Panama's Canopy Tower Ecolodge
by John Mitchell

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Panama -- What do you do with an abandoned military installation in the middle of the Panamanian jungle? For avid bird-watcher, businessman, and nature conservationist, Raul Arias de Para, the answer to this question was simple: turn it into a unique ecolodge and rainforest canopy observation post.

This former radar tower was handed over to Panama in 1995 under terms of treaties signed in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter and then-leaderof Panama, General Omar Torrijos. The United States Air Force built the facility during the 1960s to help defend the Panama Canal. It was then used by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Panama Canal Commission (PCC) for communications and air-traffic control. In 1988, the tower became part of the Caribbean Basin Radar Network and was employed by the US government to track down drug smugglers' aircraft until it was vacated in 1995.

The cylindrical Canopy Tower stands on top of 900-foot Semaphore Hill overlooking Soberania National Park, a 55,000-acre nature reserve bordering the Panama Canal. The hill gets its name from huge traffic signs called semaphores which were displayed here to help ships navigate the canal. Soberania National Park, once part of the US-controlled Canal Zone, is the most accessible wilderness park in Panama. Besides protecting the Panama Canal watershed, the area is home to hundreds of species of birds, mammals, and reptiles. The park's hiking trails, such as the 11-mile Camino del Oleoducto (Pipeline Road) and Sendero Las Cruces (Las Cruces Trail), attract bird-watchers from around the world.

Raul Arias de Para admits that he has always been fascinated by the rainforests surrounding the Panama Canal because of their spectacular beauty and incredibly rich flora and fauna. His search for a potential ecolodge site first led Raul to the area around Gamboa, at the eastern end of the Gaillard Cut. His investigations uncovered two ideal locations. He approached the US Army and the Autoridad de la Region Interoceanica (a government agency responsible for allocating real estate then being transferred from the United States to Panama) with development proposals, but they both turned him down. Arias was considering giving up his dream, when an employee of the Panama Canal Commission told him about the abandoned radar tower. He visited the derelict structure and immediately fell in love with it.

Since the tower was located inside Soberania National Park, Raul had to convince the authorities that his project would be an asset rather than a liability to the environment. After two years of negotiating, Raul Arias de Para signed a long-term concession in 1997 allowing him to develop the tower and surrounding 35 acres of rainforest for ecotourism and canopy research. It took another two years to renovate the neglected building totally at his own expense. Raul's dream finally came true in January 1999 with the opening of the Canopy Tower Ecolodge and Nature Observatory.

When Arias took over the 50-foot-high metal tower, it was badly stained and corroded. The structure was virtually hollow, with no windows and only one narrow stairway. After an engineer inspected the tower and declared that it was structurally sound, Raul's crew set to work installing proper staircases, adding large windows, and removing layers of old paint from the building's exterior. The latter had to be done totally by hand, so as not to contaminate the forest with lead-based paint.

Raul also contacted a professional designer friend in New York who came to visit him in Panama. Together they planned the layout of the lodge's interior rooms and devised a color scheme based on the colors of a Keel-Billed Toucan's beak. In addition, the one-mile paved road winding through the forest to the top of Semaphore Hill needed patching. Termites had severely weakened a bridge along this route, and its rotten wooden columns had to be replaced with new ones made of steel salvaged from the tower. Sticking to his conservationist principles, Raul carried out all this remodeling without cutting a single tree or using bulldozers.

I visited the Canopy Tower with Raul a few weeks after it opened in early 1999. As we stepped out of Raul's car in the pre-dawn darkness, we were greeted by the drone of tropical insects and the roars of howler monkeys echoing eerily through the forest canopy. The bright blue tower loomed in front of us like a rocket ship sitting on its launch pad. Workers were already busy puttering about the site and preparing the tower's ground floor for the installation of an exhibit on rainforest ecology. Raul led me up broad iron stairs to a mezzanine looking out into the forest's lower reaches. We then climbed to the next level which harbors six comfortable guest rooms with private baths. Tropical plants and colorful molas (reverse applique panels made by Kuna Indians from the San Blas Islands off Panama's Caribbean coast) decorate these tastefully appointed bedrooms. But I was taken most with their expansive windows which open directly into the canopy. Although I would not be staying the night, I imagined only having to roll over in my bed to watch the forest come to life.

We proceeded to the next floor, which is ringed by glass and has a spacious common area with a dining table, along with hammocks and chairs surveying the treetops. Well-thumbed birding magazines sit neatly piled on a table, and nature guides cram bookshelves in a cozy reading nook. We had to bend our heads as we squeezed up a narrow stairway to the tower's rooftop observation deck. The circular deck is built around a 30-foot-high yellow geotangent dome which looks somewhat like a giant soccer ball. A variation of architect Buckminster Fuller's famous geodesic dome, this fiberglass sphere once housed the tower's powerful radar equipment.

From this vantage point, we had birds'-eye views of the rainforest canopy undulating out in all directions like a green sea. In the hazy distance, I could see Panama City's pencil-thin skyscrapers and the elegant Bridge of the Americas spanning the Panama Canal's Pacific entrance. Far below, a huge freighter glided slowly through the jungle as it negotiated the Gaillard Cut (also known as the Culebra Cut), a sinuous nine-mile-long channel carved through the mountains of the Continental Divide.

Raul took out his powerful telescope and soon brought some of the forest's exotic inhabitants into focus. Over 280 speciesof birds - including toucans, owls, hummingbirds, and parrots - have been spotted at the tower so far, and the list continues to grow. Bird-watchers from around the world climb the tower to see the Yellow-Green Tyrannulet, a small bird endemic to Central and Eastern Panama, as well as elusive Green Shrike Vireos and stunning Blue Cotingas, both of which are normally hard to spot because they reside in the canopy's uppermost levels.

Four species of primates visit the site: Mantled Howler monkeys, White-faced Capuchins, Geoffroy's Tamarins, and Western Night Monkeys. Occasionally endangered ocelots, pumas, and jaguarundis also make cameo appearances. Twice each year, in March and October, huge flocks of migrating hawks and vultures darken the sky over the tower as they head to and from their wintering grounds. A survey conducted by the National Association for the Conservation of Nature (ANCON) concluded that Semaphore Hill contains the greatest variety of mammals and reptiles on the eastern bank of the Panama Canal. Included in their numbers are species threatened by extinction both nationally and globally.

Since my visit, the rainforest exhibit called Parting the Green Curtain (Descorriendo la Cortina Verde) donated by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) has opened on the tower's ground floor. Using pictures, artifacts and text, this permanent display sets out to "illustrate the incredible richness, beauty and complexity of tropical habitats by providing a historical description of biological research on one of the most important tropical areas of the world, the isthmus of Panama." Among the many topics covered are Evolution of Tropical Biology, Early Naturalists, Amerindians and Nature in Panama, Dynamics of Tropical Forests, and Caring for the Tropics.

Arias hopes that the Canopy Tower's presence will help discourage poachers and that his project will educate people about the importance of wildlife conservation, not just in Panama but worldwide. Now that Panama has sovereignty over her forests in the former US-controlled Canal Zone, Raul feels that ecotourism will play a very important role in his country's economic development, creating much-needed employment.

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