Supported by
By César Rodríguez-Garavito and Robert Macfarlane
Mr. Rodríguez-Garavito is a professor at the N.Y.U. School of Law. Mr. Macfarlane is a poet, an author and a professor of English at Cambridge University.
High in the Ecuadorean Andes is a cloud forest that is home to hundreds of endangered, extraordinary creatures, many of which seem to have wandered straight out of the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch — among them the spiny pocket mouse, the Dracula orchid, the glass frog and the tourmaline sunangel hummingbird. Numerous clear-running rivers rise in this mist-wreathed region, their flows nourished by the process of condensation and runoff called continuous fog drop. Walking through the humid, glowing greens of this cloud forest — known as Los Cedros — is what walking through damp moss might feel like if you had been miniaturized.
Four years ago, Los Cedros was nearly destroyed by gold and copper mining projects. But in November 2021, something remarkable happened to avert this catastrophe — something that could, in fact, only have occurred in Ecuador.
