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Research & Conservation
Rainforest Conservation
Research
Research
The Explorer's Inn has launched several programs of applied science, including the AMETRA (the Spanish acronym for Application of Traditional Medicine) initiative which is now run by local native communities from the Nape Center. Two other programs of applied science, a butterfly farm and Mayan gardens, have also been launched. Separately, the Inn’s grounds are now home to a research center run by Lima´s Catholic University (PUCP), one of Peru’s leading academic institutions.
But the most striking research has come in the fields of taxonomy and that ubiquitous term — biodiversity. If any place on this planet epitomizes this concept it must be the ecosystem around the Explorers´ Inn. Most of the biodiversity studies here have been conducted within a small area of forest behind the lodge, one-and-a-half times the size of New York’s Central Park or twice the size of London’s Hyde Park. Research carried out here that has helped advance humankind’s understanding of tropical rainforests includes:
Botanists gathered data regarding the economic value of intact primary tropical rainforests as well as their critical role in regulating global climate by acting as a vast carbon sink.
Noted entomologist and author E.O. Wilson, who is widely credited with helping coin the term biodiversity, discovered that there were more species of ant in a single large tree behind the Inn than in the British Isles.
Data published by Oliver Phillips, a botanist from the University of Leeds, and Alwyn Gentry, a Senior Curator at the Missouri Botanical Gardens, documented evidence of the exceptional levels of tree species diversity and turn-over rates in the forest around the Inn.
Theodore A. Parker III, regarded as one of the finest field researchers in the history of ornithology, encountered unprecedented levels of bird diversity here.
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Red and Green Macaw (close-up) 5
Red-brocket Deer 2009-04-09
