Huaorani Ecolodge represents an exceptional example of how sustainable tourism can represent an effective means to protect a globally important environment – the Yasuní National Park in Ecuador – but more importantly to provide the Huaorani with a tool to defend their unique forest culture and improve the livelihood.
The Huaorani are age-old Amazon people that traditionally lived a semi nomadic hunting and gathering life in the area’s forests. Legend says that hundreds of years ago they migrated to North Western Ecuador, in the area of the world famous Yasuní National Park, recognised as one of the most bio diverse areas on the planet, in order to escape from a tribe of head hunters.
These days they lead a more settled and open existence in the humid tropical forests where the threat to their existence comes not from other Amazon peoples - although some closely related groups still shun outside influences and can be dangerous to approach - but from the pressure to integrate, as well as from the loggers and oil companies that have had negative impacts on these culturally significant people and the health and diversity of their tropical environment.
The Huaorani maintain their traditional lifestyle and at one point the future appeared bleak for this warrior people. But faced with the destruction of their surroundings and the possible disappearance of their way of life, the Huaorani chose to resist. They opted for sustainable tourism as a way of maintaining and improving not only their culture but also their standards of living.
Sustainable tourism was in its infancy when the Huaorani began to provide the visitors to their territory with a very unique experience in the Amazon Rainforest. The possibility of sharing time with the Huaorani, of understanding their reality and getting to know their culture, while helping to conserve a unique environment, gave fortunate visitors something few had experienced before. The program, named Amazon Headwaters with the Huaorani was recognised internationally by the 1997 TO DO! award by a coalition of German tourism and social organisations.
