Scientists Identify Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park As One of Most Biodiverse Places on Earth
Jan. 19, 2010
Yasuní rainforest canopy. Photo: Bejat McCracken
AUSTIN, Texas — A team of scientists has documented that Yasuní National Park, in the core of the Ecuadorian Amazon, shatters world records for a wide array of plant and animal groups, from amphibians to trees to insects.
The authors also conclude that proposed oil development projects represent the greatest threat to Yasuní and its biodiversity.
“This study demonstrates that Yasuní is the most diverse area in South America, and possibly the world,” said Dr. Peter English of The University of Texas at Austin. “Amphibians, birds, mammals and vascular plants all reach maximum diversity in Yasuní.”
The study is published in the open-access scientific journal PLoS ONE.
“We have so far documented 596 bird species occurring in Yasuní,” said English, a bird specialist. “That’s incredible diversity to find in just one corner of the Amazon rainforest and rivals any other spot on the planet.”
Other specialists joined in to give the first complete picture of the extraordinary diversity found in Yasuní National Park.
“The 150 amphibian species documented to date throughout Yasuní is a world record for an area of this size,” said Shawn McCracken of Texas State University. “There are more species of frogs and toads within Yasuní than are native to the United States and Canada combined.”
Crowned like a king, the spike-headed katydid, Panacanthus cuspidatus, is one of the projected 100,000 insect species in Yasuní. Photo: Bejat McCracken
The scientists also confirmed that an average upland hectare (2.47 acres) in Yasuní contains more tree species, 655, than are native to the continental United States and Canada combined. The number of tree species rises to more than 1,100 for an area of 25 hectares.
“In just one hectare in Yasuní, there are more tree, shrub and liana (woody vines) species than anywhere else in the world,” said Gorky Villa, an Ecuadorian botanist working with both the Smithsonian Institution and Finding Species.
Perhaps the most impressive statistic of all is that a single hectare of forest in Yasuní is projected to contain 100,000 insect species. According to eminent entomologist Dr. Terry Erwin, that is the highest estimated diversity per unit area in the world for any plant or animal group.
“One of our most important findings about Yasuní is that small areas of forest harbor extremely high numbers of animals and plants,” said lead author Margot Bass, president of Finding Species, a non-profit with offices in Maryland and Quito, Ecuador. “Yasuní is probably unmatched by any other park in the world for total numbers of species.”
The extraordinary diversity of Yasuní is best exemplified at the 1,600-acre Tiputini Biodiversity Station on the northern edge of the park.
“The Tiputini Biodiversity Station is home to 247 amphibian and reptile species, 550 bird species and around 200 mammal species,” said Dr. Kelly Swing of the University of San Francisco in Quito, Ecuador.
“What makes Yasuní especially important is its potential to sustain this extraordinary biodiversity in the long term,” said Dr. Matt Finer of Save America’s Forests. “For example, the Yasuní region is predicted to maintain wet, rainforest conditions as climate change-induced drought intensifies in the eastern Amazon.”
The paper concludes with a number of science-based policy recommendations. One key recommendation is a moratorium on new oil exploration or development projects within the park, particularly in the remote and relatively intact—but oil rich—northeast corner that contains oil blocks 31 and ITT.
The Ecuadorian government is promoting a revolutionary plan, known as the Yasuní-ITT Initiative, which would leave the park’s largest oil reserves in the ITT block permanently under the ground. A lack of funding commitments, however, now threatens the proposal.
“The Yasuní-ITT Initiative urgently needs international funders to step up and make it a success, or else more drilling in the core of Yasuní may become a tragic reality,” concluded Finer.
For more information, contact: Lee Clippard, College of Natural Sciences, 512-232-0675 ; Peter English, The University of Texas at Austin, 512-627-7517 ; Matt Finer, Save America’s Forests, 202-544-9219 .
