Centinela is still alive!

A legendary hotspot of plant diversity, Ecuador’s Centinela cloud forests were written off and left for dead following reports in 1991 of their total destruction.

But they are not gone. 

In 2021 our teams revisted the Centinela region and discovered surviving fragments of primary cloud forest. We 'rediscovered' plant species that were believed extinct—having never been found anywhere else—and collected several new species.

Centinela can now become a symbol for conservation action.

Our goal is to raise awareness and improve knowledge about Centinela's important cloud forests and promote the many urgent opportunities to preserve them. Please see the other pages of this site for more information and ways to help.

Our team represents academic and research institutions from Ecuador, France, and the United States. Contact us and join us.

Background

When legendary botanists Cal Dodson and Al Gentry raised the alarm in a 1991 paper about the devastating habitat loss and extinction occurring in western Ecuador, their keynote was Centinela: a prominent extra-Andean ridge draped in cloud forest. They celebrated it as the most botanically interesting forest they had visited in western Ecuador, harboring many unique plant species... and then noted that the forest had been entirely destroyed for agriculture. In his best-selling book The Diversity of Life, E. O. Wilson coined the term “Centinelan extinctions” to describe a hemorrhagic loss of diversity caused by the clear-cutting of tropical forests holding endemic species (pp. 243-244). While the alarm was desperately needed, few botanists ever returned to check the extent of deforestation and search for survivors—until now.

C. H. Dodson, A. H. Gentry, Biological extinction in western Ecuador. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 78(2), 273–295 (1991).

N. C. A. Pitman, D. M. White, J. E. Guevara Andino, T. L. P. Couvreur, R. P. Fortier, J. N. Zapata, X. Cornejo, J. L. Clark, K. J. Feeley, M. K. Johnston, A. Lozinguez, G. Rivas-Torres. Rediscovery of Gasteranthus extinctus L.E.Skog & L.P.Kvist (Gesneriaceae) at multiple sites in western Ecuador. PhytoKeys 194: 33–46. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.194.79638 (2022).

A. H. Gentry, Species richness and floristic composition of Choco region plant communities. Caldasia 15(71–75), 71–91 (1986).

A. H. Gentry, “Endemism in tropical versus temperate plant communities” in Conservation biology: The science of scarcity and diversity, M. Soulé, Ed. (Sinauer Associates. Sunderland, MA, 1986), pp. 153–181.

A. H. Gentry, C. H. Dodson. Diversity and biogeography of neotropical vascular epiphytes. Ann. Mo. Bot. Gard. 74, 205–233 (1987).

A. H. Gentry, “Speciation in tropical forests” in Tropical forests: Botanical dynamics, speciation and diversity, L. B. Holm-Nielsen, I. Nielsen, H. Balslev, Eds. (Academic Press Limited, London, 1989), pp. 113–134.