Pitalala Reserve (meaning “viper” in Kichwa) will be a privately-protected area in the upper-Amazon rainforest of Ecuador and the grounds of the Biodiversity Field Lab (BioFL), an in-situ research center devoted to the study and conservation of tropical biodiversity. The reserve’s goals are:

Pitalala Reserve will help mitigate the effects of climate change by saving rainforests from deforestation. The destruction of tropical forests is responsible for up to 15% of net global carbon emissions each year. This is more than what is produced by all of the planet’s cars, planes, ships, and trains combined. Every day, more than 28,000 hectares of tropical forest are destroyed. By protecting forests, you can help keep the carbon they store from ending up in the atmosphere.

Table 1. Reduction of atmospheric emissions (tCO2e per year) from various individual actions. Based on data from: Wynes & Nicholas (2017) and Klitgaard et al. (unpublished). © 2019 Alejandro Arteaga.

The creation of Pitalala Reserve will not only help mitigate climate change, it will also help stop the loss of biodiversity. For example, protecting 1 hectare of Amazon rainforest in Ecuador actually helps save the following number of animal species: