How biodiverse are cloud forests like Intag compared to one of the most biodiverse protected areas in the world?
Carlos Zorrilla
A significant portion of the efforts and funding allocated to conserving the planet’s biodiversity is, rightly, focused on protecting the Amazon’s biodiversity. And not only because of its plants and animals, but also because it is home to hundreds of groups of ancestral peoples. However, this focus is neglecting other ecosystems that are no less important from the perspective of biological diversity and that also protect thousands of watersheds. One of these ecosystems are the cloud forests (also known as tropical montane forests).
In an effort to remedy this situation, “Intag Sanctuary of Life” was celebrated on March 29, 2025, in the Ecuadorian city of Cotacachi, Ecuador. This marks the two-year anniversary of the ruling by the Superior Court of the Province of Imbabura, halting the Llurimagua mining project, partly because it endangered the rights of nature. The declaration of Intag as a Sanctuary of Life was approved on October 2024 by a unanimous vote of the members of the Decentralized Autonomous Government of Cotacachi. One of the motivations for the declaration was to draw the world’s attention to the extraordinary biological diversity of the Intag area and the serious threat its forests and communities have faced since 1995 due to transnational mining.
Most of Ecuador’s mining concessions are located in the foothills and middle elevations of the Andes, many of which are, or once were, covered by cloud forests or montane tropical forests. Globally, it is estimated that less than 2.5% of tropical forests are cloud forests. In Ecuador, the vast majority have been deforested, and much more so in the mid elevation Andean foothills facing the Pacific. It is in these foothills that the Llurimagua mining project is located, led by the state-owned companies ENAMI EP (Ecuador) and the Chilean company Codelco. But it is just one of dozens of examples of forested areas that protect watersheds that have been concessioned to transnational mining companies without considering the impacts on biodiversity, water, and local communities.
Most of Ecuador’s cloud forests are located between 1,000 and 3,000 meters above sea level in the foothills of the Andes and are exceptionally biodiverse. These forests, in addition to being biologically diverse, protect the mid- and upper-level watersheds. Unfortunately, these same areas are also where the country’s highest concentration of minerals and mining concessions are found.
The surprising diversity of cloud forests
To better understand the relevance of the biological diversity of the cloud forests found in the Llurimagua mining concession, it is useful to compare it with Yasuní National Park, considered one of the most biodiverse protected areas in the world.
Yasuní National Park is approximately 200 times larger than the area of the Llurimagua mining concession (Yasuní is 10,000 km² or one million hectares, compared to Llurimagua’s 48.3 km² or 4,829 hectares). The fact that Yasuní has many more species in total than the Llurimagua cloud forests is not disputed; this is specially true regarding tree species. However, if the importance of the areas were measured by the number of endangered or endemic species per km², cloud forests like those of Llurimagua would be much richer (1).
In Yasuní, according to available information, 130 endangered species have been recorded and are included on the IUCN list (2, 3). Despite having very little research and being 200 times smaller than Yasuní, 45 endangered species have been identified to date in the Llurimagua mining concession and are included on the same IUCN list (2). What is the relevance of this data? Something that is striking is that, for every square kilometer, Yasuní has 0.013 endangered species, equivalent to 1.3 species/100 km². Llurimagua, even with its characteristic research deficiency, has 0.94 species per square kilometer, equivalent to 94 species per 100 km²! That is, the forests of the Llurimagua mining concession are 72 times richer in endangered species per unit area than the Yasuní.
In addition to this surprising concentration of threatened biodiversity, tropical mountain forests are notable for their number of endemic species. For example, within the Llurimagua
mining concession, two frog species have been identified that have only been reported within the 4,829 hectares of the concession and nowhere else in the world. One of the species, the Intag Resistance Rocket Frog, has only been reported in one of the 43 micro-watersheds within the mining concession and is new to science.
Another way to visualize the uniqueness and fragility of tropical cloud forests is to compare the impact a large- or medium-scale mining project would have on their biological diversity. According to Japanese experts responsible for preparing a preliminary Environmental Impact Assessment in 1996 for a copper deposit (then considered small) within the Llurimagua mining concession, the open-pit mine would deforest 4,065 hectares. Two years later, even more copper was discovered, suggesting much greater impact.
