1. Background

My path to Los Cedros was circuitous, fortunate, and rooted in a love of Nature. At 20, I immigrated to rural Mexico, where I became a beekeeper and mother. Those formative nine years shaped my understanding of social and ecological relationships, which later informed my work as a cultural anthropologist.

As a single mother, I returned to the United States to attend college and pursue graduate studies, where I became captivated by the montane environment and peoples of South America’s Andean cordillera. Since my first visit to Ecuador in 1988, I have gathered stories in homes, villages, farms, and cloud forests as both a researcher and organizer. I later moved with my daughter and son to a highland Kichwa village near Otavalo, where I completed doctoral research on gendered cosmologies and lived for nearly a decade. Key to these stories is when, in 1989, we also became friends with a family who lived on the other side of the mountain, at a lower elevation in the Íntag cloud forests.

Over the years, I developed enduring relationships in both Andean highland and cloud forest communities, returning regularly after joining the faculty of a state university in Minnesota. During a 2009–10 sabbatical, I volunteered as a reporter for Periódico Íntag, the community newspaper of the Íntag cloud forest region. That work brought me to Reserva Los Cedros—and changed my life.

Through long-term friendships and ethnographic engagement, I bring Kichwa, Mestizo, and scientific perspectives into dialog. Interweaving personal narratives, ancestral stories, multispecies science, and excerpts from the 2020 Los Cedros constitutional court case and 2021 ruling, I explore how Andean ecological wisdom connects human and more-than-human worlds across scales. I also examine challenges to implementing Rights of Nature and show how their promise depends not only on law, but on culture, education, art, storytelling, and people-planet policies that support flourishing within planetary boundaries.Footnote ¹

2. Political economic trends

Over the past four decades of globalization, Ecuador has undergone profound demographic, political, and economic transformations. Since my first visit in 1988, the human population has nearly doubled.Footnote ² In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to constitutionally recognize the Rights of Nature and Pachamama (Mother Earth) and guarantee Sumac Kawsay/Buen Vivir—the Right to Live Well—within a plurinational framework.Footnote ³

These legal innovations emerged amid economic restructuring and political upheaval. Following a decade in which eight presidents held office in ten years, Rafael Correa (2007–2017) came to power promising reform. During his first year, he supported a mining moratorium and convened a Constituent Assembly in Montecristi. Led by Alberto Acosta and allied social movements, delegates spent a year drafting a new constitution, which Ecuadorians overwhelmingly approved in 2008.Footnote ⁴

The new constitution’s promise soon collided with global markets. After defaulting on portions of Ecuador’s foreign debt, the Correa administration turned to Chinese financing for infrastructure projects and opened the country to large-scale industrial mining. Tensions between extractive development and constitutional protections have shaped Ecuadorian politics ever since.

Subsequent governments have grappled with corruption, economic stagnation, and growing insecurity. Poverty remains especially acute in rural areas (45%), while the post-pandemic rise of organized crime has contributed to one of Latin America’s highest homicide rates.Footnote ⁵

Daniel Noboa was elected president in a 2023 snap election on a business-friendly, law-and-order platform. The son of a billionaire banana magnate, he won reelection in 2025 and quickly declared states of emergency across several provinces, granting broad powers to impose curfews, restrict movement, and limit civil liberties. Through a $60 million national referendum, his administration also sought to reshape the Constitutional Court, permit a U.S. military base on Ecuadorian territory, and enact constitutional amendments. Critics argued that these changes could weaken protections for the environment and Indigenous peoples.

In a New York Times op-ed published on August 15, 2025, César Rodríguez-Garavito and Robert Macfarlane argued that Ecuador’s status as a global leader in environmental imagination and law was under threat. While celebrating the landmark Los Cedros decision, they warned that Noboa’s proposed reforms endangered both the country’s ecological legacy and democratic institutions.

On November 16, 2025, voters rejected the proposed reforms. Many observers linked the outcome to events the previous month, when CONAIE (the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador) led a national strike against austerity measures and the removal of diesel subsidies. Supported by Indigenous organizations, environmental groups, and other civil society actors, the protests were especially strong in Cotacachi, Imbabura (the same cantón/county where the Íntag Valley and Los Cedros are located).

President Noboa deployed the military to suppress protestors. The unrest left three people dead, injured hundreds, and disrupted the lives of millions. Many viewed the crackdown as a turning point that helped galvanize opposition to the referendum and reaffirm support for the constitutional framework established in 2008.

