Community-based Conservation and Participatory Rural Development: Potential, People, and Protection of Tropical Forest in Ecuador

From the years 1997-2003, a group of community members, non-governmental organization workers, and university personnel worked together on the eastern slope of the Andes, in the buffer zone of the Antisana Ecological Reserve. The primary goal of their project there was to find practical solutions to livestock management problems that are the basis for severe threats to tropical biodiversity in the area. The project was located in a sensitive and threatened watershed bordering the reserve, and additional goals of the project included protection of the Quijos and Cosanga Rivers, which ultimately flow into the Amazon drainage system. Many successful outcomes resulted from these activities, all part of a project called PLAN (Planificacion Local Agropecuaria y de la Naturaleza), and many important lessons emerged from both the successful and failed outcomes of the project.;The experience of the participants of Project PLAN provided a unique opportunity for the researcher to examine the important interaction between the two practices that were employed within the framework of the project---community-based conservation and participatory rural development. Improved pasture forage mixes for the cattle allowed farmers to generate increased quantities of milk on less land, thereby decreasing pressure on the surrounding forests. This improved pasture forage mix allowed the protection of several hectares of secondary forest, which in turn helped keep the watershed healthy. This research explores, using an ethnographic case study methodology, the key elements of the project approach that enabled these accomplishments to occur. The analysis focuses on the outcomes of this work from the perspectives of the farmers themselves. The research also explores the potential lessons that can be learned from the unique experience of the project that combined aspects of the two major relevant practices. This investigation is particularly important given the fact that these two practices have not informed one another's experiences from practical applications in the field. Recommendations from the Project PLAN experience include ways in which practitioners can employ a process-oriented, participatory approach to extend the models of the two practices in order to achieve conservation and development successes.