Yasuní National Park

Listen first. Before you see anything, the forest reaches you as sound. Insects make a steady electric hum. A bird calls in three rising notes from somewhere above. Water drips from leaves that never fully dry. The air is warm and heavy, and it smells of wet earth, rotting wood and something sweet you cannot quite name. You are standing at the edge of Yasuní National Park, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and almost everything around you is alive.

Yasuní is the largest protected area in mainland Ecuador. It covers roughly a million hectares of lowland rainforest, spread across the provinces of Orellana and Pastaza. Ecuador declared it a national park in 1979. A decade later, in 1989, UNESCO named it a Biosphere Reserve. That label means the area is meant to protect both nature and the people who live within it. That double purpose matters here more than almost anywhere else.

Most visitors arrive through the river town of Coca, also called Puerto Francisco de Orellana. From there, motorised canoes run downstream on the Napo River. The Napo is wide and brown, and it carries silt and floating trees eastward toward Peru and, eventually, the Amazon itself. The journey can take hours. Along the banks, small farms and villages slowly give way to an unbroken green wall. By the time you step off the boat, the road network feels very far away.

Now for the first surprise. Scientists consider Yasuní one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet. A study published in 2010 brought together years of field research. It argued that this corner of the Amazon may hold more species of amphibians, reptiles, bats and trees than almost anywhere else on Earth. Researchers have recorded more tree species in a single hectare here than are native to all of the United States and Canada combined. Look at the patch of forest in front of you. Few of those trees belong to the same species.

Why is life so concentrated here? Scientists point to several conditions working together. Yasuní sits close to the equator, where seasons barely change. Rain falls through most of the year. The forest also lies where the Andes meet the Amazon basin, so species from different zones overlap. Over long periods, these steady conditions gave plants and animals time to specialise. Many share the same forest by living at different heights, eating different foods, or being active at different hours.

That brings us to the canopy. Most of the life in this forest is not at your eye level at all. It lives twenty, thirty, forty metres up, in the crowns of the tallest trees. Some lodges in the region have built metal towers or walkways that rise above the canopy. From the top, the forest looks like a rough green ocean. In the early morning, mist sits in the hollows. Toucans and parrots cross between the crowns, and monkeys move through the branches in groups.

Yasuní is not empty wilderness. It is also home. The Waorani people have lived in this forest for generations, and their traditional territory overlaps much of the park. For a long time they had little contact with the outside world. Today many Waorani communities have relationships with schools, missions, oil companies and tourism. Their knowledge of plants, animals and forest paths is deep. Some community projects now welcome visitors, and local guides are often the best way to understand what you are seeing.

Here is a second fact many visitors never hear. Deep inside and around the park live groups who have chosen to avoid contact with outsiders. They are known as the Tagaeri and the Taromenane, and they are often described as peoples in voluntary isolation. Ecuador created an intangible zone to protect their lands from oil drilling and logging. No tourist route enters that area. Even standing at the edge, it is worth remembering that some of this forest belongs to people who do not want to be found.

Beneath the trees lies another story — oil. Large reserves of crude sit under parts of Yasuní, and oil roads and pipelines already cross sections of the region. In 2007, Ecuador proposed an unusual idea. It offered to leave the oil in one block, known by the initials ITT, untouched, if the world helped pay for the lost income. Too little money arrived, and the government ended the plan in 2013. Drilling then began in that block.

The story did not end there. In August 2023, Ecuadorians voted in a national referendum on the question of oil in that same ITT block. A majority chose to keep the oil underground. It was one of the first times a country voted directly to stop oil extraction in a specific place. Putting that decision into practice has been slow and complicated. Still, the vote showed how much this forest means to people across Ecuador, not only to those who live beside it.

On the ground, the forest asks you to slow down. Trails are often muddy, and roots cross the path. Guides stop often to point out things you would walk past — a frog the size of a fingernail, a line of leafcutter ants carrying green fragments, a stick insect that is not a stick. Along the rivers and lagoons, you may hear the strange hiss of the hoatzin, a large brown bird with a spiky crest. Keep your voice low, and the forest shows you more.

Some of the most memorable moments happen at the clay licks along the Napo. At these exposed riverbanks, parrots and parakeets gather to eat the clay. Scientists believe the minerals help the birds with their diet, though the exact reasons are still studied. When conditions are right, the bank fills with flashes of green, red and yellow, and the noise is enormous. Then, at the first sign of a hawk, the whole flock lifts at once.

In the evening, the forest changes shift. Day birds fall quiet, and the frogs begin. The sound builds from single calls into a dense chorus that can last all night. Bats leave their roosts, and fireflies blink low between the trunks. If you take a night walk with a guide, your torch beam finds eyes shining back from the leaves. Spiders, tree frogs and sleeping birds appear in places that looked empty a few hours before.

Before you move on, stand still for one more minute. Notice the warm air on your skin and the layers of sound around you. Look up at the leaves, and remember how many of those trees are different species. This forest has carried on its slow work for a very long time. Whatever you take from here — a photograph, a bird call, a muddy pair of boots — the forest itself stays behind, still humming, as you walk away.