November 2007
TEN YEAR CELEBRATION OF THE JOCOTOCO FOUNDATION

Last November (2007), the Fundación Jocotoco celebrated the ten-year anniversary of Bob Ridgely´s discovery of the Jocotoco Antpitta, to which we owe the name of the Foundation. Jocotoco, pronounced “hocotoco,” is the description by local villagers of the song of the Antpitta, whose discovery in 1997 prompted the establishment of the Fundación Jocotoco in 1998.

Note from the president:
It was that day ten years ago, while standing in Quebrada Honda and seeing what would become called

the Jocotoco Antpitta for the first time, that I realized how a switch in the approach to bird conservation was going to become increasingly necessary to address the impacts of accelerating human activities across much of Ecuador. If people were willing to settle in as chilly, damp, and agriculturally marginal an area as Tapichalaca, no place was safe.

The succeeding decade has been incredibly exciting. Eight areas protected in the western and southern parts of the country, with more than 12,000 hectares ( 26,400 acres ) owned and managed by the foundation, plus formal co-operative management agreements with two huge community reserves in the ”Oriente” (Amazon). More than 75% of Ecuador 's huge bird fauna now occurs in the terrain we either own or help to manage. Fundación Jocotoco's system of private reserves has become a model for the rest of the world to emulate, and we haven't stopped yet—with your help, more is yet to come.