THE WALKING TREES IN ECUADOR

It takes almost the whole day to travel from Ecuador’s capital, Quito, to the heart of the Unesco Sumaco Biosphere Reserve, some 100km to the southeast. The journey entails three hours by car to the middle of the forest, and then anywhere from seven to 15 hours by boat, mule and foot, mostly uphill and on a muddy road, to reach the interior. But the effort is worth it, considering you wind up in the middle of a pristine forest that houses a rather unusual find: walking palm trees.

A biodiversity hotspot

Some spots of the Sumaco Biosphere Reserve host nearly 500 species of birds, 51 species of large mammals, 64 species of reptiles, 61 species of amphibians, 6,000 plant species, more than 600 species of butterflies and several very old fern trees, some hundreds of years old.

Like the Ents from JRR Tolkien’s epic Lord of the Rings (only a bit slower), these trees actually move through the forest as the growth of new roots gradually relocates them, sometimes two or three centimeters per day. While some scientists debate whether these trees walk, Peter Vrsansky, a palaeobiologist from the Earth Science Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences Bratisla, claims to have seen this phenomenon first hand.

“As the soil erodes, the tree grows new, long roots that find new and more solid ground, sometimes up to 20m,” said Vrsansky. “Then, slowly, as the roots settle in the new soil and the tree bends patiently toward the new roots, the old roots slowly lift into the air. The whole process for the tree to relocate to a new place with better sunlight and more solid ground can take few years.”

Vrsansky, a local guide and conservationist Thierry Garcia have spent the few months living in the forest while documenting the threats that jeopardize some of its natural wonders.

“During our investigations, we discovered some undocumented 30m waterfalls, two new vertebrate species (a frog and a lizard) and we were attacked by a big herd of a very big woolly monkeys,” Vrsansky narrated. “They were throwing things at us, including 6m-long dry branches, even their shit and urine.”

The experience has been daunting as they forage from the forest and survive harsh conditions; Vrsansky recalls losing about 10kg of weight within a week. But despite the hardships, Vrsansky said He was exhilarated when He found, in a single spot, more than 200 cockroach species – more than those currently living in all of Europe. These cockroaches were nothing like the hideous critters lurking around your house; they were all different colors, many either luminescent, shining in the dark  because of their backgrounds and their ability camouflage themselves by changing to the color of leafs.

Surprisingly, this fairy-tale forest is currently for sale through the “agricultural reform”, which supports locals cutting down trees in order to gain living rights to a piece of land. “What is happening is that people come, cut down a bunch of trees and gain ownership of their piece of land. Then, more than five years, as stipulated by this new law, they are able to sell the land. And they do,” Vrsansky explained.

Until now, very few locals have technically lived inside the forest. A local shaman claims there is a “bad spirit” inside some parts of the reserve, and the forest is rich in disease-bearing insects and other potential threats.

Still, buying the reserve piece by piece is one of the strategies conservationists are using to save it from deforestation. One hectare goes for less than $500, and so far, García has bought more than 300. “He is not rich,” Vrsansky said of the conservationist, “But now he owns and protects his own harpy eagle, his own jaguar and more than 10,000 arthropod species. I’m sorry, I forgot, his own waterfall.”

Other potential conservation strategies include selling the land to a university so it becomes a protected research area, or using the forest to promote tourism.

“For visitors, walking by condors and raging volcanoes, combined with the pristine forest, is a window to an existential past,” Vrsansky said. “Forest itself? This is a full show of the life on Earth. You literally feel like you are diving inside an ocean full of life.”

Since 2010, like 200 hectares of forest have been cleared near the Bigal River Biological Reserve, a French-supported research station within the Sumaco reserve. Elsewhere in the reserve, many thousands of hectares have been affected since the building of an access road in 1986.

“The [cutting] is a shame, as Ecuador is one of the world countries with the highest area of protected areas. But the trees cannot walk fast enough to escape the chainsaw and the machetes backed by current legislation,” Vrsansky narrated.