South America’s Republic of Ecuador is home to amazingly rich biodiversity-including over 1,700 species of birds. Its reduced size, location, and geography create a multiplicity of landscapes, climates, and ecosystems. Emerging from a certain “environmental-consciousness indifference,” an increasing number of enthusiastic Ecuadorians have come to embrace their natural treasures. This relatively new epiphany has evolved, in no small part, due to the 2001 publication of The Birds of Ecuador and the philosophy put forth by the Mindo Cloudforest Foundation (MCF). Both have brought to light the reality that birds, birding, and bird tourism are powerful tools that link the natural world to a conservation ethic that inspires even the most previously incredulous. After co-publishing, with the country’s Ministry of Tourism, Ecuador’s National Bird-Tourism Strategy in 2006, the foundation produced an update four years later in which they designed the nation’s “National Birding Trail Network,” which we present here, along with some of the avian highlights of each, and VENT tours that strive to enjoy them.
15 окт 2024
