Río Saloya, a River We Cannot Afford to Lose

There’s a moment just before dawn when the cloud forest holds its breath. Standing on the banks of the Rio Saloya, I watch as the mist rises from the water like spirits awakening, and for a brief instant, I understand why the ancient peoples of these lands believed rivers had souls. The throaty call of a Crimson-rumped Toucanet breaks the spell, and suddenly the forest erupts in its morning symphony – a reminder that here, in one of Earth’s most biodiverse hotspots, life and water are inexorably intertwined.

But someone wants to silence this symphony.

In the name of progress – that tired old excuse that has killed more rivers than drought ever could – a private hydroelectric project called San Jacinto plans to perform a feat of hydraulic magic. They’ll make the Rio Saloya disappear, only to reappear kilometers away in a different watershed entirely. It’s a neat trick, if you don’t care about the thousands of species that call this river home, or the communities that have built their lives along its banks.

The company behind this environmental sleight-of-hand, Kawsus, has a simple story to tell: clean energy, minimal impact, greater good. It’s the kind of story that sounds reasonable in air-conditioned boardrooms in Quito, where rivers are just blue lines on maps and biodiversity is a bullet point in an environmental impact report.

But they haven’t spent dawn with the near-threatened neotropical river otter (Lontra longicaudis) that hunt in these waters. They haven’t watched critically endangered White-fronted Capuchin monkeys swing through the canopy above the river, or seen how the entire food web dances to the rhythm of the Saloya’s flow. They haven’t stood in Mindo, where 3,800 families have built an economy around the wild beauty that brings birders from around the world to this corner of Ecuador’s Chocó-Andino Biosphere Reserve.

The math is simple, really. Take 10 cubic meters of water per second from the river. Divert it through underground tubes. Generate power. What’s left – if anything remains in the dry season – would be released back into a different river entirely, leaving a 20-kilometer stretch of the Saloya gasping for water like a fish on the bank.

Here’s what the environmental impact reports won’t tell you: rivers aren’t just water delivery systems. They’re the arteries of our planet, carrying not just H2O but life itself. The Lisa fish that navigate these waters have been doing so since before humans first settled these valleys. The endangered species that depend on this river – they don’t get a vote in environmental impact assessments or corporate boardrooms.

The locals, organized under the banner #RioSaloyaResiste, understand this viscerally. They’re not fighting against progress; they’re fighting for survival – their own and that of the countless species that share this valley. When they tell me they weren’t properly consulted about the project, that the company held their community meetings in distant towns with no stake in the river’s health, I’m reminded of other environmental battles where the people most affected are the last to be heard.

Standing here at sunrise, watching the river that might soon be reduced to a trickle, I’m struck by an uncomfortable truth: we keep making the same mistakes, just with better paperwork. We sacrifice irreplaceable ecosystems for power that could be generated in less destructive ways, trading the permanent for the temporary, the sacred for the expedient.

The cloud forest is quiet again now, but it’s not the peaceful silence of dawn. It’s the weighted silence of uncertainty, of a community holding its breath, wondering if this river – their river – will become another casualty in humanity’s relentless march toward a progress that somehow always seems to flow uphill, toward power and profit, leaving the valleys below dry and diminished.

But perhaps this time will be different. Perhaps the voice of the river, amplified by its defenders, will be heard before it’s too late. Because once you’ve stood here at dawn, once you’ve witnessed the intricate dance of life that depends on these waters, you understand that some silences should never fall.

The Rio Saloya must continue to sing.