Rebuilding Fragile Rainforest Soil After Years of Exploitation
My first rainforest visit occurred in 1967 in Ecuador as a vacationing college student. The jumping off point to visit Ecuador's "Oriente" rainforest at that time was Puyo, a humid frontier town with dirt streets at the base of the eastern slope of the Andes. From Puyo missionaries traveled to the interior, mostly by airplane, to do their calling, colonist cleared virgin rainforest to homestead 50 hectares of land given by the government, Indians came to sell their handcrafts to the few tourists, and lumber trucks full of huge logs of mahogany, caoba, guayacán groaned up the steep narrow road to the highlands passing some of the most beautiful scenery -- orchids, waterfalls, steep gorges -- that I have ever seen. Puyo with its dirt streets and noisy cantinas was vibrant, active, a real frontier town.
About that same time oil was discovered farther east of Puyo deep in the Rainforest. Colonization, land clearing, logging and speculation in Ecuador's eastern rainforest accelerated. Since that time I have passed through Puyo on numerous occasions during my visits to Ecuador. The once heavily forested surrounding hills have been mostly cleared for pastures and cattle. Puyo itself has matured and is now a town with paved streets, traffic, and well-stocked stores. On a trip to Puyo in April, 2004, I discovered a real island of rainforest rejuvenation -- El Jardín Botánico "Las Orquideas" (The Orchids Botanical Garden) operated by Puyo native Omar Tello, an accountant by trade and an avid botanist and orchid enthusiast. Omar and his wife have single-handedly renourished the fragile rainforest soil on the farm by continually bringing in truck loads of organic matter for the last 29 years. Most of his seven-hectare (17 acre) farm located about three km. south of Puyo has slowly been converted back to viable rainforest. The property is a green gem in the middle of rolling pastureland that was once solid Rainforest. Omar gives tours through his rainforest which is of equal lushness and complexity but admittedly smaller than any of the walking tours I have made in Costa Rican Rainforests in Monteverde or Sarapiquí. Omar regularly visits construction sites at the edge of Rainforest saving plants that are being bulldozed. Many of these plants are brought back to his farm and planted in his own rainforest. At first these transplants would not become established in his leached, acidic soil. But after years of adding organic matter in the form of a mixture of wood chips and chicken manure, waste from nearby farms and mills, the trees and other vegetation began to flourish. Now Omar enthusiastically shows you plants along the trail. He picks off a cinnamon leaf and has you chew on it. It is a little "hot" like a pepper but definitely cinnamon. He shows you a tiny orchid the size of a small mosquito. And it's in flower! You need a hand lens to see it. Then he proudly shows you seedlings that have sprouted on their own beneath the enlarging canopies of larger trees. His rainforest is becoming self-sustaining again.
Why can't the rainforest just be
replanted?
Cutting the rainforest has long-term effects. Once the
trees are cut and the leaf-litter stops replenishing the thick layer of organic matter in
the soil, the existing organic matter disappears within a few months due to
warm, moist conditions that favor accelerated microbial activity. Soon there
is no organic matter left in the soil only mineral
components that in the Amazon region are extremely acidic and often contain toxic levels of aluminum. Nutrients
leach away and the unprotected soil is easily eroded.
Ranching is not very adaptable to the land of the Amazon Rainforest. The grasses required to feed cattle, like the crops maintained in agriculture are not resistant to the natural forces of the Amazon Basin and quickly deplete the nutrients of the surrounding soil. What nutrients that were once in the soil are removed from the ecosystem, shipped away as beef. Studies on land use have also suggested that the continuous movement of cattle on the unprotected land results in soil compacting, which increases the density of the soil material, resulting in decreased root penetration, water infiltration, and gas exchange.1 Replanting desirable trees and many other plants is impossible. The only plants that will grow on this spent rainforest soil are pasture grasses and junk trees.
1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology website http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2006/teams/r5/groupcharacterization6.doc
How to Help Omar's Project
El Jardín Botánico "Las Orquideas" is an ideal site for graduate studies in ecology, botany, forestry. Omar has living quarters available for students and groups of students who want a meaningful place to do research. Graduate students whose thesis work can complement the on-going research at the Jardin are welcome. Other students who can help in the identification and logging of plant and animal species are also welcome. Not a student but want to help? The Jardin Botanico needs volunteers who would like hands-on experience in ecological restoration. Volunteers must be able to speak Spanish and commit to at least one month. To learn more about volunteering, see the Jardin's profile on Idealist, or e-mail Omar at Jardin Botanico Las Orquideas.
Donations: The Jardin urgently needs money to purchase adjacent property to expand the park to provide additional habitat for threatened plant and animal species. Check the link below for more information.
Above all, visit the Jardin Botanico Las Orquideas website at:
Puyo, Ecuador This small but bustling town located at the eastern base of the Andes has been Ecuador's first entry point into the vast Amazon Basin until recently when more roads and entry-point were constructed. I have been making the trip down that winding road from Ambato in the central highlands to Puyo in the Rainforest foothills since 1967 when I was a college student exploring Ecuador. The once five-hour white-knuckle bus trip on a one and a half lane road through some of the most narrow, hairpin curves overlooking steep drop offs is now about one and a half hour drive over a much improved road. But the steep cliffs and the magnificent scenery are still there along with the multitude of orchids displaying themselves from the edge of the road. But now Puyo is no longer the frontier of the rainforest. It is a bustling economic center through which food and merchandise from the more developed parts of Ecuador move into the jungle and where lumber and cattle move back to the Ecuadorian population centers. Puyo is still quaint but no longer has that frontier edginess. Puyo is somewhat burnt out. The big forests I saw in the late 60's and early 70's are gone replaced by rolling pastures. The organic matter that gave life to that rainforest soil is gone just as the huge forests. Just about nothing but pasture grasses will grow.
