I will soon be off to on my adventure to the Amazon of Ecuador.

I am traveling to Ecuador with Rainforest Alliance (www.rainforestalliance.org) to visit several different lodges in the Ecuadorian Amazon.  I will visit Kapawi Ecolodge, Huaorani Ecolodge, Sani Lodge, and Napo Wildlife Center and Secoya Lodge to focus on site implementation plans aimed at better positioning sustainable community-based tourism projects.  Community-based tourism is used as a means to conserve local biodiversity and culture by implementing sustainable practices.

The Amazon is the world's largest river basin, covering an area larger than three-fourths of the continental United States.  Two-thirds of this area is filled with the world's largest and oldest tropical rainforest.  The Amazon Rainforest covers parts of nine countries of South America including Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, French Guiana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.

The Amazon basin of Ecuador covers an area of nearly 40 percent of the country.  The rainforest is home to a wide range of species, many of which are yet to be discovered or named.  Toucans, parrots, caimans, pink dolphins and hundreds of species of butterflies and insects exist within an incredible biodiversity of plant life.

The Amazon Rainforest generates 20 percent of the world’s oxygen because its rainforest vegetation is constantly converting carbon dioxide into oxygen.  Another great resource from this environment is the Amazon River that flows from the Peruvian Andes across the most part of Northern South America. The river is about 16 percent of the world’s river water.  The river also is one of the most habituated places on earth, along with its surroundings.  The Amazon River is home to the highest number of fish in the world and has 2,500-3,000 different species.