Craig C. Downer is a wildlife ecologist who resides in Carson City, Nevada, USA. He is currently in Ecuador, studying mountain tapirs and encouraging the conservation of these animals, other wildlife and the vanishing habitats of the high northern Andes. He has written a number of papers on Tapirus pinchaque and authored the mountain tapir section of the IUCN's Action Plan for tapirs, to be published in the near future. While in Ecuador, his home base is in Baños, in the state of Tungurahua. On March 3, Craig wrote to the Tapir Preservation Fund:


March 3, 1997

In the earlier report (November, 1996) jointly signed by Dr. Bassett and myself, I informed you of the poaching in Sangay National Park [see also press release], which we encountered when we entered from the village of Etien to the La Playa area at the base of Sangay Volcano. Since then I have made several other excursions and learned much about the mountain tapir's status and that of its habitat in divers regions. I will treat this expedition by expedition.

Detail map of north central Ecuador

At the base of Sangay Volcano

In December 1996, the two weeks prior and leading up to Christmas, I reentered Sangay National Park with the same guide, Manuel Abarca, but this time we went beyond the La Playa area into the primitive zone of the park at the southeast base of the Sangay Volcano. It was a bit risky entering this zone as the volcano was quite active and spilling out lava which formed rocks which descended at a high velocity, making a terrific "burring" noise. In addition, we had to pass over a narrow, slippery bridge where one false move would send one plunging hundreds of feet into a deep and dark abyss. Once in the primitive zone, however, it was like entering the Garden of Eden, so harmonious were all the elements of the natural world here.

Even in this young, lava-based community, the presence of a healthy soil is greatly manifest in the general health and well-being of the entire ecosystem. There were no cattle, there was no burning of the ecosystem, except as occasionally occurs due to volcanic activity. The scenery here was very dramatic and breath-taking between cloud forest and paramo (Alpine meadows), and with a natural amphitheater of cliffs against the backdrop of the volcano.

White deer in the mist

Among the most exciting and rewarding aspects of my stay in "La Playa East" was my encounter with a whitish deer and later a pair of mountain tapirs. It may seem to some an incredible happening, but on the day of the full moon, which from about 8 AM until 2 PM had been quite foggy, a white deer came up to me in the mist like a long lost friend to greet me. After we exchanged salutations, this deer lead me downslope toward a pair of mountain tapirs, male and female. With the aid of my two native guides, I was able to get quite close and obtain some excellent portraits of the mountain tapir in the wild.

Courtship among the tapirs

All tolled on this expedition we saw 14 mountain tapirs, eight of which were male-female pairs. This is the most I have ever seen on a single expedition, though granted we covered a lot of territory. These were seen both in highest "ceja de la selva" cloud forest and in the treeless paramo, and lend evidence that December may be a month for courtship and mating among the tapirs in this area. Another of the most exciting encounters was actually observing a male and female mountain tapir pair engaging in courtship activity. This occurred right above the La Playa camp, the base camp for those who ascend the Sangay Volcano. I obtained a number of photographs of them through a 500 mm telephoto lens. I did not want to approach too closely for fear of scaring them away. I watched them for about two hours, until dark. Other tapir pairs and solitaries were observed both in forest and paramo, grazing, resting, courting, moving about; and a good deal of notes were taken on their behavior which add to the general knowledge concerning this little-known animal.

Cattle in Sangay National Park

The cattle invasion with its attendant burning of forest and paramo habitats continues apace in certain areas of the park. As stated in my November report, this is a serious problem which threatens the integrity of the park and the lives of the mountain tapirs and many other species, including those unknown, rare, endangered and/or endemic. I have discussed this problem with park superintendent Vincente Alvarez, and he indicates that progress is being made in the area of Etien and Gualaraj. He is hopeful that an agreement will soon be reached whereby these communities and their haciendas will pull their cattle out of the park in the Plazapamba and Yanayacu sectors.

We spent Christmas night coming out of the park, finally arriving after sunset and in pouring rain at Plazapamba. Here we spent the night in a grass hut with caretakers of cattle of the Villagomez hacienda, whose base is near Etien. Several other owners also place their cattle into the park, but it is revealing that Carlos Villagomez is a wealthy banker in Riobamba, according to my guide Manuel Abarca, also of Etien. Villagomez certainly does not need to be grazing cattle in a national park for his own subsistence! I have informed Vincente Alvarez of this situation and he promises to do something about it. Poaching of the mountain tapirs goes on wherever there are cattle, since the vaqueros use dogs to round up their cattle, and will use them also for cornering and killing the mountain tapirs. Clearly cattle and national parks/mountain tapirs are incompatible.

