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Countries Appendix ECUADOR (40.2%) Ecuador has a terrible conservation record and has pursued rigorous economic development while totally disregarding its diverse environment and its indigenous peoples. Oil exploration, logging, and road-building has had disastrous effects of Ecuador's rainforests which are now less than 40% of their original cover. Ecuador has the highest deforestation rate in South America (1.6%), at a loss of 466,800 acres (189,000 hectares) of forest annually. Logging in Western Ecuador (coastal and low Andean) areas is responsible for the loss of 99% of the country's rainforest in this region. Historically logging companies have moved into an area which they selectively cut the commercially valuable and leave the remaining vegetation. After they pull out, vast stretches of logging roads remain which are rapidly followed by colonists who colonize the surrounding forest areas. These colonists cut or burn the remaining forest for agriculture or cattle grazing. Ecuador is one of the world's largest producers of logs. Perhaps the most well-known form of forest destruction in Ecuador results from oil exploitation. Oil companies, most notably Texaco, have decimated one of the most biologically diverse regions on Earth, the Oriente region of the Western Amazon. Since Texaco began extracting oil from the Oriente in 1967, it has been the dominant oil company (88% of all extraction). When it pulled out in 1992, the Texas-based oil company left behind a legacy of environmental degradation unparalleled anywhere else in the Amazon. Over the course of 25 years, Texaco spilled 17 million gallons of crude oil into the local river systems (by comparison, the Exxon Valdez only spilled 11 million gallons in Alaska in 1989). In addition to oil spills, each day another 5 million gallons of toxic waste from the drilling process are released into local rivers. The result from all this spillage is drinking water contaminated with 10 to 1000 times the EPA permitted levels of certain cancer-causing compounds. Texaco has left hundreds of open oil pits strewn across the country which overflow into farms and creeks when its rains. Oil companies have also blatantly violated the rights of indigenous peoples who inhabit this region. These tribal peoples have had their homes destroyed, been sickened by oil pollution and diseases brought by colonists who settle along the oil roads, and been violently evicted from their lands. The damage inflicted on these peoples from the oil industry was the basis for a $1.5 billion suit filed in U.S. court against Texaco on behalf of 30,000 indigenous peoples. Numerous suits have been filed in Ecuador, but justice was never served because much of Ecuador's government is bankrolled by the oil giant. Texaco offered $5-10 million in compensation and ended up winning the U.S. case. Unfortunately, despite this suit, oil exploration and pollution continues in the Oriente region of Ecuador. Ecuador has dropped out of OPEC so it could raise oil quotas and awarded new oil concession within untouched rainforest inhabited by indigenous groups. Among the oil companies participating are U.S. based Marxus, Mobil, Amoco, Triton, and Santa Fe. Marxus, with the largest operations of these firms have taken up right where Texaco left off, spilling 55,000 gallons of oil into Amazonian tributaries. Conservationists have lost many hard fought battles against commercial logging and oil exploration, but have succeeded in securing some areas. Fundaciòn Jatun Sacha has successfully outbid a logging company for 5,500 acres of coastal forest and set up the Bilsa Biological Station which works on reforestation projects and involving local people in conservation projects. Recently the Ecuadoran government has begun taking a more active role in conservation. According to the ITTO, today the government pays for the cost of establishing plantations of native species in danger of extinction and protection forests. This incentive could prove promising since more than 50% of Ecuador's land is degraded and suitable for reforestation. . . . . . For current information I highly recommend trying the CIA and FAO links below. |
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