Created in 1979, Ecuador's Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve is located between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Work that seeks to protect precious, but now-threatened natural resources and promote improvements in the lives of families now living among or around these resources. Tropical forests are great storehouses of natural life. They are home to more than half the world's species and they can provide sustainable supplies of water, food, timber and numerous other resources if both managed and protected properly. But the over-exploitation of forests has wiped out more than half of the world's original tropical forest cover.
Communities living in and around the reserve depend on the use of surrounding resources to survive.
In Ecuador, the legacy of logging has been equally damaging and continues to pose a threat to the future of the country's natural resources. To combat this, the Ecuadorian government has created a number of conservation areas. The Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve makes up approximately 5 percent of the 18 percent of Ecuador's land that has been set aside for conservation purposes. The reserve is located in a bioregion classified as one of the world's 10 hotspots in terms of conservation priorities because of the unique plant and animal life that resides there and the threat that these now live under. As a result, both international and national interests meet here.