The route starts in southern Colombia and runs through Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia before forking into Chile and Argentina. If the 8,500 km of trail were laid out end-to-end, the Gran Ruta would stretch from Cape Town, South Africa to southern France. In addition, some 30,000 km of lateral roads branch off of it, including the world-renowned Inca Trail, which leads from near the empire's spiritual capital in Cusco, Peru to the iconic ruins of Machu Picchu.
Today, less than half of the route has been formally surveyed, but much it is thought to be damaged by road construction, development and neglect. And despite its historical importance, none of the Gran Ruta's 8,500 km route is formally protected. However, it does intersect eight separate protected areas, providing coverage of about 422 km of the route or about 5 percent.
"The Gran Ruta Inca presents a unique opportunity to rally support around a strategic system of protected areas, many locally managed, that will benefit biodiversity conservation, historic preservation and the indigenous communities that live along the route," says Stephen Edwards, CI's Andean tourism specialist. "Traditionally, these communities have lived in some of the most marginalized areas on the continent; an initiative like this, and its incredible potential for community-based tourism, could lead to powerful and positive transformations of the region."
Along with keeping ancient traditions and culture alive, the communities play a critical role in maintaining plant and crop diversity, or agrobiodiversity. An important subset of biodiversity and the foundation of global food security agrobiodiversity in the Andes is unparalleled. Local farmers grow more than 3,000 varieties of potatoes, 2,500 varieties of quinoa and 1,000 different kinds of corn. The region also produces 20 species of food plants on which most of the world depends. But this
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Contact: Jim Wyss
j.wyss@conservation.org
27-828-586-382
Conservation International
13-Sep-2003