Welcome
Our mission
Fundación Cordillera Tropical's (FCT) mission is to conserve Ecuador's extraordinary biodiversity in the mountain complex of the Nudo del Azuay, within the southern tier of Sangay National Park.
Our Approach
We concentrate our efforts in the Nudo del Azuay where the activities of legal in-holders threaten the integrity of Sangay National Park. These one hundred thousand hectares of montane cloud forest and high páramo grassland require management and protection.
Unless alternative livelihoods can be developed, farmers in Sangay National Park will convert native habitats to agricultural landscapes. Well-preserved montane cloud forests and páramos, designated internationally as a hot spot, could disappear within the next human generation. The presence of these legal in-holders requires that farmers be enlisted as conservation advocates.
In response to this challenge, Fundación Cordillera Tropical (FCT) aims to incorporate the imperatives of farmer livelihoods into its conservations strategies. To this end we are working to apply a system of Conservation Agreements, also known as payments for the protection of environmental services (PPES), in which downstream environmental service buyers compensate landowners for the protection of specific environmental services. FCT is convinced that concurrent investments in human capital will both increase conservation gains while simultaneously improving incomes for participants, and perhaps tend to equalize distribution of benefits within the community.
Where we work
The Nudo del Azuay, at the heart of Ecuador's Cordillera Real Oriental, includes ecosystems spanning the high mountain páramo down to the Andean-Amazon piedmont. Singled out for its regional and global biodiversity importance, the Nudo del Azuay covers some 96,000 hectares, the majority of which are included within southern Sangay National Park.
Map of the Nudo del Azuay
Map of the 2007 land-use in the Nudo del Azuay
Map of the communities within the Nudo del Azuay