Tree microrefugia and community-based conservation in Tropandean mountainscapes: A bio-cultural approach for heritage management of ”El Collay” protected forest in Southeastern Ecuador

Geoecological researchers have viewed mountain biodiversity as a response to interactive climate variables (i.e., elevation, temperature, precipitation), while conservation planners have built on this view to develop schemes to satisfy positivist, reductionist frameworks based on indicator species. More recently, montological researchers have incorporated the human dimension to understand how mountain biotas are also determined by ancestral practices of land stewardship. The resulting manufactured landscapes emphasize utility, sacred values, and productivity and are more holistically viewed as socioecological systems (SES). We provide examples of this synergy of nature-culture hybridity in the highlands of southeastern Ecuador, in a local assembly of autonomous, decentralized municipalities, comprising the ’El Collay’ Commonwealth and its protected forest. The political process of empowerment mimicking traditional reciprocal work (ayni), has operated to benefit commonwealth members who joined for the common purpose (minga) of protecting the ’páramo’ vegetation and mountain forests in the head waters of the eastern Andean flank. This area has long been seen as the Amazon gateway, ever since the first Europeans explored the Marañón (sea-river) of the South American lowlands. The area, flanked by the Sangay National Park, a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site, the ’Rio Negro-Sopladora’ National Park and the Podocarpus National Park, in southeastern Ecuador, is a ripe exemplar of community-based conservation oriented to a sustainable future through respect for agrobiodiversity traditions. An interdisciplinary group of scientists and conservation practitioners are experimenting with new approaches of political ecology and critical biogeography, to add the SES component to the development of management strategies for ’El Collay’. Key strategies include using Payment for Environmental Services and Complex Adaptive Systems methodologies to ensure protection of the existing reserve. Part of the long-term strategy is to extend protection to an adjacent area, thereby creating an ecological corridor for regional conservation of charismatic species, including the Andean bear (Tremarctus ornatus), the mountain tapir (Tapirus pinchaque), the sparkling violetear (Colibri coruscans) and many other bird species unique to the montane cloud forest ecosystem. By looking at paleoecological data on ”romerillos” (Podocarpus oleifolius) and its correlation with the present distribution of ”guabisay” (Podocarpus sprucei), we are seeking to synergize understandings of community perceptions and valuations of these species with their capacity to withstand climate change. Areas where both traditional ecological modeling and assessments of future human land-use indicate long-term survival of these flagship species are identified as potential microrefugia in extreme scenarios. The ’El Collay’ biocultural territorial planning initiative aims to provide a secure cultural and financial basis for future biodiversity conservation. Ensuring the cultural revival of indigenous practices and a comprehensive modeling scenario whereby ethnotourism, ecotourism and agrotourism could secure consistent, communitarian revenue flow to help maintain the larger ’El Collay’ Protected Forest’s long-term refuge condition in an exemplary Socio-Ecological System of the production mountainscape.