Colombia’s Newly Expanded Indigenous Reserve Benefits Forest Guardians in the Chiribiquete Buffer Zone  

Andes Amazon Fund congratulates the Colombian government for the recent expansion of the Andoke de Aduche Indigenous Reserve by 312,064 acres.  Located in the department of Caquetá, the expanded reserve (known as a Resguardo Indígena) includes many sites of cultural importance to the Andoke indigenous community, known as “the people of the axe,” and provides territorial security to more than 155 families and 503 members of the Andoke community. At the same time, this designation protects a mosaic of habitats including Amazonian floodplain forests and wooded sandy savannas adjacent to the southern border of Colombia’s emblematic Serranía de Chiribiquete National Park.  

Andoke de Aduche adjoins the Puerto Zábalo – Los Monos and Monochoa Indigenous Reserves expanded in July of 2017 with AAF support. Together, this corridor of resguardos to the south of Chiribiquete covers 1,415,350 acres and strengthens connectivity of a larger wildlife corridor spanning more than 27 million acres. This makes up one of the largest areas of protected habitat in the world and helps ensure the well being of indigenous people that depend on these ecosystems.

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The region south of where the reserve is located has seen minimal deforestation, fewer than 2,000 hectares over an 18 year span starting in 2001. In contrast, the northwestern region that borders the Serranía de Chiribiquete National Park, which contains no reserves, has witnessed an expansion of the agricultural frontier along with high rates of deforestation.

This corridor of reserves protects the 1,752-mile-long Caquetá-Japurá River that originates in the Colombian Andes and runs through the Brazilian Amazon. This white-water river nourishes the soils of the riverbanks as it travels towards Brazil and is an essential means of communication, transportation and food provision for the indigenous communities that live along its banks. [1]

[1] Castro Andoque & Valbuena Muñoz, 2014.

Through centuries of traditional knowledge and subsistence practices, the Andoke indigenous people have been careful stewards of their ancestral forests, contributing to the protection of ecosystems that allow various species of flora and fauna to flourish.

“For us, the expansion of the reserve is important because it is like collecting our ancestral memory, the memory of that which corresponds to our territories. For us, it constitutes a Life Plan, with hope for the Andoke people.” – Elías Campo Rodríguez, Andoke maloquero of the Venado (Deer) clan.

The expansion of Andoke de Aduche protects 80 amphibian species, 465 bird species, and 64 reptile species. At least 166 mammal species have also been recorded, including the spider monkey (Ateles belzebuth), whose population is at the risk of extinction. Other endangered species found in this corridor include the giant otter (Pteronura brasiliensis), two species of Amazon river dolphin (Inia geoffrensis), the tapir (Tapirus terrestris), the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), and the brown woolly monkey (Lagotrix lagothricha).

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This expansion was initiated at the request of the Andoke community and formalized on October 28, 2020 by the board of the Colombian National Land Agency with the participation of the National Parks Unit of the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development. The technical process required to expand the reserve was carried out by AAF grantee Amazon Conservation Team with support from other partners.

Learn more about the efforts of grantee GAIA Amazonas in the expansion of the Camaritagua, Puerto Córdoba, and Comeyafú Indigenous Reserves in Colombia below.