Personally, I know of no other mining project in the world that, based on preliminary geological and environmental studies, could impact so many documented endangered species in such a concentrated area. Between the IUCN and Ecuadorian lists, 103 endangered species have been identified within the Llurimagua concession. At least two of those species—the aforementioned endemic frogs—would disappear forever if the mining project is given the green light. Since water is the resource most impacted by mining, the project would endanger all species that depend on good water quality, and especially fish and amphibians. Twenty-eight species of frog included on the IUCN and Ecuadorian lists are threatened by this mining project. Amphibians are not the only ones threatened: jaguars, spectacle bears, and three species of monkeys are among the103 threatened species identified so far.
Just eight kilometers from the Llurimagua mining concession lies the Los Cedros Protective Forest, where, thanks to numerous scientific research, 64 endangered species assessed by the IUCN have been identified. Like Llurimagua, many other endangered species are listed on Ecuador’s Red Lists. The two areas are similar in size and share the same ecosystem and latitudinal range, and therefore very likely share many of the same species (especially those that move easily, such as birds and mammals).
Another interesting comparison of the value of tropical montane ecosystems compared to lowland tropical forests, is the ranking given by scientists when they evaluated over 170,000 protected areas throughout the world and ranked them according to their biological importance.
Two of those protected areas evaluated were the 260,961 hectare Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve (now a National Park), and the 1.020,000 hectare Yasuní protected area. The Cotacachi-Cayapas National Park is in northwestern Ecuador, and is the largest protected area in all of western Ecuador. It encompasses elevation from close to sea-leval to almost 5.000 meters above sea level.
Based solely on the concept of irreplaceability, that is, on the role the protected areas play in protecting habitats of endangered species, the much smaller Cotacachi-Cayapas National Park ranked higher in irreplaceability score than the Yasuní National Park(4).
Mining is advancing in the country without authorities adequately assessing the impacts on biological diversity, and even less so in the sites that protect the high and middle Andean watersheds. An ecosystem depleted of biodiversity is much less resilient, less stable, and less capable of capturing and storing carbon, thereby less able to mitigate the climate crisis. By degrading watersheds, the crucial function of these ecosystems to regulate the water cycle, prevent flooding, and provide healthy water and food to the countryside and cities is also impaired.
In early 2026, the Ecuadorian government approved a series of major changes to the mining law, aimed at fast-tracking approval of permits for mining companies. The changes will inevitably lead to human rights violations and major environmental degradation unless the Constitutional Court declares it unconstitutional. There is no provision whatsoever to avoid mining in critical eco-systems like cloud forests, where many of the mining concessions are found.
If Ecuador’s high court fails to declare the law unconsgtitutional, the only chance these ecosystem will have is focused international pressure.
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References and Notes
(1) The five main reasons why Andean cloud forests are so biodiverse and rich in endemism:
- Richness in Epiphytes: A large part of the flora’s biodiversity is due to epiphytic plants—plants that grow on the trunks and branches of other plants, including thousands of species of orchids and bromeliads. A single mature tree in these forests can host tens of thousands of individual plants and dozens of species. In comparison, the Amazonian tropical forests are relatively poor in these life forms.
- Environmental Gradients: Rapid changes in altitude and steep slopes create numerous microhabitats with distinct environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, sunlight), which favor a high diversity of species adapted to specific niches and encourage endemism.
- Geographic Isolation and Speciation: The rugged topography of the Andes isolates plant and animal populations in separate valleys and slopes, favoring speciation (the formation of new species) through evolutionary processes over time. This has led to a high concentration of endemic species (species found nowhere else), particularly in groups such as plants, amphibians, and insects.
- Constant Humidity: Persistent fog and clouds provide high humidity that favors groups such as epiphytes, mosses, ferns, and amphibians, which in turn provide habitats and resources for insects, birds, and other species, creating complex food webs.
- Geological History (Andean Orogeny): The relatively recent and continuous geological uplift of the Andes (over the last few million years) has been a driver of biological diversification, creating new areas for colonization and isolating populations, contributing to the global biodiversity “hotspot” status of these forests.
(2) Sources on threatened species: Information on threatened species in Llurimagua comes from a variety of sources, including environmental impact assessments, published scientific studies, and data collected by local and international conservation organizations. For Yasuní, one source is: https://pachamama.org/yasuni . (Note from the original author: Interestingly, it was difficult to find consolidated research with the exact number of endangered species within the boundaries of Yasuní.)
(3) IUCN categories considered: Species listed as Vulnerable (VU), Endangered (EN) and Critically Endangered (CR) on the IUCN Red List are included. The Near Threatened (NT) category is not included .
(4) Cotacachi-Cayapas National Park rank: #161: https://irreplaceability.cefe.cnrs.fr/sites/184
Yasuni National Park rank # 173: https://irreplaceability.cefe.cnrs.fr/sites/186