Today, Ecuador stands at a crossroads. As political leaders debate the country’s development model, Indigenous organizations, grassroots movements, scientists, educators, local communities, and their allies continue the work of defending ecosystems and advancing the Rights of Nature—often at considerable personal and collective risk.

3. Pachamama

During the 1990s, when I lived in the highland village of Peguche with my daughter and son, I gained insight into how Andean social norms shape daily life. To meet every day needs, runakuna (people, in Kichwa) cultivated networks of reciprocity extending across generations and into the living landscape, Pachamama (Mother Earth). Through mingas (cooperative work parties) and ritual practices, runakuna sustained bonds linking human and more-than-human worlds.

As Kichwa leader Nina Pacari writes, “Pachamama envelops us in her womb and balances planetary systems by generating nourishment for life. Like our Mother, she deserves to be cared for, respected, and fed.”Footnote ⁶

I also learned that, in Kichwa cosmology, the Andean mountains are regarded as sentient beings, ancestral repositories, and sources of both material and spiritual sustenance. Mountain peaks are understood as gendered, relational beings connected through kinship networks. According to local traditions, Taita (Beloved Father) Imbabura and Mamá Cotacachi are the progenitors of the Guagua (Baby) mountains that shape the surrounding valley.

These values were reflected in everyday life. Families practiced small-scale farming on steep slopes with oxen and hand tools, and mingas brought kin and neighbors together to plant corn, harvest potatoes, and store fodder. Such collective labor reinforced reciprocal obligations among people, land, and community.

At one gathering, I joined preparations for a communal meal in a dark kitchen where guinea pigs scurried in the corner and consumed kitchen scraps, producing valuable fertilizer. When mature, the little critters became the centerpiece of ceremonial feasts.

As I returned from the communal spigot, carrying rinsed potatoes, Sra. Elsa began a story about a mountain spirit who manifested in a healing stone. She sat on a low bench chopping vegetables into a large pot over the fire and explained, “Several years ago we (she and her daughters) carried the laundry tied to our backs to a stream below the village.”

After washing clothes on large stones in the river, they picnicked beside the water. As the clothes dried spread across bushes, she looked up at Mamá Cotacachi whose snow-capped summit rose above the valley.

“Then I heard an unusual gurgling sound,” she said. “It felt like a summons coming from the stream.”

Following the sound, she reached into the water and retrieved a stone, carrying it home in her laundry bundle.

Months later, when her husband became seriously ill, she dreamed of the stone resting on an altar surrounded by candles, flowers, bread, and other offerings.

“I woke with the altar vivid in my mind,” she recalled. “I found the stone, gathered the offerings, and set up the table.”

She credited her husband’s rapid recovery to the stone—a spiritual emissary of Mamá Cotacachi who restored his health.

Elsa’s story reveals an Andean ontology of profound interconnectedness. Mamá Cotacachi is not merely a mountain or resource but an animate being that communicates and heals through dreams and sacred stones. In this worldview, mountains, streams, stones, humans, and spirits are bound in relationships of mutual care that sustain harmonious belonging within Pachamama.

4. The tale of Curi Quinti/The golden hummingbird and the invention of fire

Although hummingbirds are less common in the Andean highlands than in the lower-elevation cloud forests where Los Cedros is located, they are beloved and emblematic of interspecies relations. In the 1990s, my friend and neighbor Mercedes Cotacachi—a linguist, writer, and scholar—introduced me to Kichwa stories in Curi Quinti: Ecuador llactamanta huiñai causai rima cuna/El colibrí de oro/The Golden Hummingbird (1986).

In the title story, Curi Quinti embodies courage and grace. At the dawn of mythic time, the tiny hummingbird confronts giants and crosses demon-guarded realms to bring fire to humanity, providing warmth, nourishment, and the means for creativity and community.

In another folktale, a mother helps her speech-delayed child by allowing a hummingbird to “sting” the child’s tongue. The child’s speech is restored.

Together, these narratives portray hummingbirds as mediators between human and more-than-human worlds. Like mountains and ancestral spirits, they are active participants in a living cosmos grounded in reciprocity rather than human dominance. Such stories express the biocentric ethos of Sumak Kawsay (Living Well), where the common good encompasses ecosystems and multiple species (including humans), and which, I suggest, later informed Ecuador’s constitutional recognition of the Rights of Nature and Pachamama in 2008.

