Yasuní National Park

Jungle cats in the Amazon are quite difficult to find —especially the jaguar— but in the Yasuní area, you have a total of 6 species out of the 10 found throughout the entire continent. The jaguar is a majestic creature that throughout the Americas carries with him an aura unchallenged, one that has made it a mythic figure amongst almost every single human group that has shared its jungle world. It is a reclusive, monogamist mammal, with a massive body, striking pattern and powerful hunting skills. Jaguars have been recorded in Napo Wildlife Center, but are virtually impossible to come across. Camera traps located inside forest have also shot panthers (which are melanistic —or black— jaguars) and pumas.

The more common jungle cats, still extremely hard to see in the wild, especially during the brief period most people stay at Napo Wildlife Center, belong to the smaller group: Jaguarundi, Margay, Ocelot and Oncilla.

The Jaguarundi is a beautifully grayish-tinged uniform small puma found in different areas of the Americas.  The Ocelot and the Margay are both very similar in appearance. They differ in size, margays are smaller, and margays can also rotate their paws, which enables them to be more flexible when climbing up and down trees. Last but not least, the oncilla (locally known as the tigrillo, or “little tiger”) is another smaller jungle cat more spotted and less intricately patterned than the margay and the ocelot.

They are all spectacular representatives of our natural world and if you get a chance to see one during a night walk, on a trail or at a salt lick in the Yasuní, consider yourself honored!

 The layman may very well live in oblivion, with little understanding of how the powers that be rule his everyday world. He may concoct conspiracy theories of how a handful of scheming bankers and politicians take advantage of his own life, but he hasn’t a clear picture, let alone credible evidence, of how these manipulations work. Scientists in the rainforest have forever felt what laymen feel about conspiracies. They know that a large majority of the rainforests’ dynamics plays out way above their heads, in what they have come to know as the “forest canopy”, but the inability to access it with ease renders their knowledge theoretical, at best.

The canopy, the forests’ ceiling, so to speak, seems like a puzzle of infinite pieces. There are animals and plants that hardly ever leave it, monkeys, epyphites, birds and insects that interrelate and could reveal numerous aspects of the biological realities that dictate the extreme biodiversity of a place like Yasuní. Thus, scientists have been seeking ways to explore it efficiently for decades. At first, it was climbing up a tree with ropes (usually the scientist himself was unable to, so he had to resort to a jungle native, and in one particular case, to a monkey to do so) to grab whatever random sample he could get his hands on for later study. Of course, in a place where every square foot may hold well over a hundred different species of living matter, what “clear picture” could these samples allow?

Today, different ways of exploring the canopy have been developed. Canopy towers, like that of Napo Wildlife Center, covers the entire strata spectrum of the forest on a galvanized-metal staircase, reaching the top of an emergent tree well over 100 ft. above the ground. For scientists, this may not be enough. They may prefer an entire system of moving cranes, which would have to feature perfectly silent movement, a technology that perhaps has not been yet developed, to not disturb the world the animals they are trying to study. But for the layman, however, a good observation deck is a spectacular vantage point to suggest how vast and awe-inspiring tropical rainforests really are. No need for theories there.

Walking along a jungle path just outside Ecuador’s largest national park, Yasuní, the Zabala family was surprised by a group of nude Amazonians that emerged from the forest. The mother screamed as the tribesmen plunged palm-wood lances decorated with macaw feathers into her chest and stomach, killing her. They then speared two of her children, grabbed her infant son and made off into the woods. Days later, the baby was found—alive—in a hole dug beneath a tree root.

One of the most biodiverse places on this planet, the nearly-4,000-square-mile Yasuní National Park is also the verdant home of two small, semi-nomadic tribes that live in isolation: the Taromenane and Tagaeri. The attack on the Zabalas, the latest of several such incidents in the past decade, occurred near heavy machinery opening a road and a generator powering an oil well. Ecuador’s environment ministry hypothesized that the Taromenane, drawn by the sound of the roadwork and the generator’s “deafening noise,” were striking back at an “enveloping society.” Indeed, oil activity has pushed steadily east through the northern half of Yasuní’s untouched depths for the last several decades. The undeveloped ITT area—named for its potentially lucrative Ishpingo, Tambococha and Tiputini oil fields—overlaps more than 350 square miles of Yasuní’s northeast corner, and is all that remains between ongoing projects and the Peruvian border.

But the government’s Yasuní-ITT Initiative dictates that oil-dependent Ecuador will leave ITT alone forever if the international community comes up with half the $7.2 billion value of its oil. Money raised would fund conservation, reforestation and renewable energy. An initially enthusiastic reception has been hushed by the government’s aggressive sales pitch, which at times has sounded more like a hostage negotiation than an international model for conserving tropical, mega-diverse areas. Ecuador needs $100 million in commitments by year-end to keep the Yasuní-ITT trust fund alive. As of early December, it had about $70 million.

I wanted to see what about ITT the government thought could inspire people the world over to loosen their purse strings. While waiting for my access permit in the Ecuadorian environment ministry’s regional office, I chatted with a pair of bright-eyed employees. In a moment of candor, one said, “I hope the government gets the money. If not, have you seen Avatar?” She signaled the Yasuní wall map with her small palms wide open. “This is the Ecuador version.”

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I hoped ITT itself, the pristine northeast corner of Yasuní park, might deliver a more coherent pitch for conservation to me and my friend Dan, an emergency medicine doctor whose idea of a vacation is hitchhiking through rural Africa. To our uninitiated ears, though, the jungle’s voice would seem subdued, not symphonic. Deciphering it would be best accomplished traveling ITT’s trails and paddling down the Yasuní River with interpreters from the Waorani tribe, which, although still remote, has been contacted over the last half-century. With the Waoranis’ help, I believed ITT would prove itself a world apart.

And I had good reason to hope: Yasuní occupies just 0.15 percent of the entire Amazon region yet is home to roughly one-third of its amphibian, reptile, bird and mammal species. In a given hectare, there are 100,000 insect species, not to mention more species of trees here than in the U.S. and Canada combined. The number of fish species surpasses that of the Mississippi River basin. Invoking the cliché “teeming with life” would merely scratch the surface. Yasuní is life atop life atop life, all of which—in a cruel twist of fate—resides atop oil. ITT alone holds about 900 million barrels, or 20 percent of Ecuador’s total reserves.

This bounty defies comprehension to everyone except people like Quemontare “Pedro” Enomenga. Pedro, 23, is one of the first three Waorani whom Ecuador’s environment ministry hired as park guards in 2011, and we were the first people he guided.

Pedro is short with a boyish face, but strapped with muscle from hunting since he was old enough to hoist a spear. He weaved briskly between trees with absolute certainty; to his trained senses, the jungle was alive with meaning. We struggled to keep up, bypassing trees, plants and mushrooms with a pathetic inability to identify any of them. Our taxonomic vision, Pedro informed us, was on par with that of a Waorani toddler. A nettle he pushed into our forearms raised the skin in bumps and left a pleasant numbing sensation like Icy Hot. The stench of a fullback’s sweaty shoulder pads signaled that tapirs had passed through. What looked like an unripe starfruit was actually a pod containing pulp-covered seeds that tasted like watermelon Jolly Ranchers. I perceived everything in terms of my world, but there was no analog when Pedro peeled back a vine to reveal a fluid the Waorani use to paint their faces. He made birdcalls and conversed with doves. His own language, Wao Terero, bears no relation to any other on Earth.

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Original Link: http://www.wendmag.com/magazine/06-04/yasuni/