Guandera Biological Station

The Guandera Biological Station was established in 1994 and is situated in the northern inter-Andean valley of Ecuador. The station is managed by the Jatun Sacha Foundation and is located in Ecuador's Carchi Province..

A verdant and species rich valley in the highest reaches of the Andes, Guandera represents the last of forest type that once carpeted the upper slopes of moister valleys within the tropical Andes from Colombia to Peru. With unusual and often unique plant forms, Guandera’s appearance is similar to that of a lowland tropical rainforest. However, this forest is nearly 2 ½ miles above sea level and evening temperatures hover around freezing. Also stretching above the tree line, Guandera’s protected area includes an expansive and unique páramo – a type of moist, alpine grassland whose bizarre plant forms create an almost otherworldly landscape. A last haven for the Andean spectacled bear, Andean fox, mountain lion, and the Grey-breasted Mountain-toucan, as well as species found only here – such as an endemic cotinga, it is the last place of its kind.

In Ecuador, the Andes are divided into two parallel Cordilleras – ranges of lofty mountains hyphenated only by occasional passes and massive, glacier-domed strato-volcanoes. Between these two great ranges lies the Central Valley, whose rich soils and temperate climes support much of the country’s modern population. In fact, this has been the case for millennia. Pre-Columbian civilizations have long toiled the rich volcanic soils found here for crops such as corn, legumes, potatoes and other indigenous tubers as well as to produce textiles derived from the wool of alpacas and llamas, native camelids domesticated by these peoples. Just prior to European contact, Guandera lay in the northernmost reaches of the Incan Empire and to this day is perched above one of Ecuador’s richest agricultural zones. The valley below is intensively cultivated by mestizo farmers – descendents of the Incas whose blood is mixed with that of their European conquerors. As populations and the demand for industrialized crops continue to expand, the cultivated zone of the valley continues to encroach on the remnant forest surrounding the privately protected Guandera Biological Station.

Due to its high altitude and relative remoteness from former seats of power of the Incan Empire as well as modern day Ecuadorian and Colombian population centers, a small strip of native forest within Ecuador’s inter-Andean valley was able to persist through modern times. This remnant forest is situated on the valley-side flanks of the Andean Eastern Cordillera within Ecuador’s northern Carchi Province. The entirety of remaining forest, largely still unprotected and under a steady state of conversion into agricultural lands, spans from just south of the border with Colombia southward to the town of Bolivar, where the Central Valley dips into considerably low altitudes, resulting in a natural transition from Guandera’s form of moist, montane forest to an arid scrub vegetation, now highly degraded after hundreds of years of Afro-Ecuadorian inhabitation. The 10 km² Guandera Biological Station protects the heart of this remnant forest and extends this protection beyond the private reserve through active community extension efforts and regular engagement of Ecuador’s Ministry of the Environment, which manages the El Angel National Park, protecting an expansive páramo grassland on on the Western Cordillera, opposite the Guandera Biological Station.

Guandera was founded in 1994, after Dr. Michael McColm, Executive Director of Ecuador’s Jatun Sacha Foundation was tipped off to the presence of this forest by national field botanists. Shortly after his initial visit, Dr. McColm made the move to protect the portion of the forest now within the Biological Station and with subsequent purchases of private lands the entire protected area now occupies 10 km² of primary inter-Andean valley moist, montane forest and paramo.