The surrounding protected area, which extends to Bolivia's border with Brazil, is home to an amazing array of flora and fauna, from endangered jaguars and massive fig trees to millions of colorful butterflies. According to biologist Tim Killeen, who has been doing research there for more than a decade, Noel Kempff Mercado National Park is "super diverse." As examples of the park's diversity he cited the 630 bird species found there - more than exist in all of North America within an area of just 15,234 square kilometers - and the fact that its forests and savannas hold an estimated 4,000 plant species.
That inordinate biodiversity was the reason for the park's creation in 1979, and two subsequent expansions. It has also drawn more than 100 biologists to conduct research in the park during the past two decades, and is one of the reasons two important climate change studies are currently underway there. Manuel, however, is interested in a less scholarly group of visitors: the backpackers who have begun arriving with increasing frequency. Like many of his neighbors in the tiny agricultural community of La Florida, near the park's main entrance, Manuel is involved in an ecotourism project supported by SGP [The GEF Small Grants Programme implemented by UNDP]. That $23,163 grant has financed efforts to draw more visitors to the remote park while improving the ability of local people to accommodate them.
Overlooking the Paraguá River - the opposite bank of which is the lined with the exuberant greenery of the national park - La Florida is a sleepy agricultural community of around 100, most of whom are Chiquitano Indians. Dozens of thatch-roofed, adobe houses are scattered along the riverbank and around a soccer field, near which stand the cement-block school and health post. Plantain, papaya, mango and avocado trees grow around most homes, and in their shadows wander chickens, geese, cows and other livestock.
The ecotourism project, which began at the end of 2000, aims to supplement the subsistence economy of La Florida in various ways. Manuel, for example, participated in a guide-training course and received camping equipment through a small loan fund, which he will repay from the $10 daily fee he and other local guides charge visitors. Some of his neighbors have borrowed from the fund to construct rustic accommodations, equip tiny restaurants, or buy bicycles and dugout canoes to rent to tourists. Others have come up with enterprises that don't require large investments, such as renting horses or selling fish to restaurants. Vincente Roca, one of La Florida's oldest citizens, makes rubber balls, palm-leaf fans and other souvenirs to sell to tourists.
Juan Surubí, who acquired five bicycles to rent through the loan fund, is enthused about tourism's potential. "It is a source of work that is going to carry us forward, toward a better future," he smiled.
Manuel, who sometimes spends days hiking and camping in the park with a group of backpackers, has a more hands-on relationship with ecotourism, since he introduces the tourists to the local ecology. Not only has the 19-year-old guide taken two training courses and worked as a field assistant for biological researchers, he continues to study botany and English at home, to improve his guiding abilities. He explained that he enjoys working in the national park, and finds its primary (virgin) forest especially interesting.
"Luckily they had the initiative to protect the park," he said. "Now we can be sure that this beauty won't be destroyed."
Manuel's attitude is quite a switch from La Florida's traditional relationship with its natural resources, which has been one of extraction and predation. His own family history reflects the evolution of that relationship. Like most of the area's residents during the 1940s and '50s, Manuel's grandfather was a rubber tapper. When the rubber market crashed, however, the local economy switched to logging and hunting. During the 1970s and 80s, countless tons of mahogany and tens of thousands of caiman, jaguar and ocelot hides were exported from the area. Manuel's father worked for a lumber company and then a cattle ranch, all in what is now part of the national park. Manuel also worked at a sawmill as his first job, but he didn't like it. He has since earned better money as a nature guide or research assistant.
"It's a good alternative, selling nature without destroying nature," he observed.
Noel Kempff Mercado National Park has no shortage of selling points. Bird watchers can see hundreds of avian species there, including several kinds of macaws, parrots, toucans and the nandu: a South American ostrich. The four-legged fauna is equally diverse, including jaguars and five other felines, the rare Andean maned wolf, the giant anteater, pampas deer and eight monkey species. Such diversity results from the park's location in a transition zone between the forests of the Amazon Basin and the swamps and savannas that dominate the southern half of the continent, which means it comprises an array of life zones that includes Amazonian forest, termite savanna, inundated forests and the threatened cerrado savanna. Those endangered ecosystems comprise some splendid scenery that ranges from dense jungle to windswept grasslands, several breathtaking waterfalls and the bluff-lined Huanchaca Plateau, which towers over the local landscape.
