Bringing Back the Rainforest
       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.

Omar Tello (left) with his daughter and me

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 my last 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 thick layers of organic matter for the last 25 years.  Most of his nine-hectare (22 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?
(click photos to enlarge)
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 are extremely acidic and 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 ground 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.

How to Help Omar's Project

If you want to reach Omar Tello directly, please do so at:

Omar Tello Benalcázar
El Jardín Botánico "Las Orquideas"
Km 3 Caserio Los Angeles
Puyo, Ecuador