#ecotourism

#ecotourism

It was late November, and I was standing in an ancient beech forest at the edge of Towada-Hachimantai National Park in Japan's Tohoku region. The area, deep in the Ōu Mountains on the northern tip of Honshu, is known for its autumn colors, hundreds of species of moss, and the Oirase Gorge, a river valley with abundant waterfalls. The Oirase Stream is fed by Lake Towada, a volcanic double caldera that is the primary source of the region's rich biodiversity.

Four miles by foot into the Colombian Amazon, in war-torn Guaviare, a stunning prehistoric rock painting known as the "Sistine Chapel of the Ancients" stretches across a full eight miles of cliff face. The frieze, estimated to be about 12,500 years old, depicts massive ice age beasts thought to have once roamed South America, including mastodons and ground sloths the size of a car.

Year-round, a herd of 250 goats known as the goat brigade is deployed in Santa Juana to prevent forest fires by eating highly-flammable vegetation.