Wealthy hunters on legally protected land

I have learned that certain citizens of Etien and neighboring communities, as well as wealthy hunters both Ecuadorean and foreign are regularly led by both licensed and unlicensed tourist guides into Sangay National Park. Here they hunt deer, mountain tapirs, spectacled bears (on occasion), rabbits, guinea pigs, guans (small birds of the curassow family), and other wildlife. Witnesses are being sought to convict and punish these individuals, and I have talked to some of the ecotourist guides about this problem. One of these is the RainForest agency, which operates out of Baños. We agree that making public examples of the hunters who act illegally is of crucial importance in educating the general populace. Their conviction and punishment will show that authorities are serious in their stand to protect the park and its wildlife.

International pressure should be brought to bear. A project I designed was to have been adopted by the Minister of Environment and presented as a request for funds to the World Heritage Site office in Paris. However, I am now uncertain whether this request was followed through. President Abdalah Bucaram has been forced from office, and a new Environmental Director is due. I will be going to Quito to try to straighten out this situation.

Reserva Golondrinas, northern Ecuador

So far, I have been talking about conditions in and around Sangay National Park in the eastern central part of the country. In January 1997, I toured the Reserva Golondrinas in Carchi state, far to the north near the Colombian border. Here a large area of cloud forest and paramo, the headwaters of the Rio Blanco which empties into the Rio Mira, is being preserved or restored through a very positive program which incorporates agroforestry and terracing techniques using largely native species of a wide variety. Ecotourism is also part of this project as well as a program by which international volunteers help to restore denuded slopes and work with locals to develop sound land management practices. These obviate their abandoning the sterile, eroded, "raped" land they have caused to plunder the remaining watershed forests and paramos. The Golondrinas sanctuary apparently has no surviving mountain tapirs, and I saw no evidence of them, but in an area to the west known as Cerro Golondrinas, reports of a few survivors came to my attention from local campesinos. I have discussed a project to reintroduce the mountain tapir into the reserve with Elisa Manteca-Oñate, president of the Golondrinas Foundation, as well as with her husband, Pete Saabe. They would like to work with me in realizing a reintroduction of these animals into their reserve.

Seeking mountain tapirs for relocation

The other two expeditions I made while in northern Ecuador were largely for the purpose of identifying an area from which mountain tapirs could be transferred into Golondrinas.

The first area I visited was the Reserva Ecologica El Angel, just to the east of Golondrinas [ED NOTE: Sorry, I could not find this for our map]. This has many of the characteristics of an "abandoned reserve," although its frailejon (Espeletia spp.) stands are magnificent. These trees grow 15 to 20 feet tall and have long, feathery leaves at the crown. Though mountain tapirs were living here in recent years, the reserve director, Carlos Medina, informed me that there are none at present. This is a consequence of heavy hunting pressure by surrounding ranchers and campesinos coupled with the widespread practice of burning the high paramos. A major fire had just swept a large portion of the reserve in December and had its source from the Colombian side of the border. From reports, these Colombians also rob cattle from the high paramos, often illegally placed by Ecuadoreans in the reserve, and many Colombians occupy land in Ecuador. Recent complaints against their activities reportedly resulted in the bombing of the home of an Ecuadorean family in the border town of Maldonado, killing the family members.

Precious little native forest remains in and around the reserve. There are a few Polylepis groves with a mixture of other species, but very tiny in extent. (Polylepis is a member of the rose family that grows above normal timber line.) Some larger forest or chaparral areas lie outside and adjacent to the reserve, and I urged officials to try to acquire these. It is certain that the mountain tapirs cannot survive without forest shelter from the cold, and from the frequent icy rains and windy storms that assail this high Andean region. Before a project to reintroduce the mountain tapir can be successfully achieved here, a program to restore its forests must be accomplished and a better law enforcement program must be effectuated. Clearly, El Angel is not currently the source for mountain tapirs to reintroduce elsewhere.

I would like to mention that there is a tract of about 20 hectares up for sale adjacent to the park. It is one of the nicest Polylepis forest reserves I have seen. Efforts should be made to acquire this land for the reserve. It is currently occupied by cattle and fishermen, and also loses trees each year to people in search of lumber, fenceposts, and firewood. It comes with a cabin; the place name is "Cañon Colorado."

