Wildlife Lodges


Sandoval Lake Lodge is the only lodge inside the Tambopata National Reserve and is an ecotourism partnership with the five families that own most of the land surrounding the lake. These local community members receive 49% of the net profit from the lodge, and some community members are also paid lodge employees. Sandoval Lake Lodge had 4,500 guests in 2009, making it one of the top three lodges in the Tambopata region. Additionally, the lodge contributed $19 per tourist to the Tambopata Reserve, a total of $85,000 in 2009. This total represents 60% of the visitor fees paid to the Tambopata Reserve, more than the combined total contributed by all of the other 15 lodges of the region. Lodge employees and the lake community members protect the lake.

The lodge, which has 25 double-occupancy rooms with electricity, overhead fans, hot water showers, and flush toilets, overlooks the largest and most attractive of the four oxbow lakes in the Tambopata National Reserve/Bahuaja-Sonene National Park. The primary attractions for visitors are the uniquely beautiful palm forest rimming the western banks of the lake, resident Giant Otters, seven species of monkeys, a variety of water birds, and one of the world’s largest concentrations of Red-bellied Macaws. Brown Capuchin Monkeys, Bolivian Squirrel Monkeys, and Red Howler Monkeys are particularly visible and amusing as they forage at close range in bushes along the lake edge.

The Cock-of-the-Rock Lodge is the focal point of a project to save the most pristine altitudinal transect in South America. A single-lane, gravel road travels northeast from Cusco, and descends from high Andean grasslands through intact cloud forest to lowland rainforest. This road runs along the edge of the higher elevations of Manu National Park. We worked with 20 families of recent colonists to buy their lands and preserve the cloud forest. Our 16.7 square miles of forest holdings run from 3,000 to 9,000 feet of elevation, and income from the lodge pays for our private guards to patrol the altitudinal transect by motorcycle.

The lodge, which has 10 double-occupancy cabañas with hot-water showers, and flush toilets, is nestled in a reforested patch of mountain cloud forest near a small, rushing Andean river. The primary attractions for visitors are spectacular cloud forest scenery, the world’s best protected and most visited Cock-of-the-Rock display ground (or "lek"), Woolly Monkeys, Brown Capuchin Monkeys, orchids, and native fruit trees and feeders visited by colorful tanagers, barbets, and hummingbirds.

Manu Wildlife Center is an ecotourism project that saves and showcases spectacularly-rich rainforest originally scheduled for timber extraction and market meat hunting. The Center is located in Manu Province, just east of Manu National Park and along the long northern border of the 1,000,000-acre Amarakaeri Communal Reserve (ACR), a national protected area that boasts the largest uninhabited rainforest region in Manu Province. Ironically, the Manu Park has many more Indians living throughout it than does the enormous ACR wilderness. The lodge staff protects the extensive forests of MWC and ARC which lie along the largest uninhabited section of a major river in all of Amazonia.

The lodge, which has 24 double-occupancy bungalows with hot-water showers and flush toilets, overlooks the Madre de Dios River. The primary attractions for visitors are the world’s largest known Tapir clay lick, the world’s most visited large macaw and parrot clay lick, two large oxbow lakes harboring families of Giant Otters, two canopy platforms at 100 and 130 feet above the ground, and 10 species of monkeys. In December 2002, Condé Nast Traveler Magazine scoured the entire Amazon and concluded that the Center was "the most intense wildlife experience in Amazonia.”

Located in central-western Brazil, the Pantanal is a UK-sized mosaic of seasonally-flooded savannahs and tropical forests that features the finest wildlife viewing in Latin America.

This area harbors a world-record 82 species of large birds, thousands of which can be seen during a 1-h drive on the raised Transpantaneira Road, the only all-year route that penetrates the heart of this enormous wildland.

At the end of the Transpantaneira Road winds a labyrinth of rivers on which our specially-trained trackers and boatmen showed Jaguars to travelers 595 times in 351 guest days in 2006 through 2009. No other location in the Americas offers nearly-guaranteed views of wild Jaguars. Most of our clients also saw Tapirs and Giant Otters.

Owned and operated by professional wildlife biologists, Pantanal Wildlife Center is located 2.5 km off the Transpantaneira Road, on the forested banks of the wildlife-rich Pixaim River. With air conditioned rooms and accessible riverine forest, PWC offers the Pantanal’s best value for serious birders, naturalists, and photographers. We offer boat outings that feature the world’s tamest Giant Otters. Other exclusives are the Pantanal’s only mobile canopy towers strategically located at fruiting and flowering trees and silent, and electric river catamaran for photographers using long lenses on tripods. We also offer horse rides, cattle drives, walks on scientifically-designed forest trails, research lectures, mammal spotlighting, star chart for study of the spectacular night sky, and Brazilian barbecues.

The Napo Wildlife Center is a successful, 100% community-owned lodge that was designed and built with major donations in 2001-2005 from Tropical Nature and donated labor from the community. This 11-room lodge protects the vulnerable northern border of Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park and generates $50,000 per year in visitor fees to help protect this, the country’s largest Amazon reserve. This total represents 100% of the visitor revenue for the park. These fees come from two sources: overnight fees charged to the NWC lodge guests and day-use fees charged to guests from lodges located outside the park who visit the community’s observation blind to view the community’s parrot clay lick. TN designed and financed this parrot lick observation system, which for the first time managed to harness these outside lodges to help pay for park protection.

In recognition of Tropical Nature’s success in converting an indigenous community from a threat into the greatest protector of the park, in December 2006 the head of the Ecuadorian park service congratulated Tropical Nature and invited us to duplicate this success in other rural communities throughout Ecuador. The community of 30 families that owns NWC has seen its community revenues leap from the pre-project total of $5,000 per year to the current total of $150,000. Additionally, the community no longer hunts animals or cuts forest inside the park for agricultural plots.