Yasuni National Park

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yasuni National Park is a national park in Ecuador that lies on 9,820 square kilometres between the Napo and Curaray rivers in Napo and Pastaza provinces in Amazonian Ecuador, around 250 km from Quito. The park was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1989. It is a territory of the Huaorani.

This national park is primarily a rain forest. There has been some controversy with the construction of "oil" roads for the exploitation and production of petroleum within the park. Famous scientists including Jane Goodall have protested against this construction.

The bat Lophostoma yasuni is endemic to this park.

[edit] History

(From Greenberg et al. 2005)

With the goal of preserving the local ecosystems and the Huaorani culture, the Parque National Yasuní (PNY, 0.43 deg N/76.02 deg W) was established in 1979 and, along with the adjoining Huaorani Reserve, contains over 16,000 km² of primarily undisturbed terra firme, vàrzea and swamp communities (Pitman 2000). Before 1993, the impact of land use in PNY was minimal. The Huaorani, a group of hunter-horticulturalists have occupied the region since before recorded history, constructed 2-3 ha. garden plots on ridges and hillsides which fed their entire kin residence unit, approximately 6.5 people per unit (Lu 1999). At about 0.02 individuals per square kilometer (Lu 1999), the ecological footprint of these people is believed to be relatively small. The garden plots were used cyclically: the Huaorani households abandoned garden plots after a few months or years, and would not use them again for months or years, allowing the local flora and fauna to regenerate (Hennessy 2000).

By 1970, the primary export of Ecuador had shifted from agriculture to oil, following the discovery of a massive oil field under the Napo region in the eastern lowlands of the country. Several major oil fields were found within PNY, and between 1993 and 1994 the Maxus oil company constructed a 150 km road through PNY, the Vía Pompeya-Iro (VPI), to access drilling platforms within the park. Despite PNY’s status as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, colonization remains almost totally unhindered by the oil company (now Repsol-YPF) or the government of Ecuador, which allows access to anyone claiming to be an Indian (Koester, pers. comm.)

The annual rate of deforestation is currently only 0.11%, but this rate is increasing with time and, assuming that the trend of increasing rate of forest loss continues, it is predicted that by 2063 50% of the forest within 2 km of the VPI will be lost to unhindered colonization and anthropogenic conversion.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

Greenberg, J. A., S. C. Kefauver, H. C. Stimson, C. J. Yeaton, and S. L. Ustin. 2005. Survival analysis of a neotropical rainforest using multitemporal satellite imagery. Remote Sensing of Environment 96(2):202-211.
Hennessy, L. A. (2000). Whither the Huaorani? competing interventions in indigenous Ecuador. Master’s thesis, Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley.
Lu, F. E. (1999). Changes in subsistence patterns and resource use of the Huaorani Indians in the Ecuadorian Amazon. PhD dissertation. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Pitman, N. C. A. (2000). A large-scale inventory of two Amazonian tree communities. PhD dissertation. Durham, Duke University.