In 2008 and 2009 I went to the Imbabura province in northern Ecuador to continue to work on my story on the andean bear. There, I visited the communities of the Intag region. I met many people and among them, those who fought during many years against a Canadian mining company , whose project to operate an opencast copper mine might have threatened the region. It was particularly interesting to meet Carlos Zorilla, executive director of the Ecological Defense and Conservation of Intag (DECOIN). "Significant portions of the mountain forests of the Intag zone are the cloud forests the andean bears call home", he said."They are considered to be on the top of the list of threatened ecosystems. Furthermore, they play an oversized role in the protection of water resources." It is precisely in this region that the industrial copper mining project might have destroyed thousands of hectares of primary forests harboring threatened mammal and bird species.

A preliminary Environmental Impact Assessment revealed the following devastating impacts of such a project:
- Relocation of hundreds of families from four communities
- Massive deforestation, which would dry up the local climate.
- Impacts to the biodiversity of the Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve which contains 752,235 acres of land and extends from the mountains of the Sierra to the western edge of the coastal rain forest in the Esmeraldas region.
- Damage to the habitat of dozens of threatened mammals and birds, including: jaguars, ocelots, spectacled bears, pumas, brown-headed spider monkey, and the plate-billed mountain toucan
- Contamination of rivers and streams with toxic elements including lead, arsenic, chrome and cadmium.

The communities of Intag, with the full support of all the local governments and organizations, have been resisting mining development since the 1990’s, when the Japanese Mitsubishi subsidiary, Bishimetals, discovered copper and molybdenum amidst the Toisan Range's primary forests and pristine rivers and streams. In 1997 due to overwhelming local opposition, Bishimetals was forced to abandon the project.
The Canadian mining company has been in the Intag area since 2004. Its unwelcome presence in the area has provoked numerous violent confrontations which led the government to issue several stop-work orders in late 2006 and early 2007. They have been accused of serious human rights abuses, including numerous and documented use of paramilitaries against the local population who are opposed to mining.

Today, the mining company has lost all its concessions in the region of Intag. She has also lost those of Junin and Chaucha who are now in the hands of the Ecuadorian government and who may, under the new mining law, be operated by a national company . At the last meeting of DECOIN, last January 2010, Carlos Zorilla said: "It could hardly be clearer that there will be no mining in Intag… However, your energy will be needed again if the government goes ahead with the plans of exploring in Junin via the newly created state-owned mining company. For now it will be difficult because the company has not money, but that can quickly change."

In July 2009, I also met Ramiro Porras, coordinator of the 2500 hectares Alto Choco Reserve, located in the Intag zone. Alto Choco is one of the three reserves managed by the Foundation Zoobreviven, a non-profit Ecuadorian organization established in 1997 to protect Ecuador's ecosystems and wildlife. Foundation Zoobreviven runs a volunteer program where volunteers can assist with reserve's management tasks, such as reforestation, organic farming, area patrolling, plant and tree development studies and more recently, coffee farming.
More info on their site; www.zoobreviven.org
The Foundation Zoobreviven doesn't actually run research on the Andean Bear. For those who would like to work as volunteers for the Andean bear conservation project, here is the site: www.andeanbear.org
I'll return to Ecuador in 2010 to visit some remote places of the Intag region and to take more pictures for my book on the andean bear. I'll also go to Venezuela to work with biologists involved with bear conservation.