Yasuni National Park

Yasuni National Park is in Ecuador with an area of 9,820 km² between the Napo and Curaray rivers in Napo and Pastaza provinces in Amazonian Ecuador. The park is about 250 km from Quito and was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1989. It is within the claimed ancestral territory of the Huaorani indigenous people.

Yasuni is home to several uncontacted indigenous tribes, including the Tagaeri and the Taromenane.

The national park lies within the Napo moist forests ecoregion and is primarily rain forest.

Yasuni National Park is arguably the most biologically diverse spot on Earth. The park is at the center of a small zone where amphibian, bird, mammal, and vascular plant diversity all reach their maximum levels within the Western Hemisphere. Moreover, the park breaks world records for local-scale (less than 100 km²) tree, amphibian, and bat species richness, and is one of the richest spots in the world for birds and mammals at local scales as well.^[1]

However, Yasuni National Park is threatened by oil extraction and the colonization, deforestation, illegal logging, and unsustainable hunting that accompanies oil-access routes.^[2]

A species of bat, Lophostoma yasuni, is endemic to the park.

Drilling controversy

There has been extensive controversy over the construction of "oil" roads by Texaco for the exploitation and production of petroleum within the park. Famous scientists including Jane Goodall, E.O. Wilson, and Stuart Pimm have protested against this construction.^[3]

Since June 2007, the Ecuadorian government has been promoting the Yasuní-ITT Initiative, a proposal that seeks to leave the Ishpingo-Tiputini-Tambococha (ITT) oil fields untapped under the core of Yasuni National Park in exchange for compensation from the international community for lost revenue.^[4] The government will receive, in turn, an international compensation fund equivalent to at least of 50% of the profits that it would receive were it to exploit the reserves.^[5]

Actor Leonardo Dicaprio, Edward Norton, and former Vice President of the United States Al Gore are supporting the Ecuadorian government.^[6][7]

References

Further reading

• 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.
• Vogel, J.H. (2009). The economics of the Yasuní Initiative: climate change as if thermodynamics mattered. London, Anthem Press.

External links

• “Opinion: Yasuní and the New Economics of Climate Change” CNN. Edition: International. August 23, 2010.
• Yasuni Green Gold Campaign to save the park and its indigenous people
• Yasuni Campaign by New Internationalist
• Yasuni Campaign by Ecuadorian civil society organizations - Amazonia por la Vida