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PIONEERING CONSERVATION IN ECUADOR
Fundación Maquipucuna is an Ecuador-based nonprofit organization, Reserve and Ecolodge situated on 14,000 acres within the Chocó-Andino bioregion, one of earth's top 5 biodiversity hotspots. It offers global inspiration that leverages collective wisdom and creativity to foster regenerative development, emphasizing holistic conservation practices, climate refugia, and valuing and nurturing ecosystem services across multiple scales.
Together with local communities and governments they have created the Chocó-Andino Biosphere Reserve which works to:
- Preserve local wildlife (including endangered species such as the Andean (spectacled) bear);
- Promote environmental education, sustainable economic development, and research
- Demonstrate that the preservation of natural assets yields much greater long-term economic and societal benefits than the economic activities that damage these natural assets for short-term profit.
Maquipucuna has sustainability ingrained into virtually all aspects of their model. They support environmental preservation initiatives that simultaneously generate income and security for local communities; they conduct an eco-tourism program to fund their own operations and they seek collaborations and partnerships with municipal government that will protect and expand their critical work.
Pennywise is partnering with Maquipucuna and Earth Analytic, a mapping and geospatial analysis company specializing environmental preservation, to raise international awareness of and support for these critical natural resources and to support the responsible stewardship of them.