Description - Conservation work in Intag

Over the next two weeks I'm going to be working at my first volunteer project, conservation work at the Alto Chocó reserve. I thought I would provide a description of the project so you can better understand what I will be doing.

Alto Chocó is located in Intag, about four hours north of Quito in Ecuador. This region has been designated one of the most important endangered areas for biodiversity. The reserve is located on the slopes of the mountains in the cloud forest, at an altitude between 1,000 and 2,950 meters.

Alto Chocó's main purpose is reforestation to try and recover about 225 acres of cloud forest. To help supplement this reforestation work, my tasks, along with tree planting, will include growing tree seedlings, maintaining the botanical garden (with hopes of transplanting the over 60 species of orchids back into the woods), developing worm compost, maintaining the infrastructure of the reserve and gathering native tree seeds to germinate.

A secondary purpose of the project is researching the Spectacled Bear. Once or twice a week, I will go for hikes in the woods to look for signs of the bears in hopes of better understanding them so that eventually we can help bring their population back. These bears are small in comparison to Canadian bears. They would be around the size of a baby black bear. To aid with the research, one of the tasks is to plant corn plantations to feed the wild bears in hopes of increasing the opportunity for more research.

The most interesting part of my project is going to be my living conditions. I will be living at a remote research station that's a 20 minute walk from the road and a 30km bus ride from the nearest medical facility (it also doesn't have any electricity). The hardest part of all of this is that I met with the project coordinator on Friday and he told me that at this time there are no other volunteers or researchers. It will be just me and a guide/supervisor who I will be working with .... and as far as I can tell, he goes home at night.

So needless to say this project has the beginnings of a great horror movie ...... Dave heads into the Ecuadorian Cloudforest .... all that was found of him was his camera ..... this is what happened .... (in blogs everywhere March 1, 2008)

BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!It turns out that after I had written this entire description, things have changed. There has been a lot of rain in Intag which has caused landslides. Thus my project in Intag has been closed. As such I'm heading to Mindo for a different conservation project. I have no idea what I'm going to do there and all I know of Mindo is that it's west of Quito and has lots of butterflies. That's all. Good thing I did all that research on Intag over the past three months .... and a really good thing I didn't go to Intag on Saturday as planned!!