In 2008, I went to Ecuador to work with Armando Castellanos, director of the Andean Bear (spectacled bear) Conservation Project and Samuel Ayala, a radio-tracking specialist.
I spent several weeks in a mountain area close to the Colombian border to cover a photo story about this bear species that is classified vulnerable on the red list of endangered species. It faces a major risk of extinction in the medium term. Habitat loss and poaching pose the largest threats to the Andean bear. Today its habitat has been reduced by half. 2000-3000 still live free in a zone which extends from Venezuela to Bolivia. The destruction of their habitat and thus of the necessary natural ressources which they feed on, leads the bears to plunder the cultures of corn and sugarcane. Many of them are every year shot by farmers whose corn is one of the main source of food.

VOLUNTEERING
The Andean Bear Project relies exclusively on the money received from its volunteers. The director of the Conservation Project is presently in search of volunteers. They have to come to the headquarters in the village of Pucara where they will be trained to use radio telemetry equipment. Then, they will help to locate the bear in the cloud forest. They will also do other field work as to set traps to capture the bears...At term, the collected information will allow to know more about the movements and the behavior of the bears.
For any information, it is necessary to go on the Web site of the organization www.andeanbear.org and to visit the column "Volunteering".
It is well indicated how to get in touch with the organizers. All the information will be sent to the future volunteers by e-mail. The Web site is in English only. The volunteers have to pay the amount of 500 US$ for each month to participate in this project. For this moderate sum, they are supplied with a comfortable accommodation as well as the food. They are accommodated in a village at 2000 m in the mountains of the Imbabura province.

The complete photo collection is available at the photographer's office: philippe_henry@hotmail.com