Explorer's Inn

The Explorer's Inn was founded after Max Gunther Döring, a veterinarian and lifelong outdoorsman and keen amateur naturalist from northern Peru, bought into the company Peruvian Safaris (PS) and transformed its business model from African-style big game hunting expeditions to what is now known as "ecotourism", encouraging guests to leave as little impact as possible on the natural environment which they were visiting. After much searching by Max for the perfect rainforest location, PS narrowed down the hunt to Tambopata and eventually bought 105 hectares of rainforest from the Peruvian government, on which it built the lodge. Ever since then, the fate of the surrounding ecosystem, especially its conservation, has been inextricably linked with the Inn and the research made possible by the lodge. The Inn hosted its first guests in 1976 and the following year the Peruvian government created the 5,500 hectare-Tambopata Reserved Zone (TRZ), appointing the Explorer's Inn as its legal custodian. Because of preliminary reports by a team of US biologists on the high diversity of bird species, the National Geographic Society, US National Museum, US Fish & Wildlife Service, World Wildlife Fund and the Explorer's Inn together funded a survey of flora and fauna in November 1979. The team of scientists, including one mammalogist, one ornithologist, one botanist, one herpetologist and two entomologists from the United States, and three biologists from Peru, concluded that because of the area's extraordinarily high number of endemic species, including many animals that had yet to be documented as well as numerous rare and endangered species, there was a strong imperative to preserve and significantly enlarge the protected area, a recommendation that helped lead to the designation of the Tambopata National Reserve.