The Ecuadorian government has approved a new nature reserve in Carchi Province near the Colombian border, protecting 16,800 hectares of cloud forests and mountains on the Pacific slope of the Andes. The declaration marks a success for MacArthur grantee Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofán, which began work to protect the area in 2001 when it conducted a Rapid Biological Inventory of the area with the Field Museum of Natural History, another MacArthur grantee. The area is home to a number of threatened species, including spectacled bears and pudus — the world’s smallest deer — that inhabit its forests.
