The Intag area of Ecuador, situated on the slopes of the Western Andes, is in the middle of the Choco-Western Ecuadorian and Tropical Andes Biological Hotspot. There are only 25 of these biologically diverse and threatened areas in the planet.
DECOIN’s (Defensa y Conservaciono Ecologica de Intag) goal is to conserve the area’s threatened biodiversity by protecting the species and providing local rural communities with safe drinking water. The project works with communities interested in protecting their drinking water and forests by providing a framework for conservation and community involvement.
DECOIN educates communities on the importance that forests play in providing a consistent supply of clean drinking water. This knowledge motivates the community to conserve their forests, which in return helps out the forest ecosystem and species inhabiting these areas. The project allows the reforestation efforts to be implemented by the communities themselves, by giving them native trees to plant. Water-testing workshops have been carried out in the past to train locals in the use of the kits and interpretation of the data. DECOIN has helped conserve 900 hectares of some of the world’s most biodiverse and threatened forests.
The project funded by Denver Zoo helped add a new community to the DECOIN program, the Chalguayacu Alto Watershed Reserve, which is protecting community’s drinking water and helping protect native forests.
Carlos Zorilla, the Project Director of DECOIN, is the winner of the 2008 Denver Zoological Foundation Conservation Award. Carlos and his team have helped over 37 different communities in the Imbabura Province in Northwest Ecuador create and manage their own watershed reserves.
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