OIL POLITICS: Wishing Ogoni Yasuni
By Nnimmo Bassey
August 4, 2011 01:23PM
Flowing from the Eastern slopes of the Andes, the Napo River in North Eastern Ecuador offers travellers a swift downstream ride. The broad river with occasional sand bars was so replete with driftwood that as the Oilwatch team sailed on it a week ago, we had to hold our breath when it seemed the pilot would run smack into some. Happily the over four-hour ride from Coca, the capital city of Orellana Province, to Neuva Rocafuerte, close to the Ecuadorian border with Peru, was devoid of incident.
Views of lush forests and the occasional human settlements on the banks of the river were broken at two points by gas flares that peeped through the foliage. Before heading here I had heard a presentation where it was stated that gas flaring had been snuffed out in Ecuador. Here we were, confronted with blatant evidence to the contrary. These flares cannot be hidden.
We were headed for Yasuni, the nature reserve and indigenous territory famous for being declared by the government as out of bounds to crude oil activities. Yasuni holds 846 million barrels of crude oil or 20 percent of the country’s oil reserves. Valued at $7.2 billion, the Ecuadorian government launched a programme in August 2010 where it stated that the country would leave the oil underground and forgo 50 percent of its value in the process.
Interesting. But where would the balance 50 percent come from if the oil is not extracted and sold? The proposal requires that the international community contribute the balance $3.6 billion over a period of 13 years. A steep idea, if you ask me. However, since then there have been responses, although the trickle is yet to become a deluge.
Perhaps you are wondering why anyone would sit on oil reserves and refuse to drill it. The reasons given by the Ecuadorian government include that the area in question is a national park, protected by law against mining and other destructive activities. Yasuni, in the Amazon, is a biodiversity hotspot. It is so lush, captivating and awe-inspiring you would not blink if someone suggests that Yasuni means ‘sacred land’.
Secondly, there are some indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation in this territory. They ask nothing of government, want nothing from anyone, except that they should be left alone, to stay with no contact with anyone.
Thirdly, leaving the oil underground avoids release of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.
Expectedly, corporate interests seriously contest the government’s intention. But the people are all for leaving the oil in the soil here. Campaigners include school kids who have formed themselves into Guardians of Yasuni groups.
While the battle is on to leave the oil firmly underground in the Yasuni, this has already been the reality of Ogoni, Nigeria, since 1993 when Shell was expelled from their territory. Shell’s expulsion has effectively locked the oil underground here, and attempts to return to the lucrative Ogoni oil fields could not materialise as the people are not ready to forget the damage done by decades of exploitation of crude in their land. They are not ready to wash away the memories of the several lives lost when the Nigerian state unleashed a reign of terror on the people – an orgy that climaxed in the murder of Ogoni chiefs and the state murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni leaders. Moreover, thousands of Ogonis are yet to return from exile into which they were forced by the state of insecurity that reigned in the land.
Many Ogoni people are happy that oil extraction has been halted in their land and creeks. However, with major oil pipelines crossing through Ogoni territory, they have experienced massive oil spills even though oil activities do not go on there.
Interestingly, many observers claim that there has been a deliberate arm-twisting rule by government not to allow benefits accruing to other oil producing areas into Ogoni. They insist that there are no NNDC projects in their area simply because they have rejected the re-entry of oil companies. The question they ask, and we agree, is why nothing is remembered of the decades of oil extraction here and the pollutions that led to the peaceful resistance and expulsion of Shell. Why is no one taking note that new oil spills have sacked the entire Goi community, for example, and thoroughly damaged the rivers/creeks at Bodo City?
As the Ogoni pollution study by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is being released, it is hoped that the next steps of remediation of Ogoni land will be undertaken with the polluter picking the bill. We can hazard that the UNEP report will state that Ogoni is far severely polluted. If that is so, the question for the Nigerian government will be why they seek to reopen the oil wells in Ogoni? Would it be to inflict more harm on the land, and on the people? The people testify that life is better for them without the sharp claws of the oil industry.
For leaving the oil underground, Ogoni should be rewarded and not punished. They are saving their environment and saving the planet too. As the pollution report is released the best that we can do is to wish Ogoni Yasuni and to see it happen.
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