[1] In 1993, Alwyn Howard Gentry and his colleagues, in a trip organized by Conservation International and helicopter support provided by the Ecuadorian Army, were able to collect bromeliads from the prairies for the first time.

Robin Foster and Hamilton Beltrán conducted botanical inventories in 1995 on the Peruvian side of the border, on a second trip sponsored by Conservation International.

With the support of the National Geographic Society, the Missouri Botanical Garden and the National Herbarium of Ecuador, in December 2000 a series of expeditions were launched to make inventories of the flora in the Ecuadorian slopes of the cordillera, visiting places that no biologist had set foot in before, such as the Ijiach Naint hill in the Coangos River Basin.

[2] Despite protest by local Shuar and Saraguro Kichwa communities, as well as environmental agencies (such as MiningWatch and OCMAL), the Ecuadorian government handed out concessions to multiple international mining companies (among which Aurelian and Ecuacorriente - a Chinese joint venture - as well as Corriente Resources of Canada, Kinross of Canada, and Lowell).

Besides destroying primary rainforest, and with it the habitat of many unique species, the storage of toxic mine waste in up-river impoundments may contaminate a huge ecosystem downstream.