Yasuni

Yasuni National Park covers about 10,000 square kilometers of Ecuador's Amazon region between the Napo and Curaray rivers, roughly 250 kilometers from Quito, at a convergence of the equator, the Andes and the Amazon basin that gives it some of the highest local species richness recorded anywhere on Earth. Surveys have recorded at least 596 bird species, about a third of all Amazonian birds, more than 100,000 insect species estimated per hectare, and roughly a third of the entire Amazon basin's amphibian and reptile species within less than 0.15 percent of the basin's area. The park is also home to the Tagaeri and Taromenane, indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation, and was named a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 1989; a 2023 national referendum required an end to oil drilling within the park despite estimated reserves of 1.7 billion barrels beneath it.