5. Cloud forest lives: Key biodiversity areas link local and global geographies

Geographically, cloud forests cover sides of the Andes Mountains from 850 to 2500 meters or 2800–8200 feet above sea level. In particular, Reserva Los Cedros’s primary forests cover steep Andean foothills and are situated at the headwaters of four regional rivers. They form parts of contiguous eco-corridors, including two global conservation hotspots—the Chocó linking Northwest Ecuador to Costa Rica on the south–north axis, while also connecting the Tropical Andes.Footnote ⁷ These cloud forests are living hydrological engines, circulating huge amounts of moisture (> 3 meters per year), and creating complex living systems across continents.

Scientists working with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) identify Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) as sites essential for sustaining global biodiversity as a pillar for planetary health. The Los Cedros Protected Forest is recognized as one of the world’s most important KBAs because of the exceptional concentration of endemic and threatened species, many of which occur nowhere else on Earth.Footnote ⁸

Los Cedros Protected Forests encompass 15,000 acres of cloud forest, including diverse micro-ecosystems, spanning elevations from 2,740 meters at Cerro de la Plata to 1000 meters at the trailhead. Their mountainous arms extend into the ancient east–west Toisán Range, where resident species form ecological communities that make this region one of Earth’s last tropical sanctuaries.

Los Cedros sustains extraordinary biodiversity while functioning as a living genetic reservoir, carbon sink, climate stabilizer, oxygen producer, and source of clean water. Their habitats link local ecosystems to broader bioregional and hemispheric networks. These forests prevent erosion and nourish the Esmeraldas River Basin, a critical estuary for migratory birds and breeding ground for thousands of aquatic species. Bordering Cotacachi Cayapas National Park, one of the planet’s ecological treasures, Los Cedros remains under threat.

6. Los Cedros and neighboring communities

In early 2017, I hired a driver to take me and supplies to the trailhead of Reserva Los Cedros, where a guide and mules were waiting. We left the village of El Chontal (600 meters above sea level), where the mighty Guayllabamba River roared, and climbed through the adjacent Río Magdalena Grande valley. As the road ascended, steep ridges opened onto a landscape of homesteads, pastures, remnant forests, and the village of Magdalena Alto.

“When I migrated here as an adolescent forty years ago, all this was forest,” Sr. Ricardo told me. “Colonists cleared land for farms and cattle—a government requirement for securing land titles. That policy lasted until the 1990s. We cut the forests to grow food and lost so much wildlife.”

The road accelerated extraction by giving loggers easier access to timber markets. Before the cement bridge crossed the Magdalena River, muleteers regularly hauled cedar and other hardwoods to roadside depots. “People think logging has decreased,” Sr. Ricardo explained, “but now trucks can pick up mostly contraband timber closer to the source.”

Before road expansion shortened the hike to Los Cedros to just two hours, I often encountered muleteers descending the trails carrying loads of cedar planks. “Muévete, mula, muévete”—“Move faster, mule, move”—their voices echoed across the slopes. Those scenes remain an enduring image of extractive pressure, contrasting sharply with the muleteer who later guided me to the reserve.

One farmer underscored the wastefulness of logging: “From a large cedar, you might get only 100 to 150 planks. Lumberjacks earn about a dollar per plank, so most of the tree is lost.”

That morning, Sr. Ricardo’s wife, Sra. Margarita, spoke of a recent tragedy. “Just a couple of weeks ago, two experienced loggers were killed by falling trees—one a father of six, the other a young man. In mourning, villagers suspended Christmas celebrations.”

Later, a resident recalled the community’s New Year’s gathering when a man, moved by grief and drink, declared: “Pachamama is telling us she has had enough. We must stop logging.” His words captured what many were feeling.

The political ecology of these forests remains shaped by tensions between extraction and conservation.Footnote ⁹ For many families, limited access to education, stable employment, and land makes logging, cattle expansion, migration, or mining appear to be the only viable options, even as they accelerate ecological loss. The challenge is to create livelihoods rooted in mutual wellbeing and forest stewardship. Residents of these forest frontiers are essential caretakers on the front lines of the biodiversity and climate crises—and of our shared future.

