Abstract
Ecuador has the world’s highest biodiversity, despite being a tiny fraction of the world’s land area. The threat of extinction for much of this biodiversity has dramatically increased since April 2016, during which time the Ecuadorian government has opened approximately 2.9 million hectares of land for mining exploration, with many of the concessions in previously protected forests. Herein, we describe the system of protected lands in Ecuador, their mining laws, and outline the scale of threat by comparing the mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and orchids from several now threatened protected areas, classed as “Bosques Protectores” (BPs), in the NW montane cloud forests. We examine two large (>5,000 ha) BPs, Los Cedros and El Chontal, and two medium BPs, Mashpi (1,178 ha) and Maquipucuna (2,474 ha). Since BP El Chontal is so poorly explored, we used several other small reserves (<500 hectares) in the Intag Valley to gain an idea of its biodiversity. Together, these BPs and reserves form a buffer and a southern corridor for the still-protected Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve, which is otherwise now surrounded by mining concessions. We gathered published literature, “gray literature”, information from reserve records and websites, and our previously unpublished observations to make comparative species tables for each reserve. Our results from these still incompletely known reserves reveal the astonishing losses that mining will incur: eight critically endangered species, including two primates (brown-headed spider monkey and white-fronted capuchin), 37 endangered species, 149 vulnerable and 85 near threatened and a large number of less threatened species Our data show that each of the reserves protects a unique subset of taxa in this land of highly localized endemics. Each of the reserves also generates sustainable income for the local people. The short-term national profits from mining will not compensate for the permanent biodiversity losses, and the long-term ecosystem service and economic losses at the local and regional level.
