Touch The Jungle

Touch the Jungle, an Ecuador rainforest conservation and social justice project run by a volunteer group sponsored by Earthways Foundation, and the Ecuadorian rainforest village of Playa de Oro have recently created the world's first margay sanctuary: the Playa de Oro Reserva de Tigrillos.

Please browse through their Touch The Jungle website to learn how they are preserving this important and increasingly rare rainforest habitat and the neotropical felines that live there. You are invited to visit and assist this important project through our available Group Tours or Independent Travel.

The project's goals are:

• Help local residents protect their ancestral lands from encroaching lumber companies, and provide them with a sustainable income earned by protecting rather than destroying their forest.

• Protect the six species of neo-tropical felids native to this area, with a particular focus on the smaller species such as margays, ocelots, oncilas, and jaguarundis, which have received little attention from conservationists and remain largely unknown to the public.

• Operate a lodge in the heart of the rainforest where students, researchers, and ecologically-minded visitors can live in rustic comfort while collecting data on these little-studied species and other rainforest fauna and flora.

• A safe place for the release of endangered cats back into the wild; especially small cats such as margays and oncillas confiscated from (illegal) exotic animal traffickers.

For more information, contact project founder Rosa Jordan via email.