Though the drive to La Florida from the departmental capital of Santa Cruz is bumpy and dusty, and takes from 12 to 20 hours, the trip can be broken up with visits to one or more of the beautifully restored Jesuit missions scattered around the region. La Florida has weekly bus service from the mission town of Concepción, whereas jeep rentals and charter flights are available in Santa Cruz. Once they reach La Florida, visitors have enough options to keep them busy for at least a week, such as dugout rides on the Paraguá River - home of piranhas, caimans, dolphins and giant river otters - bike trips to Laguna Chaplin and other spot, or hikes up to El Encanto Waterfall and the Huanchaca Plateau.
Despite its natural assets, the park as received little tourism to date, due to its remote location and the fact that neither it nor Bolivia are on most travelers' radar screens. The Bolivian NGO Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza (FAN), which administers the park through an agreement with the government, operates several camps and lodges within the park catering to slightly up-market tourism, but since those groups usually fly directly into the park, the closets most residents of La Florida have gotten to them is watching their charter planes fly by. An important component of the community ecotourism project is consequently marketing Noel Kempff Mercado to the low-budget travelers who have traditionally ignored the park.
"We've identified viable markets," said Tim Killeen, who has been instrumental in the development of the project. He explained that they are focusing on Cuzco, Peru, a mecca for the millions of backpackers that travel through South America every year, in hopes of luring a fraction of those tourists. "The people of La Florida can't provide first class service. So we're hooking them up with a market that doesn't want first class service. It's a perfect fit."
Though currently a research fellow at Conservation International's Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, Killeen has long been associated with the NGO administering the ecotourism project: the Fundación Amigos del Museo de Historia Natural Noel Kempff Mercado. He saw the need for such an effort several years ago and began writing grant proposals in his spare time. The project consequently received funding from SGP and the Weeden Foundation, as well as support from FAN. Since one of the project goals is to strengthen local organizations, they have helped the residents of La Florida create an ecotourism association and a local guides' association.
The elected chief of La Florida, Pastor Solís, has been involved in the project from the start, participating in the guide training courses and the establishment of the associations. His experience in the park stretches back to before its creation, when he worked for a large logging company, but since then he has worked as a field assistant for Tim Killeen and, more recently, as a guide. He expressed confidence that nature tourism will play an increasingly important role in the local economy.
"Tourism will benefit the entire community," he said. "Not just a few people, but everyone."
Killeen, who has been working with the people of La Florida for more than a decade, called his work on the ecotourism project "an attempt to give something back to a community that has helped him over the years." He explained that though the project is primarily focused on La Florida, the idea is that as the number of visitors grows, the towns of Porvenir and Piso Firme, up the road from La Florida, will also get into the tourism business.
"We're trying to improve their livelihoods," he said, adding that as local people receive benefits from the park, they will become allies of conservation.
In addition to marketing Noel Kempff Mercado to tourists in Cuzco and La Paz, the Fundación Amigos del Museo is organizing holiday excursions for Bolivian university students and high school seniors, as part of a program to attract domestic tourism. Such excursions have the added benefit of introducing Bolivians to the park, and making them aware of its ecological importance.
Among the participants in an inaugural excursion was the Resident Representative of the UNDP in Bolivia, Carlos Felipe Martinez, who was impressed by the park's beauty, the quality of the guides, and the enthusiasm he encountered in La Florida. He said the ecotourism project reflects the UNDP mission of promoting "a sustainable human development."
"I'm certain that when communities are given the opportunity and responsibility to work together for the environment, and promote tourism as a source of income, we are advancing toward liberty, toward equity, and social justice," he affirmed.
Article by: David Dudenhoefer