The first time I went to “Ranchitos del Quetzal” was during my General Ecology lecture back in 2011. After that, it became more or less an annual thing.
Julio Álvarez, may he rest in peace, knew the whole cloud forest very well. The life habits of the Resplendent Quetzal (Pharomacrus mocinno) were amongst the main topics he’d enjoy telling us about. I was still very lucky to have met him and listen to his inspiring stories and seen his videos of the Quetzal behavior. The Resplendent Quetzal is our (Guatemala) National bird, so we grow up hearing about it everywhere. However, very few of us are lucky enough to see them. Some people even think it’s a myth! Unfortunately, they are endangered due to habitat destruction and wildlife trade. Luckily, there are more and more efforts to preserve their habitat. We owe this particular Natural Reserve and all that it provides us to Don Julio and his family.
But the cloud forests of Guatemala host a lot more wildlife than the Quetzal. One of the unbelievably diverse and underrated groups we can find here is orchids. Also due to illegal activities, our orchid biodiversity is endangered.
Conservation needs community!
Today, my good friend JP Pinto is in charge of several things in the Reserve. One of them is his Orchid Conservation Project. Maybe orchids are not my thing, but when you listen to someone talk about them with the passion that Pinto has for them, it’s inevitable to feel some emotional attachment to these plants and want to know more!
He has now installed a small lab in the Reserve. There, he is trying to improve a culture medium with accessible ingredients to reproduce the local orchid species. This will enable him to (1) re-introduce native orchids into the forest and (2) give the local community a means for reproducing orchids themselves. This way they can stop extracting (illegally) endangered orchids from the forest without losing their economic activity (since tourists love to buy these). Pinto will also give you a live show of how he fertilizes the orchids! It’s totally worth seeing this and learning about orchids, their importance, and their conservation.
The cloud forest provides us with so many ecosystem services (pharmaceutical, climatic, genetic, recreational) and we cannot afford to lose it. What is most attractive here might be the high chance of observing the Quetzal, but the Reserve has trails within the forest where you can observe so much more flora and fauna. You can have a swim in the natural pools along the river. There are even rooms and a restaurant so you can spend the night here and wake up within the clouds.
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