Maikiuants, perched high in Ecuador’s southeastern Amazon highlands near the Peruvian border, sits atop copper-rich ground now claimed by Solaris Resources, a Canadian mining company seeking to gash an open-pit mine into these mountains. If extraction moves forward, the forest Jhostin and Olger were walking through—home to endangered species, waterfalls, medicinal plants, generations of Indigenous knowledge and undiscovered beings—could be permanently altered.

The jaguar’s presence here holds weight as a matter of law. In Ecuador, endangered species—and nature more broadly—have legal rights. The government must clear a far higher bar than under conventional laws before approving projects like large-scale mining.

Jhostin and Olger are paraecologists, people who document life in their homelands using generations of ecological expertise and scientific methods. They work with Ecoforensic, a nonprofit that trains paraecologists—paramedics for ecosystems—to document how ecosystems function and how they are harmed. Ecoforensic works in places in Ecuador like Maikiuants: biodiverse regions where scientific data is thin or nonexistent.

The data paraecologists collect, such as species inventories and water samples, is then translated into evidence that carries weight in courts. Increasingly, it’s winning cases.

In 2023, in Ecuador’s Intag Valley, community paraecologists helped halt a proposed mega copper mine by documenting threats to endangered species that the company’s environmental studies had failed to account for. The ruling hinged on Ecuador’s “rights of nature” laws, enshrined in the country’s constitution in 2008.