7. Legislation for Protected Forests, Pachamama/Mother Earth, and Nature

The 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro brought global attention to sustainable development, biodiversity conservation, and forests’ role in climate regulation. Around the same time, botanists Calaway H. Dodson and Alwyn H. Gentry published their landmark Science article, “Biological Extinction in Western Ecuador,” documenting extraordinary endemism in cloud forests and estimating that only 4 percent remained intact. In 1994, Ecuador strengthened its environmental protections by passing laws that established legal categories for Protected Forests to safeguard biodiversity, water resources, erosion control, and carbon storage.

That same year, José DeCoux, who had lived in Los Cedros since 1988, and collaborators completed surveys of newly acquired land. They developed the Los Cedros Forest Management Plan, secured Ministry of Environment approval, and registered the area as a Protected Forest.

Ecuador also signed the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1993, committing to the protection of endangered species and habitats. This international framework continues to shape conservation policy and is included in strategic national plans.

During the 1990s, Indigenous movements and their allies gained greater political influence by advocating for land rights and environmental protection.Footnote ¹⁰ In the Íntag cloud forest region of Imbabura Province, Mestizo and Afro-Ecuadorian communities developed conservation projects and sustainable economic alternatives while resisting large-scale mining operations. I first visited Íntag in 1990 and later helped found DECOIN (Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Íntag) in 1996, the region’s first environmental organization. In 1998, Bishimetals, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi, withdrew from its copper-mining concession in the Junín area. This withdrawal was widely viewed as a significant victory for environmental justice and community resistance to mining.Footnote ¹¹

During the late 1990s, Cotacachi County also gained global recognition for innovative participatory governance with a Kichwa mayor. In August 2000, the Cotacachi Citizens’ Assembly, including regional groups and municipal authorities, adopted a Cantonal Ecological Ordinance (EO). The first of its kind, the EO prohibited industrial mining and prioritized watershed protection, ecological restoration, and community-based development.Footnote ¹²

In 2008, Ecuadorians approved the Constitution of Montecristi, which recognizes Nature and Pachamama as rights-bearing entities and enshrined Buen Vivir (Living Well) as a guiding principle.Footnote ¹³ The government also enacted a mining moratorium and embraced the Precautionary Principle. Yet after defaulting on portions of its foreign debt in 2009, the state shifted toward industrial mining as a development strategy.

Until 2020, neither the Rights of Nature nor communities’ rights to prior consultation had been fully tested in court. When the government auctioned mining concessions within Protected Forests in 2017, it placed 67 percent of Los Cedros and hundreds of other protected areas at risk.

8. Rights versus wrongs

“Is the world going to continue bungling towards the apocalypse?” José DeCoux asked when I arrived at Los Cedros in July 2018. He described the escalating mining threat after Ecuador’s Ministry of Mining (ENAMI) partnered with the Canadian company Cornerstone S.A. to lease the Magdalena I and II concessions, covering more than two-thirds of the reserve. DeCoux argued that the government granted exploration permits without the legally required community consultation or the environmental impact assessment needed to evaluate effects on water, soils, forests, ecosystems, and local communities before exploration. Meanwhile, mining companies expanded their local influence through high-paying jobs and funding for community projects, while state institutions, including the Ministry of the Environment, promoted foreign mining investment.

A guide told me, “Community leaders are targeted with plum wages. The company has village leaders on their payroll.”

Los Cedros had previously worked with neighboring communities, through a United Nations-supported effort in the early 2010s to develop a co-management plan. I accompanied DeCoux to scores of community meetings, where he framed co-management through conservation, education, and local participation. However, some residents viewed co-management as the means to extraction. After the government cut funding for Los Cedros’ co-planning and the Covid-19 pandemic, economic precarity in the region increased.

9. Litigating on behalf of Los Cedros Protected Forest

In November 2018, under the leadership of DeCoux, county-planning director José Cueva, and Ibarra-based attorney Edgar Merlos, the Cotacachi commonwealth or county filed a petition on behalf of Reserva Los Cedros to defend the constitutional rights of Protected Forests. The case, brought in municipal court, sought to determine whether Protected Forests’ safety and well-being could be legally enforceable and whether prior consultation requirements had real legal effect.

The plaintiffs argued that forestry protections had remained intact since Los Cedros was designated a Protected Forest in 1994 and had been strengthened by the 2000 Ecological Ordinance and the 2008 Constitution. They also cited Ecuador’s 1993 ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity and contended that the state had failed to properly consult affected communities or conduct environmental impact studies before permitting exploration.

The municipal court dismissed the case, ruling that no human populations lived within the Protected Forest and that Nature lacked “a voice,” concluding that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue.

