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The Full Story
We’re on a Mission
Our mission is to spark the reversal of cloud forest destruction, charting a path for cloud forest recovery bordering the Cayambe Coca National Park, and soon enough, regionally and globally.
Our Calling
Cloud Forests, uber-biodiverse montane tropical forests (high altitude) with persistent cloud cover, are going EXTINCT. We are building forestry systems to reverse this. And we are collecting measurable data to analyze and understand our results, with the aim of replication and wider protection and recovery of cloud forests.
Cloud forests are the least protected biome on Earth, often confused with lower altitude rain forests. Cloud forests are uniquely covered by mist and fog, and the trees are covered with life: lichens, epiphytes, basically mini-universes of life that can rival entire nations for their extreme biodiversity.
Horrifically, cloud forests have plunged from 11% to 2% of total forest cover in the last half-century. That’s over 5 times faster than global deforestation rates. According to a USDA forestry services study, 90% of remaining cloud forests in the Western Hemisphere will be wiped out by 2060, driving this entire ecosystem towards extinction. We place cloud forest survival at our core.
Why we need to reverse this catastrophic trend?
1. Cloud forests are the highest source of wildlife and flora endemism on Earth, meaning where life began, with uncountable species still unidentified being systematically destroyed through habitat loss.
2. Cloud forests, particularly in the Andean Amazon, supply most of the water to the Amazon basin. Efforts to protect the Amazon basin are useless without protecting the higher cooler, Andean Amazon slopes where the water comes from, and where wildlife is running for safety.
3. The spectacularly beautiful endemic species thriving here, from tiny crystal frogs and microscopic orchids to giant tapirs, giant cedars trees replete with epiphytes and home to more biodiversity than entire nations, merit life.
4. It is unreasonable to allow cloud forest ecosystems to disappear just because they are off the radar of most funding organizations, without expecting a catastrophic impact on well-funded ecosystems replete with indigenous communities such as rain forests.
5. The fragile, steep cloud forest landscape being stripped of tree cover for cattle grazing and agriculture, is causing landslides and mudslides that are cutting into the roads, destroying infrastructure includig schools and homes, clogging hydroelectric systems, and most tragically, is now costing human life.
6. As fresh water globally dries up, cloud forests, the Earth’s watersheds and floating rivers, can produce the fresh water needed to support life.
Our Approach
From our 170-acre pilot site in the upper Amazon, we are developing and testing reforestation models, from rewilding to assisted reforestation systems, all while blocking further invasion into 615 acres of primitive, primary cloud forest adjacent to our recovering forest and building the Crystal Frog, the world’s first cloud forest recovery and discovery center.
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The trees we’ve planted in our reforestation model, always respecting emerging growth around them, include native IUCN Red List tree species at risk of extinction, such as cedars and wax palms, as well as many native tree species with culinary and cosmetic potential such as wild walnut (tocte or nogal), logma
( a fruit tree akin to lucuma), Sangre de Drago or Dragon’s Blood known for the healing properties of its sap, and the protein-packed legume chachafruto also known as porotón.
We’re collaborating with local schools and community to recover cloud forests. That means testing new recipes, new uses, such as breads and ice cream made from cloud forest ingredients, to make them relevant. We are excited about experimenting with culinary, medicinal and cosmetic uses for tree and emerging growth plants, as a complementary activity to raise awareness and interest in cloud forests.
From our food lab in Ibarra, we’re experimenting with new wild ingredients for culinary use, and collaborating with local and international universities such as UDLA, UTE, and Wageningen in Holland, to deepen knowledge and appreciation of these trees for their potential properties beyond their importance for reforestation.
We’ve also had to confront the reality that the cloud forests are under attack. We succeeded in negotiating the departure of an invader to the park lands directly adjacent to us, enabling us to become a physical barrier to protect over 600 acres of primitive, primary cloud forest accessible through our restoration site.
After 12 years, we see plenty of indicators that this precious and at-risk-of-extinction biome is completely recoverable.
Founder
Craig Leon , embarked on educational and farming programs to help restart the production of quinoa alongside rural communities back in the 1980s and was the country's first exporter of honeydew melons to Europe. In 1992 he co-founded Andean Organics, the first certified organic commercial vegetable business.
Craig graduated summa cum laude in Economics from Princeton and got his MBA in Agribusiness at Harvard. In 2012, he acquired 170 acres of degraded cattle lands in Baeza. Upon discovering that trees such as logma (an endemic relative to lucuma), poroton (protein-rich tree beans), motilon (Amazon cherry), tocte (Andean-Amazon walnut) and other wild food plants were naturally abundant in the land and in the area, Craig decided to work on models to help restore the biome and provide a new, ecologically inclusive model for sustainable wild food production that protects at-risk animals that inhabit the cloud forest.
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Upon seeing nature’s response, by 2020 the focus changed to give priority to understanding the forest recovery holistically, including ornithology (birds), herpetology (frogs), mammals, botany, mycelium (mushrooms), hydrology (water) and all the beautiful recovery possible in cloud forests, one of the most at-risk biomes on Earth.