Three generations of conservation and nature – related tourism in Ecuador:

San Isidro Lodge has long been recognized as a pioneer in nature tourism and conservation since it is one the first lodges in Ecuador to offer a full service stay in a place surrounded by a private forest reserve. It all goes back to a time in the late 1940’s when young Simón Bustamante started his exploration of the largely uninhabited eastern part of Ecuador (“el Oriente”) when he was barely into his teens. In those days there were only foot and horse trails, so what takes us only hours now in a vehicle, back then took days or weeks. From his first journey, he was hooked and continued to get to know this vast region of the country like nobody else. The centuries-old, rugged passages – some of them first opened by the Spanish conquistadores in their feverish search for El Dorado – led up and over the wind-swept continental divide and down through Andean forests, and down into the Amazon lowlands. These seldom traversed and even feared lands where a deterrent to most early explorers and colonists, but nothing less than a wonderland for Simón.

Over the years, and many expeditions later, Simón became a distinguished figure of the zone, friend to many, as well as a hydro-electric engineer. Along the way he had been a part of the team that had rediscovered la Cascada San Rafael, designed and constructed roads, helped co-found numerous towns and served as minister of natural resources under the president José María Velasco Ibarra as well as a congressman representing Napo province. As fate would have it, his adventures coincided with a government plan to open up untouched land for colonization. Of all of the areas that he spent years exploring, up and down the slopes, the spot that most captivated him were the mountainous hills surrounding the small hamlet of Cosanga, named for the river itself, so he bought the lands that are now part of the forest reserve that surrounds the lodge. San Isidro was founded and officially legally registered by the government in 1959.

Simón’s awareness of the importance for proper natural resource management and preservation was vanguard – even pre-dating the national park system – in a time when deforestation was thought of as land improvement and a necessary practice to make properties productive. With this foresight he trailblazed a path that turned him into one of the country’s first true conservationists. To settle land back then, it was a requirement to make 50% productive. Of the original 620 hectares, only about 100 were cleared for cattle ranching, leaving the rest as original forest. Most of the cattle land has since regenerated back into tall secondary forest.

Tourism on the reserve was an idea that the Bustamante family had been formulating for years when they built the first set of small cabins. When San Isidro received its first guests to the lodge back in 1985, “eco-tourism” was a foreign concept to most and just getting started in Ecuador; Tinalandia on the west slope, and Jaguar and Anaconda Lodges in the Tena area, were a few of the earliest lodges with this concept already in practice. As tourism to natural areas and private conservation efforts began to grow in the country, so did the San Isidro reserve. In 1998 an adjacent 550 hectare tract of forested land was purchased to add to its original 620 hectares. With this momentum, the Napo Andean Forest Foundation was created, and with help of numerous international organizations with the goal of raising funds to significantly expand the reserve and establish it as an important corridor, connecting the two different extremes of the Antisana National Park. Over the next 10 years, this became a reality with the purchase of about 900 additional hectares of mostly inaccessible lands that were the final link in consolidating this project.

The reserve has evolved into the ideal place to develop diverse projects and activities related to conservation. For decades San Isidro has supported research on its reserve by opening its doors to foreign and Ecuadorian researchers and students, making it one of the best studied forest reserves in the country. In 2014 San Isidro initiated a reforestation project to help restore the Logma tree – a special and native tree of the zone – that has been exploited to the point of near local extinction due to its prized wood. Also known as Lucuma, this tree species’ large and pulpy fruit, which has antioxidant properties, and considered a super-food, is best known from Peru where it is popularly consumed as ice cream and flour. The tree had become rare enough in the area that even older generations had to think way back to remember its existence, but through persistence, numerous trees were located. Seeds were then collected and germinated, and raised to saplings and small trees, that were then planted with great success around the lodge and in regenerating areas in the reserve. After a long wait, 2023 marked the first year that some of the trees flowered and then fruited.