Qualla: Jatun Sacha Foundation

Jatun Sacha Foundation: Introduction

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Jatun sacha means big forest. The phrase comes from Kichwa, one of the indigenous languages still spoken across highland and Amazonian Ecuador, and it is the kind of name that sets an ambition quietly but firmly. When the Jatun Sacha Foundation was legally established in 1989 under Ministerial Agreement No. 270 from Ecuador's Ministry of Agriculture, the big forest was already in trouble. Ecuador, smaller than the state of Nevada, holds more bird species than all of North America and one of the highest rates of biodiversity per square kilometer on Earth. It is also among the most rapidly deforested countries in the Americas. The foundation was built to slow the loss, one reserve at a time.

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Jatun Sacha Foundation: Seven Reserves, One Country

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The foundation's core work is running biological reserves - protected patches of forest ranging from roughly four to twenty-five square kilometers, each paired with a research station that can host scientists, students, and volunteers. Two sit east of the Andes in Amazonian Ecuad...

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Jatun Sacha Foundation: The Volunteer Engine

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Most conservation budgets in Ecuador are small. Jatun Sacha learned early that keeping multiple reserves running requires hands, and that hands will come a long way for the chance to live in a cloud forest. The foundation developed one of the first large-scale conservation volunt...

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Jatun Sacha Foundation: Research and Reforestation

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Each station is a small laboratory. Bilsa, on the Pacific coast, has recorded more than 1,100 species of vascular plants, some of them described to science only recently. Its Center for Conserving Plants of the Western Forest produces about 100,000 trees a year for reforestation ...

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Jatun Sacha Foundation: The Big Forest, Smaller Every Year

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The challenge Jatun Sacha faces has not gotten easier. The Pacific lowland forests of northwest Ecuador - the Choco - are among the most threatened ecoregions on the continent. The Amazon frontier keeps advancing with roads and oil palm. The Andean cloud forests are being cleared...

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