WILD Campo Alegre nature reserve
A Danish-led biodiversity and nature conservation project
in the cloud forest of Colombia
WILD Campo Alegre (WCA) is a biodiversity and nature conservation project, started in December 2022 by the Danish WILD Nature Foundation WNF (wildnf.org). Christian Frimodt-Møller, a biologist from the University of Copenhagen who has lived in Colombia since 2011, defined the project in 2021 and is currently the project manager of WCA.
WCA has both a Colombian operating and ownership fund, but the control lies with the Danish WNF, with a board of directors that includes former Zoo Director Bengt Holst, President of the Danish Society for Nature Conservation Maria Reumert Gjerding, lawyer Knud Foldschack, Mikkel Beha Erichsen and several others.
The aim of the project
The aim of the project is to protect and restore high altitude cloud forest (+2500 metres above sea level) near Pereira on the western side of the Central Andean Range. In December 2022, with the help of a generous grant from the Kirkbi Foundation, 731 hectares of land at an altitude of 2800-3300 metres were purchased. Approximately 45 % of the area consisted of open fields with cattle farming, while the rest is secondary and especially primary cloud forest. The last cattle were moved in April 2023, after which approximately 30 kilometres of barbed wire fencing was removed from the reserve. The land is directly adjacent to the cloud forest, a belt of forest that runs along the Andes and is bordered at the top by páramo vegetation (at about 3600 metres altitude).
In April 2025 a long-term agreement with the local environmental authorities was signed where WCA includes a further 475 hectares in “comodato”. This area borders the reserve towards the higher mountains to the southeast, and covers primary cloud forest and páramo vegetation up to an altitude of some 4200 meters. And finally, since 1st July 2025 WCA is renting part of the Pava finca, called La Quincha. This area is an “island” of pasture within the forest and also bordering WCA. By restoring the forest in these pastures, we make ecological corridors to other forest patches where species like mountain tapir again can roam. Besides we are already removing large amount of barbed wire from La Quincha, that have be crisscrossing the pastures and forests. Thus, WCA today covers almost 1500 hectares.