Ecuador has four main geographic regions:
1.) The coast make up of the low-lying land in the western part of the country, including Ecuador’s Pacific coastline.

2.)The highlands mountainous terrain of the Andes mountains running north-south along the middle of Ecuador

3.) The east or the Amazon featuring the Amazon rainforest areas in the eastern part of Ecuador. This is a large area, nearly half of the country’s total area. Also an area of very low population density as less than five percent of Ecuador’s population lives in this area.

4.) The Galápagos Islands, approximately 600 miles west of Ecuador’s mainland in the Pacific Ocean

There is great variety in the climate, which is largely determined by the diversity in altitude within Ecuador. This results in an abundance of different habitats
that ultimately support a great variety of animal and plant species. Its not suprising that Ecuador is one of seventeen megadiverse countries in the world with a wealth of biological diversity.

Ecuador is home to 15 percent of the world’s known bird species, about 1,600 different species. Ecuador also has over 16,000 species of plant within its borders.

This great biological wealth is increasingly under threat as a result of human population increases, deforestation, extraction activities, natural resource depletion and unbridled agriculture. To answer this threat Ecuador has put nearly 20 percent of the country under some form of protected status, including eleven national parks, ten wildlife refuges, nine ecological reserves, and other areas.