Forest within the proposed extension (Lou Jost)

In these challenging times, we are delighted to continue our support of the Ecuadorian conservation charity Fundacion EcoMinga with a donation of £25,500, as down payment on our £60,000 purchase of an approximately 250-acre extension to our fabulous cloudforest Naturetrek Reserve in the Ecuadorian Andes close to Baños, 3 hours south of the capital Quito.

We have been working with EcoMinga (the Ecuadorian partner of the World Land Trust) to conserve this incredibly important area of cloudforest since 2007, our goal being to acquire and protect the land needed to preserve the cloudforest corridor that links the Llanganates and Sangay National Parks in the Ecuadorian Andes. This has been classified by WWF as one of the 200 most important wildlife corridors in the world, due to its high levels of biodiversity. However, the unprotected lower slopes between the two national parks are threatened by deforestation at the hands of their many private owners, most of them local farmers keen to replace the forest with plantations of the profitable fruit known in Ecuador as naranjilla (Solanum quitoense), a tomato relative. Our purchase of this forest from the farmers for the purpose of a nature reserve, accessible to the local people for no-impact tourism, is helping to protect numerous regional endemic plant species such as the recently-discovered Blakea attenboroughii, as well as some very special Andean wildlife, including Spectacled Bear, Mountain Tapir, Giant Antpitta and Andean Cock-of-the-rock. It has even resulted in the discovery of two species of frog and one species of lizard which are new to science! We were delighted last summer when one of the frogs that was discovered in our reserve was officially named Noblella naturetrekii, in recognition of Naturetrek’s role in its discovery and conservation, whilst the other new frog species will be named after Naturetrek co-founder, Maryanne Mills, whose determination has always been that the company should invest profits in forest acquisition and whose idea this project was. Lou Jost, co-founder of EcoMinga, notes: "We haven't seen the end of the new species coming out of these mysterious cloudforests. I am sure there will be more!"

Our latest cloudforest acquisition will take our total donation to EcoMinga to over £350,000 – funds generated by our own donations to offset the carbon impact of our clients’ flights – with another £77,500 already ear-marked for further cloudforest acquisitions. If you have booked a holiday with us over the last year, you will likely have been asked if you would like to match our donation, and if you said yes, then we offer our special thanks to you for your additional support. Of course, we are sadly now in the process of cancelling many of these tours, but if you would still like your donation to go towards the future purchase of cloudforest, even though you won’t be taking your flight, we’d be delighted to organise this. Please just let us know once your tour is cancelled, and we will ensure that your kind donation continues to help with species conservation in this fabulous part of the Ecuadorian Andes.

Once complete later in the year, this latest purchase will extend the area of our Naturetrek Reserve to 1,639 acres, and, above all, becomes another piece in the jigsaw as we close in on creating and protecting a cloudforest corridor between the Llanganates and Sangay National Parks, sanctuary to such a wealth of unique, rare and endangered species of fauna and flora.