The largest biodiverse edible forest in the world

The Biodiverse Edible Forest (BCB) is a multi-purpose forest ecosystem designed to integrate habitat conservation, rich floral diversity, sustainable local economies, and knowledge-sharing. It is a living landscape where ecological restoration and community livelihoods coexist — enabling responsible harvesting for culinary applications while protecting and regenerating biodiversity for future generations.

Through education, research, community engagement and culinary connection with food, the Bocavaldivia Foundation is working to establish a large-scale conservation corridor that protects and connects diverse ecosystems, while honoring the cultures and communities rooted in this territory. Our vision is to create the largest human-restored, biodiverse edible forest in the world — a living model of regeneration where conservation, food systems, and community resilience thrive together. Our conservation approach offers tangible solutions with quantitative metrics of success to ensure our efforts directly protect lands, benefit local communities, and protect the endemic species that occupy the land.

Our foundation utilizes two distinct methods of land acquisition included in the project. Direct acquisition of lands is our preferred route, purchasing plots at fair prices directly from landowners. These lands are acquired in the name of the Bocavaldivia foundation and are managed by the board, following the legal protocols of Ecuador for buying lands with titles. Alternatively, we can also enter lands into the BCB in instances where a collaborator wishes to retain the title of the land, yet are willing to permit us to oversee all aspects of the man- agement and operations on their land.

In these instances owners can choose to sign over their land to the foundation using a trust or ‘fideicomiso’, which ensures the use of the land follows all outlined guidelines related to the foundation for a minimum of 5 years, but the original owner(s) can retain the title. Utilizing these two methodologies we are able to acquire lands when funding permits, but can also not miss opportunities to include other privately owned lands or reserves under the umbrella of the project, while ensuring strict compliance with our management policies under both scenarios. Following SDG’s we consider these alliances to be extremely important for large scale conservation projects, permitting us the agility to rapidly grow our conserved forests and share our mission.

We are currently prioritizing parcels which can connect to, and expand our existing reserves on the Pacific Coast of Ecuador. This region spans from the saltwater mangroves to the tropical dry forests, and into the piedmont humid tropical forests. The namesake tourist destination and our founders restaurant Bovacaldivia with ally Tanusas resorts are seated on the coast, which represent the transition from mangroves to tropical dry forests. Coastal habitats which can be reconnected to other transitional ecosystems are difficult to find as anthropogenic intervention in these regions is advanced. Yet in this region of Manabi, if we act fast, we can establish significant corridors from the ocean to the mountains.

Our long-term goal is to rapidly expand the conservation areas into a corridor from the Galapagos islands to the Amazon rainforest. As fragmentation is among the most serious issues, restoring connectivity is crucial for the conservation of species in these regions, and while we are currently focused on building our first corridor, our larger vision remains to reconnect reserves at a national and international scale to build the largest biodiverse edible forest in the world. We realize this is ambitious, however climate change requires substantial goals.

Our project also differs from some other more traditional conservation initiatives as we do not dismiss degraded land plots simply because the quality (or lack thereof) of forests. We see part of our work as actively restoring these lands, and maximizing their potential by focusing on planting endemic edible species, maintaining the existing habitat and promoting a healthy landscape.

Success in our foundation is measured through two metrics: the first follows traditional conservation through the preservation of pristine forest land, with sustainable use via edible species. The second is the acquisition of land that was deforested for extraction, cropping and raising livestock, that will now be restored and become part of protected lands to reestablish biological, cultural and communitarian corridors.

​​The Bocavaldivia foundation has its roots steeped in rural communities education. Our work first came from Foundation Amor 7.8, an Ecuador-based organization providing high quality hands-on education to rural communities. 

Education has taken distinct forms such as trainings in high-end gastronomy, identification and use of non-conventional edible plants, and experiences in conservation and gastronomy for elementary and high school students.