Cotacachi authorities appealed to the Provincial Court of Imbabura. In June 2019, a three-judge panel visited the region, attempting to reach the former mining exploration site via a difficult seven-hour mule route. Although they did not reach the camp, they observed environmental disturbance, including felled trees and new access tracks, and gathered testimony from DeCoux and villagers. Despite government pressure, the courageous judges ruled in favor of Los Cedros.

The case was immediately appealed by mining interests to the Constitutional Court.

10. Can forests have rights? Los Cedros Protected Forest v. Cornerstone SA and ENAMI

On October 20, 2020, I awoke before dawn as Ecuador’s Constitutional Court hearing streamed online, with scientists, legal scholars, and civil society presenting the case for Los Cedros Protected Forest before nine judges.

The state’s defense, led by officials from the Ministries of Energy, Mining, and Environment, along with representatives of mining and business chambers, argued that Protected Cloud Forests were not legally “protected areas” under Article 407 and that extractive development was fundamental for national progress.

One scientist countered that decades of petroleum-led development had failed to deliver prosperity while degrading ecosystems and livelihoods.

Early in the trial, Judges Agustín Grijalva Jiménez and Ramiro Avila inquired and expressed concern that the Ministry of Environment lacked baseline ecological data. “Are the Rights of Nature applicable to Protected Forests?” they asked officials from the Ministry of the Environment, who appeared surprised by the question.

I testified, drawing on decades of collaboration in Íntag and Los Cedros, describing community-led conservation models aligned with Buen Vivir and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). I emphasized Los Cedros as a “living classroom” or hub for conservation, scientific collaboration, education, regeneration, and economic development.

Natalia Greene from the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN) argued that the case would establish precedent by extending Rights of Nature beyond the national protected areas system. She noted that over 1,200 scientists submitted amicus briefs underscoring Los Cedros’ ecological importance. She warned against concessioning the reserve to mining.

Biologists gave voice to various species and the complex roles they played in ecosystems’ and planetary health. Elisa Levy criticized the state’s limited regulatory capacity, their reliance on company-produced environmental studies, and its failure to uphold constitutional obligations under Article 395 and the Precautionary Principle. She argued that environmental governance was undermined by weak oversight and lack of scientific independence.

Industry lawyer Oscar Vela contended that mining restrictions in Protected Forests lacked a clear legal basis and warned the Court against overreaching. He said, “Your actions could undermine legal certainty and investment in Ecuador. Such decisions should not replace legislative processes. Maintaining trust in legal norms is essential, and the court’s decisions should not mirror local referendums like the mining ban in Azuay (referenced below), which is a separate political process.”

FLACSO ecological economist Alberto Acosta and president of the 2008 Constituent Assembly rejected the idea that Nature could be reduced to monetary value. He testified, “Ecosystem services in Los Cedros are economically significant, generating an estimated $47 million annually through carbon sequestration, water and food security, biodiversity, pollination, and climate regulation—benefits lost if mining is allowed.”

Acosta warned that mining in similar ecosystems has produced severe environmental damage while generating minimal employment.

“Mining provides employment for less than 1% of Ecuador’s workforce, so its economic benefits are limited. Protecting Nature’s Rights is essential, because our human rights and ecological integrity are intertwined. A nation’s greatness is measured as much by what it preserves as by what it builds,” he said.

A local villager, Digna Espinoza, spoke in support of Cornerstone SA, describing how the company created jobs, improved incomes, and supported community services especially during the pandemic. She credited mining investment with reducing migration and criticized environmental groups for lacking viable economic alternatives.

After nine hours of testimony, Julio Cabezas of Comunidad Magdalena Alto closed the hearing with this plea: “We have 13,000 economically active people in Íntag-Manduriacos. Mining at full capacity would employ only 200 people while Pachamama is destroyed. What will we leave our children? How will they inherit the Earth? Thank you, gentlemen of the Constitutional Court.”

11. Landmark ruling

Thirteen months later, on December 1, 2021, as I was preparing to teach class, I received an email from Ecuador’s Constitutional Court.

I opened the judges’ written decision and was overjoyed by their historic ruling. The Court affirmed Nature’s intrinsic value as a subject with rights and the need to protect ecosystems and natural processes. Judge Grijalva linked the Rights of Nature with the human right to live in a healthy, ecologically balanced environment.