The fate of tapirs around Rio Cofanes

Having determined that the El Angel reserve was no place from which to reintroduce tapirs, I decided to visit the headwaters of the Rio Cofanes, further to the east in the Carchi province and to the east of San Gabriel, close to the Colombian border. I was fortunate to be greeted by a local campesino who put me up for the night. The next day I walked to the divisorio through some beautiful cloud forests. I was immediately put on the alert when everyone I met asked me whether I was going in to hunt the mountain tapirs or deer. This is an area of heavy hunting pressure and where the tapirs as well as deer are being extirpated. I saw no tapir tracks all the way to the ridge, and precious few tracks of deer, but many signs of hunter encampments. A friend told me that Colombian settlers had recently abandoned an effort in the upper Rio Cofanes to grow "amapola," or heroin, and had themselves taken their toll on the native game animals, including the tapirs. My conclusion is that hunting pressure, illegal in the case of the mountain tapir, is serious in this region and that any team attempting to capture and transfer mountain tapirs from this area would have to venture well down on the eastern slope of the Cofanes drainage before encountering the animals. There would then remain the difficulty of bringing them out to the road, a distance of several miles, and risky for the well-being of the high-strung tapirs.

I visited the upper Cofanes area, since several sources had informed me that this was an area where the mountain tapirs still occurred, but were being hunted out. It may be that for much of this region, they have in fact already been hunted out. Also worrisome is the fact that colonists are felling the forests here at a rapid rate and threaten the habitats remaining, especially on the western side. A recent government party informed the community of Cofanes and others not to continue felling or burning the high forests here, as the area was to be declared a reserve. I will, of course, support this effort.

Political troubles

Since my three expeditions in Carchi state in the north, the president of Ecuador was ousted. There was considerable disruption of the public order, including of transportation linking the major cities of the country. Now that Bucaram is out and the Congress has installed an interim president, Fabian Alarcon, until elections in a year's time, the nation is back to normal.

Land of mystery and legend

I decided to make an expedition in February 1997, to the mysterious Llanganates region just north of Baños, where I live. This is the fabled area where Atahualpa's treasure is reportedly buried. Atahualpa was the last Sapa Inca. Many have lost their lives over the centuries in this formidable region in pursuit of the treasure, and quite a lore surrounds the place, including to the effect that it is "encantado," or haunted. Stories of strange all-white mountain tapirs also come from the Llanganates.

I began the expedition on Saturday, the 15th of February, and returned from the area to Baños late on the night of Sunday, the 23rd, definitely a "tired-er" but a wiser person. My assistant, Ruben Ñunez, accompanied me along with local guide Jorge Vasco. We entered to the heart of the reserve, passing first up the Rio Muya from the town of Triunfo. We then went practically straight up through a tall cloud forest until we reached the treeless paramo. Here there was a series of lakes, including the Laguna Negra, on which we saw some ducks: paramo teal.

Status of the tapirs

From Triunfo and vicinity originates considerable destructive activity to the recently declared Llanganates National Park. Reports of intensive hunting of the mountain tapir and deer several kilometers into the park were received and, indeed, it was not until we had passed these more accessible areas that we began to observe tapir tracks. Also of alarm is the fact that for the first four or so kilometers, following the trail along the Rio Muya, we observed considerable felling of the large, gracious trees which grew on the steep slopes on both sides of the river. This is leading to ruinous erosion of the precious and delicate soils here and the muddying of the river's otherwise pure and naturally filtered waters.

Concomitantly, cattle are being brought in to graze in the national park. Hunters acting illegally and fishermen with casting nets, or "atarayas," come here, as well as youngsters with slingshots trying to kill birds. The former were observed either directly or indirectly on the way both in and out of Llanganates. Reports from Segundo Rodriguez, long time guide into the region, indicate that the hunting pressure upon the mountain tapirs is quite serious and that they are disappearing from the border areas of the park. Since there is, as yet, no appointed park ranger to patrol the area and educate the locals, the situation is only getting worse. I will urge authorities to set up this much-needed infrastructure, without which the park will be one in name only. According to Segundo, the greatest killing of the tapirs occurs during the rainy season when fierce storms cause them to descend nearer to encroaching settlements. The Triunfo area is one of rapid colonization, and strict measures must be instituted immediately.

Beyond Cerro Hermoso

On the bright side, after our expedition passed Cerro Hermoso and began descending toward the Rio Topo area, mountain tapir tracks and trails became much more frequent, and the cloud forest and paramo were encountered in beautiful, pristine condition. We spent two days at the encampment here, and I was able to obtain some spectacular, colorful photographs of this wonderful area. There are mineral waters here which are quite important to the mountain tapirs as well as other animals; I would like to return to remain alone here for a few weeks during the dry season between October and February in order to make some direct observations of the tapirs in this location.