In continuing collaboration with Fundacion Amor 7.8, the Bocavaldivia foundation supports workshop delivery and the creation of a conservation-based curriculum. We are sponsoring the implementation of an edible garden in rural schools, and will hold cooking workshops using locally grown ingredients.

It is our goal to rapidly expand our educational outreach activities to schools surrounding the conservation site. We are in the process of creating, free of cost, a children's cookbook focused on encouraging local foraging and harvesting, restoring traditional knowledge, and deepening children's conservation understanding.

Activities in early stages:

The backbone of the bioeconomy in our current state of the is the use of edible species in the restaurants Bocavaldivia and Foresta as well as other affiliates. In- gredients are grown in the edible forests, in addition to other sustainably pro- duced ingredients which are procured from members of the local communities. Additionally, coffee and chocolate are the first products that are currently being produced for regional distribution, which are grown on our El Abrazo reserve (see below for details). In the near future we will be launching subscription services for our products with monthly deliveries, and products will be available in our associ- ate restaurants and hotels (e.g. Bocavaldivia, Foresta and Tanusas).

Upon securing more funding:

As the project grows and more funds are available we intend to develop additional commercial products for regional, national and eventually international sale. We plan to set up distribution routes and help local producers find buyers and then let the producers sell directly to the buyers as well as creating added value through the creation of different products so they can maximize profits. This may take the form of a monthly membership program with deliveries to major cities. Addition- ally, portions of harvests that are damaged or otherwise unsuitable for retail we will purchase to use for humanitarian efforts such as schools, orphanages and/or retirement homes.

Assessing extant biodiversity and monitoring the recovery of diversity in degrad- ed habitats are our central research goals, though as our funding support grows we aim to not only enrich our applied studies of biodiversity, but also expand into other experimental avenues in the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology.

Conserving, and enhancing biodiversity is a central theme of our project. We uti- lize a number of methodologies to estimate biodiversity using cost-effective tech- niques such as visual/auditory surveys, camera traps, and environmental DNA strategies. In each of our reserves we take baseline data with regular subsequent sampling modalities to ensure the stability of communities, and measure species richness and recovery. Our collaborators in biodiversity research include numer- ous researchers from top Ecuadorian universities and local institutions such as In- stituto Nacional para la Biodiversidad.

As the foundation continues to grow, our biodiversity research will similarly scale to meet the needs of the project and take advantage of available funds to allocate in research grants to encourage current students to become future conservation leaders through research projects funded by the foundation. Our priority will con- tinue to be focused in studies of biodiversity, understanding anthropogenic influ- ence on plant/animal populations, and the recovery of degraded lands.

With a recent acquisition of an impressive transitionary humid forest called el Abrazo, an impressive 45 hectare reserve which connects the lowland tropical dry forest with the low elevation Andean Chocó, we are poised to launch our flagship research station. While the use of many research stations are exclusive to re- searchers, we feel strongly that scientific outreach and ecotourism are highly complementary and therefore mutually beneficial. While scientists based in El Abrazo can utilize isolated laboratory spaces, there are also many common use spaces including experimental plots, outdoor kitchens and social areas where sci- entists can socialize and share their work with ecotourists.

Bocavaldivia has established an outdoor kitchen en el Abrazo where tourists are brought and can enjoy a full multi-course fine dining experience exclusively fea- turing ingredients from the edible forests that surround them. Similarly, both our staff and visiting scientists are encouraged to share their research with guests in the forms of both formal and informal seminars. Whenever possible research themes will be presented during Bocavaldivia meals, giving the perfect opportuni- ty for scientific outreach presented in an entertaining, and informal manner.

One perfect example of this is with a dish which features an edible so-called glass frog which is made using the silicone molds from a scientific study which demon- strated how transparency functions as a novel type of camouflage in these frogs. During their meal guests are briefly told of these endemic species of transparent, nocturnal glass frogs, and from their dining table can look towards a stream in the distance where these frogs are found.