Qualla: Jama-Coaque Ecological Reserve

Jama-Coaque Ecological Reserve: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ninety-eight percent of coastal Ecuador's native forest is gone. The Pacific Equatorial Forest that once stretched from the Andes to the ocean has been logged, burned, and cleared for cattle and cocoa, leaving only fragments. The Jama-Coaque Ecological Reserve is one of those fragments, a 2,100-acre sanctuary in the Jama-Coaque Coastal Mountain Range where clouds hang so thick on the peaks that the trees quite literally drink them. The reserve protects what remains of a lost world, and the name it carries belongs to a kingdom that lived here for nearly two millennia before the Spanish came.

Jama-Coaque Ecological Reserve: The Kingdom in the Name

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Jama-Coaque civilization flourished along this stretch of coast from around 355 B.C. to 1532 A.D., nearly nineteen hundred years. They made ceramics, traded along the Pacific coast, and built a culture that predated the Inca by centuries. Then the Spanish arrived, and the Jam...

Jama-Coaque Ecological Reserve: A Forest That Drinks From Clouds

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The reserve climbs from 846 feet along the Camarones River to 2,290 feet at the summit of Cerro Sagrado. In that short vertical distance, the forest transforms. The lower slopes are tropical moist evergreen forest that blends into rainforest. Around 1,900 feet, something extraord...

Jama-Coaque Ecological Reserve: Between Two Currents

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The reserve sits at one of the planet's most dramatic climate transitions. Offshore, the cold Humboldt Current sweeps up from Antarctica along the Peruvian coast, creating the Atacama Desert, the driest place on Earth. Just to the north, the warm El Niño current pushes south, fee...

Jama-Coaque Ecological Reserve: What Lives in the Trees

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Six species of wild cats move through the Jama-Coaque forest: jaguar, puma, ocelot, oncilla, margay, and jaguarundi. All are endangered. The reserve also shelters two endangered primates, the mantled howler monkey and the white-fronted capuchin. Other threatened mammals, such as ...

Jama-Coaque Ecological Reserve: A Biodiversity Hotspot Worth Fighting For

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Conservation International has designated the Tumbes-Choco-Magdalena corridor, which includes Jama-Coaque, as one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. The Bamboo House Research Station sits inside the reserve, three kilometers inland from the small agricultural community of Cama...