The Jocotoco Antpitta discovery in Ecuador began with an unfamiliar call echoing through a remote Andean forest in 1997, and what followed turned a single ornithological moment into one of South America’s most sustained conservation programmes. The bird, grey, black, and brown, standing on stilted legs, was unlike anything the scientists on that expedition had recorded. It was entirely new to science.
A New Species That Needed Protecting Immediately
The bird was later named Grallaria ridgelyi, the Jocotoco Antpitta, in honour of the ornithologist Robert Ridgely, who organised the 1997 trip. It is the largest member of a group of birds called antbirds, and its range was narrow: the eastern slopes of the Andes, close to the border with Peru. Ridgely recognised quickly that the habitat itself was at risk. He sought funding to purchase the land where the bird had been seen, and that fundraising effort produced the Tapichalaca Reserve, the first in what would grow into a network of protected landscapes.
Fundación Jocotoco was formally established in 1998, one year after that initial sighting, according to Rainforest Trust. The foundation now manages 18 reserves covering more than 103,000 acres, with another 188,000 acres of private and communal land co-managed in partnership with local communities. Those figures differ somewhat from the foundation’s own published totals, which cite 19 landscapes and 123,000 acres under direct management, alongside 200,000 acres of community-owned land, a reflection, perhaps, of how rapidly the network has been expanding.
The Jocotoco Antpitta Discovery Ecuador Built Into a Wider Mission
The pace of that expansion has been real. According to the Jocotoco Impact Report 2024, the foundation acquired nearly 12,400 acres for its reserves in 2024 alone. That is not the rate of an organisation in steady-state management; it is still actively building.
Across the reserves, 1,350 bird species have been recorded, 12.5% of all bird species in the world. The landscapes span Amazon rainforest, high Andean páramos, the wet Chocó and the dry Tumbes region, and extend out to the Galápagos. They shelter the Andean condor and the Andean bear alongside more imperilled species, including the El Oro parakeet and the Galápagos petrel.
The foundation’s work on the Galápagos has drawn sustained international backing. Since 2015, the Lindblad Expeditions–National Geographic Fund has provided more than $1 million in support for the Floreana Ecological Restoration Project, with Fundación Jocotoco serving as one of the project’s co-executors alongside Island Conservation, according to National Geographic–Lindblad Expeditions. That kind of decade-long, seven-figure commitment is not easy to secure for conservation work; it points to what a credible track record makes possible.
None of this has been straightforward. Working across such ecologically different zones (from sea-level island ecosystems to high-altitude páramo grasslands) demands distinct expertise, distinct community relationships, and distinct funding streams for each landscape. The foundation has had to operate as several organisations at once, held together by a shared focus on habitat protection and ecological restoration.
What the Outside World Makes of It
The foundation states its own results plainly: ‘Every year we discover new species, we rediscover species thought to have already been lost to extinction, and we bring species back from the brink.’ That is a claim that could sound like marketing in other contexts. Here, the recorded species counts give it ballast.
Ian J. Davidson, Americas regional director for BirdLife International, put it to the Guardian in terms that reach beyond Ecuador: ‘By creating a network of protected habitat “arks”, Jocotoco has given these remarkable species a genuine chance not only to endure, but to recover and expand beyond their remaining strongholds.’ He added: ‘Their work stands as a global conservation success story, an inspiring example of what determination, science and long-term stewardship can achieve for nature.’
With nearly 12,400 acres added in 2024 and a funding partnership entering its second decade, the network built around one previously unknown bird shows no sign of having reached its ceiling.
