Yasuní is a very sensitive natural reserve

The Yasuni National Park, located in the so-called ‘The Refuge of the Pleistocene’ in Napo, has an area of 9. 820 square km. A sector that was declared by UNESCO as a natural reserve for the programme Man and the Biosphere in 1989.

The WWF also declared that the Yasuni is one of the 200 top priority ecoregions with a significant importance to the world’s wild environments and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) chose Yasuni for his eminent program of living landscapes.

This Park protects a region of extraordinary value for its biodiversity which makes it very sensitive, so it could be affected by the exploitation of around 846 million barrels of oil that lie in the bowels of the Ishpingo, Tambococha and Tiputiniparaiso (ITT) block, despite the fact that today during an interview in GamaTV, Lorena Tapia, Minister of environment of Ecuador, guaranteed the environmental control in the exploitation of oil in the Yasuni Park area.

“It is absolutely important that citizens know that the Yasuni National Park is going to remain intact , with every effort of the State, through the Ministry of the environment,” said Tapia.

“The operation as such (…) would be around one per thousand approximately, the best technologies are going to be used, and the Ministry of the environment will provide the best control”, she said,and also explained that the Yasuni National Park has around one million hectares and the block Ishpingo Tambococha Tiputini (ITT) has about 200 hectares.

Ecuador hopes that the Park is not affected by the exploitation, since not only is at stake the livelihood of this reserve but the effective conservation, the survival of the peoples in voluntary isolation, the avoided deforestation in 40 protected areas and the proper handling of 5 million hectares of natural areas under the ownership of indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian communities.