Dear friends, Welcome to Ecuador! “Ecuadorians are strange and unique beings, they sleep peacefully amid smoking volcanoes, they live in poverty amid incomparable wealth and they cheer up with sad music.” Alexander Von Humboldt.

Just under half of Unesco’s World Heritage sites are under threat, the WWF asserts. Sites deemed threatened include the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the Pantanal in Brazil and the Virunga national park in the Democratic Republic of Congo – and 111 others.

The world’s first fluorescent frog has been discovered near Santa Fe in Argentina. Scientists at the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires made the discovery by accident while studying the pigment of polka-dot tree frogs, a species common across the continent.