When Paolo Lugari and other early Gaviotans first arrived in los llanos in the early 1970s, they tested hundreds of crops, but nothing thrived in the highly acidic, leached tropical soils, whose natural levels of aluminum bordered on toxicity. The area had been mainly empty savanna, devoid of anything but low, nutrient-poor grasses. Then, Lugari met a Venezuelan agronomist who suggested trying tropical pine seedlings obtainable from Honduras.

The trees grew and the Gaviotans debated among themselves whether it was wise to cultivate an exotic species. Some argued that the issue was political, not environmental, since the same pines also grow in Panama, which was once part of Colombia. Had the United States not stolen the isthmus and installed a puppet government in order to dig their canal, the pines would still be native Colombian trees. The controversy, along with the matter of what to do with pines since they weren't edible, was settled by a succession of random occurrences. Who could have guessed that Caribbean pines would prove to be sterile in the llanos, posing no invasive competition to local flora? Who could have known that their bark resin, a natural protection against the tropics' array of hungry insects, would flow so copiously here that it could be harvested like maple syrup—more, really, like milk from cows, because tapping the thick amber liquid seemed to stimulate production without hurting the trees? Or that here pines would mature nearly a decade faster than forestry texts predicted? Or that until the early 1990s, Colombia had been importing millions of dollars' worth of resins annually for paint, varnishes, turpentine, cosmetics, perfume, medicines, rosin for violin bows—until, that is, Gaviotas inaugurated a forest products industry that involved leaving trees in place, not mowing them down?

By 1995, Gaviotas had planted almost six million trees and had begun to witness a miracle. In the moist, sheltered understory of the Gaviotas pines, an indigenous tropical forest began to regenerate. Biologists from Colombia's Universidad Nacional recorded 240 species hardly seen in the llanos for millennia. Populations of dear, anteaters, and capybaras began to grow. With thousands more hectares available for planting, the Gaviotans decided to let the native species slowly choke out the Pinus caribaea over decades and return the llanos to what many ecologists believe was their primeval state: an extension of the Amazon.