The Court also emphasized science and the Precautionary Principle, stressing that protective action is required where activities may pose a risk of serious or irreversible harm to Nature, water, the environment, or human health. The ruling called for precaution in the face of scientific uncertainty, including within ongoing debate, limited knowledge, or complex evidence. It further affirmed the State’s duty to take timely and effective measures to protect Nature, people, and the environment.

This landmark decision continues to reverberate around the world.

Since 2020, Ecuadorians have voted on three environmental referendums. Together, they reflect an evolving collective understanding of how to put the constitutional Rights of Nature and Sumak Kawsay/Buen Vivir (Living Well) into practice through participatory environmental governance. Although the Constitutional Court blocked a proposed mining referendum in Azuay Province in 2020, voters there overwhelmingly approved a mining ban to protect Cuenca watersheds in 2021. In 2023, Ecuadorians also voted to end oil drilling in Amazonian Yasuní National Park and citizens in Pichincha Province voted to prohibit mining in the Chocó Andino forest. These votes demonstrate growing public support for democratic decision-making that prioritizes ecological integrity and community well-being.

12. A call forward: Flourishing together

Jane Goodall, the renowned primatologist and conservationist, hailed Ecuador’s 2021 Constitutional Court ruling revoking mining permits in Los Cedros Protected Forest as a landmark victory for the Rights of Nature. In a video-recorded message, she praised the Court for recognizing that human wellbeing depends on healthy ecosystems and biodiversity, highlighting Los Cedros as habitat for rare species, including the critically endangered brown-headed spider monkey.

Goodall said the decision empowers Ecuadorians to defend other vital ecosystems, particularly Indigenous territories, and sends a powerful global message against mining in ecologically sensitive areas. She concluded that respecting Nature is essential to addressing climate change and biodiversity loss and thanked the judges and people of Ecuador for their leadership.Footnote ¹⁴

13. Flow with the rhythm of nature

On December 27, 2023, I was sipping morning coffee in the Los Cedros dining room when four high school girls appeared after their two-hour hike up the mountain through the mud. Their chatter and laughter preceded them as they emerged from the forest into the sunshine following a night of heavy rain.

“We’re students from García Moreno High School,” one explained. “We contacted you (José) about our field trip. We’re making a video project about plants.”

“Great,” José replied from his makeshift desk. “Hose off your boots and help yourselves to lemonade.”

The students gathered around the long table in the open-sided dining hall, eagerly drinking lemonade and sharing warm homemade bread.

“We designed the project and secured funding ourselves,” another said. “We’re making a video in English!”

José, the reserve’s director, welcomed them warmly. Though gruff on the surface, he had devoted decades to protecting Los Cedros, which he began building in 1988 with support from around the world.

Turning to me, he said, “Linda, can you show our visitors the Dracula orchids in the orchidarium?”

We followed a narrow path to a wooden trellis where rescued orchids bloomed.

“What do you think?” I asked in Spanish and then English. “How are we connected to plants?”

One student raised her phone to film, then suddenly stopped. “Wait! We need our team shirts!”

The girls ran back to the dining hall and returned wearing matching shirts emblazoned with the slogan: Flow with the Rhythm of Nature.

“You are poets,” I said. “That sounds like something the forest would sing.”

They gathered around as we practiced the phrase in English, repeating each word until it rolled off their tongues. Then they filmed themselves singing it beside the Dracula orchids.

Afterward, we sat along the mossy trail discussing the many roles of plants: pollinators, carbon storers, oxygen-producers, soil formers, beauty creators, and life itself.

“The Dracula orchids have a remarkable evolutionary story,” I explained. “Their flowers mimic the scent of fungi to attract pollinators. Nothing here survives alone.”Footnote ¹⁵

Later, the students hiked to the Los Cedros River, returning tired and full of stories. Over lunch, José shared his hope of creating a permanent educational center at the reserve.

As they prepared to leave, he smiled and said, “We’re looking for funding to bring more local students here. One day, Los Cedros will have an educational center for everyone.”

14. A dream in the canopy

That March, at the height of the rainy season, life seemed to burst in every direction—and a longtime dream came true for me.

While writing on the back porch of my cabin, level with the forest canopy, I spotted a Violet-tailed Sylph building a nest at the tip of a moss-draped branch. Weaving moss and spider silk into a delicate sphere with a tiny side entrance, he flashed violet-blue tail feathers and an iridescent emerald crown as he worked.

