Ecuador waterfall disappears

This item appears on page 26 of the May 2020 issue.

San Rafael Waterfall, at nearly 490 feet the highest waterfall in Ecuador, disappeared in late February after the Coca River, which fed it, diverted into a sinkhole upstream believed to have been created by a series of landslides earlier in the month. Naturalists do not believe the waterfall will return naturally. It was a centerpiece of the Cayambe-Coca Ecological Reserve, a national park in the Amazon rainforest.