of cattle per year on one hectare, and grazing productivity begins to drop significantly after only five to ten years (Nebel and Wright 1993). In a seven-hectare plot of land located at 950 meters elevation in the Andes at the headwaters of the Amazon, a restoration effort was undertaken in 1980 to create a fully functioning secondary forest with a diversity of plants, insects, and birds comparable to that in a primary forest. The land had previously been used for cattle grazing and was in a much degraded condition, with little or no topsoil and primarily a monoculture of gramalote pasture grass or carpetgrass (axonopus scoparius). From local accounts, we estimated that the land was first cleared between 1920 and 1930 for sugar cane cultivation, and later shifted to cattle ranching. By 1980, all neighboring lands were occupied by pasture, and the closest In 1980 the restoration area and surrounding lands were being used for low-intensity cattle grazing. Cattle ranching has since actually decreased in the region as yields have decreased, frequently making ranching unprofitable. Photo by Omar Tello