I watched in awe as he returned each morning for three days. On the third day, his mate—orange-bellied and white-chested—appeared and joined him. Together, they created a living architectural sphere, a delicate reminder of Nature’s boundless creativity.

During that same March 2023 visit, José DeCoux hosted GARN supporters celebrating the Rights of Nature victory. Though he described himself as a “mountain man”—part recluse, part practical conservationist—his health was declining.

Still focused on the future, José saw the gathering as an opportunity. “Maybe these wealthy folks can help fund educational programs, community outreach, science, and infrastructure,” he said. “Local people are key to conservation.”

15. José’s living legacy

I saw José in the public hospital hours before he passed away, May 20, 2024, just days prior to his 73rd birthday. His legacy endures through the growing commitment to biodiversity conservation at Los Cedros and beyond. For more than three decades, he welcomed and supported scientists from Ecuador and around the world, contributing to research that produced more than 120 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, as well as countless photographs and stories. Yet his work also made him a target of hostility from mining advocates, and at times he feared for his life. Today, we mourn his loss and celebrate his contribution as a visionary of conservation, science, and education.

In the years before his death, we spoke often by phone and during my visits to Los Cedros, 3 or 4 times a year. One conversation stayed with me.

“After the Constitutional Court ruling, half the people in the ten surrounding communities were angry,” he said. “They lost mining jobs and blamed Los Cedros. Where else is there employment? How are they supposed to interpret the Rights of Nature?”

“Now it’s time to deliver. Let’s work in the schools,” I replied. “If children have opportunities to learn science through direct experience and the arts, they’ll see the value of biodiversity and the roles they play in protecting it. If students are engaged and excited, their parents will become supportive too. Maybe we can help create a stronger educational program.”

On one of our last calls, José sounded unusually optimistic.

“My team, CIPBAT (Corporación para la Investigación y Protección de los Bosques de los Andes Tropicales/ Corporation for Research and Protection of Andean Tropical Forests) has reached an agreement with the Imbabura Ministry of Education,” he said. “They’re developing a curriculum to implement in local schools that integrates science, art, and leadership.”

Soon afterward, a colleague and I secured funding for educational materials and programming, which CIPBAT distributed to local schools.

In March 2025, I witnessed some of the fruits of these efforts when a group of high school students visited Los Cedros. Before arriving, they had completed lessons on bird ecology, fungi, conservation careers, and the legal and philosophical foundations of the Rights of Nature. Stepping into the cloud forest, they were overjoyed.

The outreach coordinator told me, “Some of the children from town and the villages have never really been in the forest. After studying natural and social sciences in the classroom, we bring them to Los Cedros for two nights. We hike with them, explore the streams, and engage them in hands-on learning. They’re always enchanted.”

She paused before recalling one child.

“A little boy, maybe six years old, started crying when it was time to leave. He didn’t want to hike back down the mountain,” she said.

“I belong here,” he said.

In that simple declaration lay the future José had worked so hard to create: a generation that sees itself not apart from Nature, but as belonging to a world we all care for.

16. Los Cedros goes global: Narratives, song, art, and re-enchantment

César Rodríguez, a law professor at New York University, founded the More-Than-Human Rights (MOTH) initiative to advance legal and cultural approaches to the rights and wellbeing of humans and more-than-humans.Footnote ¹⁶ He has co-organized international gatherings bringing together lawyers, scientists, Indigenous leaders, artists, writers, judges, journalists, philosophers, and activists.

Drawing on Indigenous thought, he argues: “If the forest is alive—if animals, plants, fungi, rivers, air, and rocks are animate beings—then we need ways to hear their voices. If biology has become ecology, if individuals are ecosystems, what does that mean for human rights, which arose to protect individual Homo sapiens?”Footnote ¹⁷

Before José DeCoux’s death, Rodríguez joined MOTH collaborators—writer Robert Macfarlane, musician Cosmo Sheldrake, and mycologist Giuliana Furci—at Los Cedros to create The Song of the Cedars (available on Spotify). Combining field recordings, lyrics, and multilingual refrains, the piece was conceived as a collaboration with the forest. Inspired by Humbaba from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Macfarlane wrote the lyrics, Sheldrake produced the recording, Furci contributed Spanish refrains, and Rodríguez added his voice. MOTH and GARN Ecuador are exploring whether the work can be “copygreened,” recognizing more-than-human co-authorship, with streaming proceeds supporting Los Cedros conservation projects.

