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Andean mountains of dry forest with their peaks in the clouds, Santander

Northern Andes, Colombia

The land remembers
how to heal.

Stories of the people bringing water, forest and life back to the Northern Andes, one of the most diverse regions on the planet.

Read the stories

Three mountain ranges, páramos and the rivers born from them. These are the stories of the people caring for them.

Bioregions Series

Regeneration at the scale of a bioregion

Short episodes for reading a territory through its water, not its borders.


An 1850 watercolour of the Chita snow peak, with a páramo of frailejones and two travellers by a fire

Episode 01

What Is a Bioregion?

Before the tap, the water you drank today crossed a mountain. That path draws a territory no government ever drew.

Forested Andean mountains with a band of mist over a valley of pastures and a winding road

Episode 02

The Northern Andes

Where the range splits in three, water flows to the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Amazon and the Orinoco. No border divides it.

A silver-leaved frailejón in the foreground against the mountains of the páramo

Episode 03

One River, Many Worlds

From frailejón to cactus there is a single river. We follow the Fonce from the páramo to the dry Suárez canyon below Barichara.

A white egret in the Meléndez River among stones and bamboo, in the Multicentro Urban Forest in Cali

Episode 04

The City Is a Bioregion Too

In the south of Cali, beside the Meléndez River, neighbours turned a park into a forest. It now has 118 bird species.

Barichara from the air: the cathedral dome, clay-tiled roofs and the green valley beyond

The stories