About Rainforest Concern
Rainforest Concern purchases, leases and manages threatened native forest with exceptional biodiversity in a strategic way to create corridors of forest.
These include some of the most threatened cloudforests in Ecuador, the Araucaria (Monkey Puzzle) temperate rainforests of Chile, and lowland rainforests in Ecuador, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka and Brazil.
If land is purchased this is usually done in the name of partner non-governmental organisations or local communities in the countries concerned.
The charity creates protected corridors of forest between existing reserves to avoid the risk of forest fragmentation, resulting in a diminished gene pool.
It develops programmes for health, education and alternative income generation with local people living near its projects. These are designed to reduce the human impact on native forests.
A significant part of alternative income is derived from responsible ecotourism, and local people are directly involved in the management of the projects’ lodges.
Rainforest Concern aims to form partnerships with non-profit counterpart organisations that undertake the day to day management of the projects.
It promotes research in biodiversity and has research facilities at several projects.It has volunteer programmes and encourages the involvement of young people worldwide to become involved in its projects.
Our history
Rainforest Concern was founded in 1993 by conservationist Peter Bennett. The initial drive to establish the charity was the rapid loss of rainforest taking place throughout the world, and in particular in western Ecuador. It was here that Bennett saw the danger of the last remaining forests being broken into disconnected fragments through rampant logging and widespread burning, and conversion to plantations of the African oil palm.
The forests in this part of the world are some of the most biodiverse with many rare and endemic animals and plants such as the spectacled bear, jaguar, tapir, cock-of-the-rock, plate-billed mountain toucan and toucan barbet to name but a few.
More than 90% of these forests have already disappeared and without the efforts of Rainforest Concern and its partners, what remains would already have been broken into fragments.
Rather than waiting for politics to bring about changes, a direct approach of purchasing threatened forest was established with the aim of creating a two phase Choco-Andean Rainforest Corridor to link the three main existing protected areas together. Biological corridors are essential to maintain migration of animal and plant species from one area to another and to ensure healthy population levels.
The Choco-Andean Rainforest Corridor will ultimately create the vital link between the cloud forests of the Andes and the lowland forests of the Choco region. Since 1994 Rainforest Concern has made dramatic progress with land purchase and in providing alternative income for the local communities. With its partners it has recently completed the final link of almost 30,000 acres for the northern phase of the corridor.
Its efforts are now focused on completing the southern phase of the corridor between the Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve and Mindo Nambillo Reserve. Here an even greater emphasis is being placed on education and alternative income generation in order to reduce the human impact on the native forests. These include the cultivation of organic shade-grown coffee, the production of jewellery carved from tagua palm nut and locally managed sensitive ecotourism projects.