The Condor Bioreserve Project in Ecuador

Abstract

This volume examines the Condor Bioreserve Watershed Protection Area (CBR), a major effort to conserve Ecuador's biological patrimony, and offers management suggestions to make it more successful. The CBR is a landscape-level ecosystem management effort in the high Andes devised by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to conserve freshwater and biodiversity resources (Anonymous 2001). The watershed feeds Quito, Ecuador's capital city, among other cities and communities. TNC is setting up partnerships with diverse groups, communities, and organizations in the CBR and using community-based natural resource management and integrated conservation and development to achieve sustainable natural resource goals. The CBR project is one of many worldwide to conserve ecosystems (e.g., Clark 1999). These efforts are challenging in that science, management, and policy must be integrated in practical ways through effective programs (Clark 1993). This introduction (1) summarizes Ecuador's biophysical and social contexts as background for the rest of the volume and (2) gives a description of the papers in this volume.

Key Words:

• Andes
• Biodiversity conservation
• Condor Bioreserve
• Ecuador
• Quito
• The Nature Conservancy
• watershed management