Ecuador is one of the most biodiverse countries on Earth, home to over 6% of all species — plant and animal — on the planet; over 23,000 different species call the country that is roughly the size of Arizona home.
David Agro worked in the South American country in the 1990s as a biological contractor with Robert Ridgley, who would go on to discover a new bird species endemic to Ecuador called the Jocotoco Antpitta. Agro will be speaking at 12:15 p.m. today in Smith Wilkes Hall for the Bird, Tree & Garden Club’s Brown Bag Lecture Series, where he will discuss his time as a founding member and later president of the Jocotoco Conservation Foundation, as well as his work in sustainable and green architecture.
“It’s a pretty snazzy bird,” Agro said of the Ecuadorian native that lent its name to the foundation.
The Jocotoco (pronounced “ho-ko-toe-ko”) is endemic to Ecuador, meaning it is only naturally found within the borders of the country — its natural range is not much larger than the area of Toronto, Agro said. But as Ecuador developed, the Jocotoco’s habitat started being encroached upon, putting the newly discovered bird at risk of losing its home.
“While we were there, we could see that all its habitat was obviously very rare — and we could see its habitat was being removed quickly,” Agro said. “One of my mentors when I was a kid … suggested buying the land to protect this interesting bird.”
The Jocotoco Conservation Foundation had found its mission. Since it was founded in 1998, the foundation has established a series of conservation reserves that protect over 57,000 acres of Ecuadorian habitats; combined with Ecuador’s extensive National Park System, roughly 20% of all land in the country is protected. Thanks to their work preserving the habitats of Ecuadorian creatures, the foundation has saved four species from extinction.
In addition to his work with the foundation, where he served as president from 2016 to 2021, Agro also works as an architect, with a special focus on green and sustainable architecture. One of his goals in his architecture, he said, is to “blur the distinction” between the natural world and the human world, using sustainable materials and environmentally conscious construction practices to create buildings that are beneficial to both the humans who use them and the natural world around them.
His lecture today will focus on how his work in both architecture and grassroots environmentalism can contribute greatly to furthering conservation efforts around the world.
Agro hopes that Chautauquans will leave his lecture with a deeper appreciation for a concept he called the “homegrown national park,” where conservation organizations join forces to preserve land and protect the species who live on it, and he thinks that Chautauqua can be a place where those efforts can take off.
