The Chocó Cloud Forest stretches along the Pacific slope of the Andes Mountains, from northwestern Ecuador through western Colombia. It’s an ecosystem characterized by low-lying clouds within the tree canopy. That moisture is captured by tree crowns as water droplets, which drip to the forest floor, nourishing roots. This significantly increases the amount of water available to these ecosystems, in some cases doubling the amount of water that would otherwise come from precipitation alone.
The Chocó is renowned as a biodiversity hotspot, with a wide variety of plants species, birds, insects, and amphibians unique to this environment. Epiphytes proliferate throughout this lush forest. These are non-parasitic plants that grow on other trees, such as mosses, ferns, bromeliads, air plants, orchids. While much of this forest has receded over the last century due to deforestation, some pristine tracts of cloud forest habitat are still found in Ecuador, within the Mindo Valley, the mountains west of Quito, and southern Colombia, such as near Cocora.
This ecosystem is also among the last remaining places to see Andean spectacled bears in the wild. Although superficially similar to North American black bears, their closest relatives were giant short-faced bears, which went extinct around the time humans began populating the Americas. They’re also more timid than their North American relatives, are much more herbivorous, and are the only bear species known for building nests in trees. They seasonally occupy a wide range of habitats, from the subalpine Páramo ecosystem of Andes through Peru’s desert floodplains, although their range has been shrinking into isolated pockets in recent decades due to hunting and habitat loss, and they are currently listed as vulnerable. In Ecuador, however, they’re a protected species and the population is stable. Once a year they descend from the mountains into Maquipucuna Reserve, in the Chocó cloud forest, to feed upon ripening fruit, like aguacatillo, a species of small wild avocados.