Otobo's Amazon Safari
Created in 1979, Yasunì National Park covers 9820 km2 between the Napo and Curaray rivers and is a major protected area within the western Amazon. In 2010, a group of 100 scientists from Ecuador and around the world published the first synthesis of biodiversity data for Yasunì National Park in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. According to the “Concerned Scientists for Yasunì”, this part of the Amazon basin is one of the world’s last high-biodiversity wilderness areas, a regiorn of extraordinary species richness across taxonomic groups. (Bass M.S., Finer M., Jenkis C.N., Cisneros-Heredia D.F., et al. 2010. Global Conservation Significance of Ecuador’s Yasunì National Park. PLOS ONE).
In 1999, a presidential decree created the Zona Intangible Tagaeri-Taromenane (ZITT) within the Park, an area permanently off-limits for oil drilling, mining and logging. It covers approximately 700000 ha and is populated by about 300 Huaorani distributed along the Shiripuno and Cononaco rivers. Other two indigenous groups named Tagaeri and Taromenani that refused the contact with the modern world in the last decades, still now live in voluntary isolation deep in the forest mantaining a semi-nomadic lifestyle just like their ancestors did for thousands of years. Thanks to its untouchability, the ZITT represents the megadiverse heart of the Yasunì National Park. The Huaorani who live in the Intangible Zone understand the outstanding conservation significance of their territory and are involved in managing tourism and advocacy activities in order to protect the rainforest, their culture and human rights.
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With about 150 species of amphibians and 120 reptiles, the herpetofauna is the most diverse ever documented on a landscape scale (≤10000 km2).
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More that 600 birds represent one third of the Amazon’s total native species.
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At a local scale (≤100 km2) Yasunì is one of the few places in the world with over 200 coexisting mammal species. The Park is home to several threatened mammals uplisted from vulnerable to endangered such as White-bellied Spider Monkey, Common Woolly Monkey, Giant Otter, Giant Armadillo, Lowland Tapir and to two endemic primates: Golden-mantled Tamarin and Equatorial Saki. Bat diversity is stunning, with over 100 species.
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Healthy populations of elusive top carnivores like Jaguar, Puma, Harpy Eagle and Crested Eagle still survive where habitat fragmentation didn’t occour with the consequent reduction of their home range.
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The estimated fish diversity is around 500 species and a single hectare of forest in Yasunì National Park is estimated to contain at least 100000 arthropods.
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Yasunì is among the richest areas globally for vascular plants, which determines a highly complex forest structure with diversified ecological niches where organisms compete and interact.
These are just few numbers that can give you the idea of the extreme species richness of the Yasunì and its incredible ecological value. Otobo’s Amazon Safari is a full immersion in a paradise of biodiversity where wildlife lovers have the opportunity to experience at first hand a truly untouched and pristine rainforest. Although a methodical animal inventory has not be done yet in the forest around Otobo’s community Boanamo, species richness seems to coincide on the datas collected by the Concerned Scientists and in some cases looks higher: for example, in Boanamo we found 13 species of monkeys while in the Tiputini Biological Station, located to the north of the Park, have been counted 10 species.