We did not venture onto the Cerro Hermoso itself, either on the way in or the way back, since it was always covered in mist and is an area where many have lost their lives. As mentioned, the Llanganates have a reputation for lost expeditions and deaths. In fact, on the way in, just before reaching the encampment in Rio Topo, we were briefly sidetracked in the mist, losing the trail due to the heavy rains and the existence of tapir trails. Our guide had to make an all-out effort to recover the trail and get us to the camp cabin, which he managed to do just before dark on the night of Tuesday, 18th of February, 1997. It is easy to see how people can become lost in this area, especially those who enter without the help of experienced native guides. I will also attest to a mysterious quality about this region, which is something beyond the scope of this field report, but nonetheless quite fascinating in and of itself.

The radio-collaring project

The planned capturings and collarings have not yet taken place in Sangay National Park due to the turmoil in the government in recent months. I will now go to Quito to follow up on and if necessary reinitiate this process.

Since the collars already in place are going strong, emitting signals, I see no need to replace those in the La Playa area. I hope to place the new collars in the Purshi sector of the park. There is also the possibility of placing collars in the Cayambe-Coca Ecological Reserve east of Quito.

An aqueduct and road near Quito

Here I have, upon invitation, designed a project for the EMAPA, or Quito municipal water utility. In this connection, I made a trip into the Cayambe-Coca Ecological Reserve during the last days of January, guided by a biologist who works for EMAPA and a conservationist worker for the Rumichaca Foundation. We travelled along the newly constructed aqueduct and road which enters from Papallacta toward the town of Oyacachi. This construction is a clear violation of the reserve and has jeopardized the entire situation here for all forms of wildlife and their wilderness habitat. The construction, still ongoing, was justified as the only way to meet Quito's expanding growth and demand for water. It accesses several lakes in the reserve, and shows how easily authorities let fall the laws intended to protect parks and reserves, wilderness and wildlife. Obviously now that a road of considerable distance has been constructed into Cayambe-Coca, a greatly increased danger of colonization exists. So much will depend upon the public order and the resolve of government officials to defend this vital watershed. It is in the most practical interest of the government to do so.

The road, however, makes this enforcement much more problematic . . . the road and the burgeoning Ecuadorean population. My proposal is to study the mountain tapirs here and seek to accommodate their population through the identification salt licks, migration and other survival requirements. I could then work with engineers in creating a new salt lick to replace the one which the road has already obliterated. We also need to plan and create a well-located over- or underpass so that the tapirs can continue to conduct their age-old migrations. I will keep you informed about the status of this proposal.

Public talks and education

Another aspect of my work here has been giving public talks using the film Esperanza: The Mountain Tapir and my slides to help people understand the need for conservation of habitat, plants and animals. This has been quite successful and I have reached well over 2,000 people in schools, universities and public gatherings. On Saturday, 1st March, 1997, I gave a talk to the general public in Baños. In the past few months I have managed to give the program at every primary and secondary school in Baños. Additionally, in December I gave a 4-hour conference to a course of ecotourist guides in this same city. I have also given the program to the political leaders of all the cantons in the state of Tungurahua and to all the agricultural district overseers in this same state. I have also given the program to the Agrarian University of Riobamba, which has expressed interested in collaborating with me on the Purshi collarings and trackings. I gave some programs in Carchi state and now am invited to give the program at four major universities, one in Riobamba and three in Quito.

Working with the government

I have consulted with government officials on a new management plan for Sangay National Park, and many of my suggestions have been incorporated into this new plan. I have also interested government authorities in studying the possibility of producing blue-green algae in the high Andean lakes, which are appropriate due to their volcanically associated richness of nutrients. They will be further evaluating this possibility, especially in the Atillo Lakes area adjacent and to the west of Purshi. I am quite hopeful about this possibility, as I believe it could produce a turn-around from the same old destructive livestock culture which has been operating for centuries, and which promises to desertify the whole Andean region.

Plans and hopes for the future

There are, of course, many other alternatives, including the cultivation of quinoa, the ancient complete food. Agroforestry programs can also be of great benefit to the region.

There are many other aspects of my work here which I could describe, but believe that this will suffice for now to inform you of my activities. I am hopeful that the officials of the new government will be of a more stable nature and able to carry out concretely plans that are vital to the future of all life forms, including man, in this spectacular and biodiverse bioregion.

Sincerely,


Craig C. Downer