In summer 2025, Robert Macfarlane published Is a River Alive? The book includes his journey to the headwaters of the Los Cedros River, deep in Ecuador’s cloud forest. Traveling with Giuliana Furci and others, he explores the temperament and mystery of rivers and some of their ecological interdependencies, such as leaf-cutter ants’ fungal gardens and Furci’s sixth sense that leads her to the rare fungus Psilocybe stametsii. He interweaves river stories from Ecuador, England, India and Canada to reveal their animacy and our deep connections to them.

That same summer, Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña celebrated the fungus Psilocybe stametsii in a painting at an exhibition at Xavier Hufkens Gallery in Brussels. She also collaborated with Giuliana Furci and Cosmos Sheldrake on the sound piece Honguito niño (Mushroom child). They paid homage to P. stametsii ‘s rarity, only ever observed twice; Vicuña’s sensibilities draw attention to the ecological importance of fungi and the threats they face from climate change, deforestation, and pesticide use.

17. Los Cedros and our planetary future

After the 2021 legal decision, CIPBAT worked with community leaders and the Ministry of the Environment to develop the court-mandated co-management plan. The challenge is clear: despite their essential role as stewards of cloud forest ecosystems, buffer-zone residents face limited livelihood options.

Cloud forest farmers are often pushed by markets and necessity into monocrops such as naranjilla, which are highly vulnerable to pests and increasingly dependent on toxic pesticide regimes. Many lack access to training, safety equipment, or protective measures. In August 2024, this crisis turned tragic when a young Mestizo farmer in Magdalena Alto died shortly after spraying his crops, leaving behind a partner and two children. The loss underscored the urgency of regenerative alternatives—such as syntropic agriculture, which restores soil health through diverse plant systems that mimic forest ecology.

Supporters, including myself, have written grants to strengthen “living classrooms” for local students, forest ranger training, ecotourism, agroecology and food sovereignty projects, and native tree nurseries. Yet transitioning to regenerative economies requires more than funding or policy change; it requires cultural transformation.

As a rural friend once asked me: “Why have I never learned about Indigenous perspectives or the philosophical roots of my Mestizo/mixed heritage?” Within economies of care and reciprocity, the question points to how education and knowledge systems often exclude relational ways of knowing grounded in Indigenous life-worlds, mutual responsibility, and interdependence.

At Los Cedros and in the Íntag Valley, CIPBAT and other organizations treat storytelling and creative expression not as add-ons but as core strategies. Through workshops and social media, communities translate legal victories—such as Ecuador’s 2021 Rights of Nature ruling—into living narratives that mobilize action. Regenerative practices become not only understandable but desirable and achievable. Regeneration, in this sense, is cultural as much as ecological; rooted in soil, seed, and story.

Los Cedros has evolved not only ecologically but also through expanding networks of care, creativity, and resistance. New alliances across disciplines, species, and borders have made the forest a collaborator in art and action, reinforcing the idea that they are not merely protected but an active co-author in their defense.

Against a backdrop of political and economic precarity, these forms of integration are significant. They point toward a world where human and Nature’s rights emerge from the same root system—where justice is ecological as well as legal, and regenerative rather than reactive. Co-citizens across the world can celebrate that on November 16, 2025, more than 60 percent of Ecuadorian voters in the national referendum rejected proposed constitutional changes, reaffirming protection for Nature and their leadership in environmental governance.

As extractive pressures intensify globally, this account is not a conclusion but an invitation: to move forward with Los Cedros and Ecuadorians into an uncertain future where hope is cultivated, and resistance is grounded in song, science, solidarity, and the forest’s own intelligence. This vision aligns with the recent Global Justice Report, which outlines transforming how we live—an ecological path to living well for the 99 percent—a prosperous, low-carbon world in which 90 percent of people are better off than they are today.Footnote ¹⁸

Rodríguez-Garavito and MOTH collaborators note that Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution has influenced interspecies jurisprudence in more than 40 countries. The Los Cedros case exemplifies emerging approaches to living within the pluriverse and recognizing interdependence among human and more-than-human worlds.Footnote ¹⁹ Today, more than 500 legal actions worldwide recognize the rights of Nature.Footnote ²⁰

The Los Cedros experience suggests that all beings—human, fungal, animal, feathered, and vegetal—are interrelated and can flourish together. The Rights of Nature are not only legal innovations but invitations to reimagine what it means to live well.