Exploring Colombia's cloud forest, part 1

Written by Manuel Bernal Escobar

Photos by Riley, Alyssa, and Manuel

Once upon a time, three tropical ecologist friends decided to go on a vacation in a remote forest near a conference they were going to attend in Cartagena, Colombia. Little did they know at the time, their whimsical trip to visit the forest would guide their scientific pursuits for years to come!

The three friends -- Alyssa, Riley, and Manuel -- are field biologists. So naturally, they like to be outdoors as much as possible, and they all enjoy long hikes more than anybody else. One day while planning the trip to the conference, they decided that it would be a great idea to take a few days off after the end of the meeting. After discussing the best place to visit they decided to go to the cloud forest. They found a reserve located in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (SNSM) called El Dorado, which belongs to the NGO ProAves. SNSM is a mountain on the Colombian Caribbean coast and is isolated from the Andes Mountain range. It is the tallest and closest mountain to the coastline in the world. It reaches 5700 m above sea level at its highest point, which is only 46 km away from the beach. These special features, that is, the isolation from similar mountain ecosystems and the sharp elevational gradient, make it an exceptional place for unique biodiversity.

Indeed, SNSM is considered a biodiversity hotspot in Colombia. Although it has not been explored thoroughly, scientists have already discovered 23 species of birds that are endemic to SNSM, representing more than 25% of Colombia’s endemic bird species. Similarly, more than 30% of the reptiles and amphibians found in SNSM can be found only there. Also, high rates of endemism have been reported for some plant families including Melastomataceae, Bryophytes (mosses, liverworts, and hornworts), and paramo (high-elevation grassland) vegetation among others. Moreover, there are currently four indigenous communities (Koguis, Arhuacos, Wiwas, and Kankuamo) living in SNSM that have been there since long before Europeans arrived to South America in 1492.

El Dorado reserve is in the middle of the cloud forest between 1900 and 2800 m above sea level on Cerro Kennedy, which is a 3100 m mountain in the western corner of SNSM. El Dorado has 1500 ha with various types of land cover, ranging from abandoned pastures to primary forest patches including different successional states such as bushes and secondary vegetation. This type of ecosystem is described as wet lower montane forest, has a mean annual temperature of 15 °C and mean annual precipitation of 2900 mm. Although the temperature is quite stable throughout the year, there is a seasonality in the precipitation defined by three dry months at the beginning of the year.

Arriving to the reserve was not easy, mainly because the night before was the conference banquet, and everybody stayed out late dancing and celebrating. Even though they were hungover and tired that morning, they made their way to the shuttle that would take them from Cartagena to Santa Marta, a 3-hour drive through the dry Caribbean savanna. Once in Santa Marta, they changed from the shuttle to a 4x4 truck that took them in a 2-hour drive winding up from sea level to the reserve, tucked away on Cerro Kennedy at 1900 m above sea level. By the end of the afternoon, they were in their rooms preparing to go to the restaurant to watch the sunset at the famous ridge called “Cuchilla de San Lorenzo” and to have dinner. After dinner they started to discuss how they were going to spend the next two days in the reserve, but little did they know about what they were going to find.

They decided to explore the trails near their rooms and the restaurant on the first day, and on the second day, they would take a longer hike up to the highest point in the reserve and then down to the patch of primary forest at the far side of the reserve. On the first day, they visited the secondary forest around the busiest part of the reserve, where they could see that conservation is a work in progress. They were expecting to hike a lot that day, but with every 100 m they hiked they found trees or plants that they did not know and that captured their attention for 8 hours. At the end of the day, they were tired from standing all day looking at plants, but they were not tired of hiking.

The next morning, they were ready for the long hike and to explore the lower limits of the paramo and the primary forest. After having a big breakfast and packing lunch, they started hiking. That day they started their hike at 2000 m asl, and after an hour of hiking they reached the limit between the montane forest and the paramo at 3000 m asl. There they saw the majestic wax palms (Ceroxylum ceriferum) and the charismatic SNSM parakeet (Pyrrhura viridicata), two flagship species for conservation in SNSM. After exploring the high-elevation ecosystem, they headed to the primary forest. To do so, they hiked down for an hour to 2200 m asl and arrived at “La Cumbre,” an old farmhouse nestled in the middle of a big pasture that is the entrance to the primary forest.

It took them 40 minutes to cross the pastures and get into the depths of the primary forest. But once they were inside that forest, they could not believe what they were seeing. The trees in the forest were huge. Bigger than any other trees they have seen before in similar ecosystems, in both diameter and height, and from a species they were not expecting -- a tropical gymnosperm locally called Pino Romeron (Retrophyllum rospingliosii). The biggest tree they saw that day reached 1.25 m in diameter at breast height and 30 m in height. This patch of forest was located on a very steep slope of Cerro Kennedy, and that is probably why it was not cut down before. The three friends could not hide the happiness in their faces and did not want to leave the forest. But it was getting late, and they needed to hike back to the restaurant on the other side of the reserve. So, the three of them agreed that they would keep hiking in the forest until they saw another big tree, then they will hike back. On their way back to the reserve, they could not stop talking about the forest they had just visited.