MATT TERRY & the Ecuadorian Rivers Institute

Each year, the Kayak Session Awards celebrate athleticism and innovation in our sport. The 2020 award for river-centric nonprofit went to the Ecuadorian Rivers Institute. For a few days, the ERI enjoyed a brief and overdue burst of international recognition. Following reports that the ERI was making significant headway in protecting 12 rivers in Napo province - where Ecuador’s best whitewater is concentrated - Chandra Brown reached out to ERI founder Matt Terry to propose an article about the ERI. She found, of course, that it’s impossible to separate the organization from Matt himself, and his uncommon and unforgettable work of doggedly changing the course of river conservation from the Andes to the Amazon.

Words: Chandra Brown

Matt Terry first showed me Ecuador’s Inchillaqui River - the aptly nicknamed “Hakuna Matata run” - sometime in 2010. He paddled a tandem ducky with his girlfriend, and my friend Rosada and I followed them down in kayaks. In a part of the world where many rivers are polluted to the point of malodor, the Inchillaqui is clean. It's a small drainage, trickling from mountain foothills through the selva before slipping, almost unnoticed, into the Misahuallí on its path toward the Napo and then onto the Amazon. It is the perfect class II creek, with water that still smells sweet as the epiphytes that adorn its banks. Matt Terry does not discriminate against any river: The Inchillaqui is as vital and precious to him as the Jondachi or as Ecuador’s…

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Kayak Session (Digital) - 1 Issue, Spring 2021

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