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ECUADOR 1996
FROM JOHN SEED'S DIARY
(1)
(When he was monitoring these
projects)
In Ecuador we got to spend some time with the folks at CIBT (Centro de Investigacion de los Bosques Tropicales) a group that RIC helped to create about 8 years ago. Doug Ferguson (2) is no longer directing CIBT though he is still running one of their projects which I was able to visit: the creation and protection of the Galeras National Park in the headwaters of the Amazon. Martha Mondragon (3), is now running CIBT from Quito as well as involving herself as much as she can in CIBT's Los Cedros Scientific Reserve.
The project Napo-Galeras has been in operation for five years, a partnership between CIBT and the Association Mamallactas to protect 54,000 acres of virgin rainforest from colonisation. To get to Galeras, we caught a bus from Quito and down the eastern slopes of the Andes to the town of Archidona. A little way out side town reside many of the Mamallacta extended family, ancestral owners of Galeras Mountain. The head of the family is the shaman Casimiro Mamallacta and Doug is married to his daughter, Martha. Eight of us from the north coast of NSW (4) descended on their place. We were accommodated in the beautiful thatched eco- tourist bungalow by the river which RIC had helped to fund. One wall was open to the elements, in the direction of the rushing river 50 metres away and there was an open fire in the middle of our large room bedecked with hammocks.
We lived there for a couple days acclimatizing in the midst of the Mamallacta's forest which looked like chaotic wild nature, yet every plant around their settlement brought them food, medicine, building materials or vision. This was the most complex garden I ever saw! The Mamallacta's forgo the large-scale clear ing for cattle that their fellow Quechua people have opted for. They are RIC's natural allies for preserving the rainforest.
We also got to visit one of two eco-centres that AusAID funding is helping the Association Mamallacta to build. The eco-centres will provide community meeting places and the educational component of the project Napo-Galeras. They will be centres for teaching the importance of maintaining the biological diversity of the forest and reviving indigenous cultural practices which promote preservation and sustainable use of the rainforest for building, fiber, medicine, food and cultural pursuits.
They welcomed us to the half-finished Centre with a feast of sugar cane, boiled yuca, chopped chonta-dura palm hearts baked in banana leaves, bananas and the roasted nutty shoots of the cocoa plant. Thanks and appreciation were translated from Quechua to Spanish to English and back again and I was proclaimed the little grandfather benefactor who had made it all possible which I vigorously denied.
At 2.30 one morning, 6 of us Aussie ecotourists took off with Doug, Martha and Lizan Ferguson (age 1), two of Casimiro's sons, Ramon and Benjamin, Doug's 16-year-old son Made and others. Two hours before dawn we started walking thru knee deep mud, off to find Casimiro and his wife and brother who were out with some 200 others cutting the line around Galeras on a 60km front. We walked all that day thru mud adjoining Quechua pasture and crops, and all the next thru exquisite jungle to get to Casimiro's longhouse at the foot of Galeras Mountain.
"Cutting the line" describes the physical demarcation of the Galeras National Park, one of Association Mamallacta/CIBT's main tasks now that the National Park status has been won for Galeras. Unless a physical boundary is created on the ground corresponding to this new line on the map, it would be impossible to stop colonisation, logging and poaching from continuing.
The 5 metre wide line was being cut with machetes and chain saws, funded by AusAID. To comply with Ecuadorean law, we had to employ Don Pancho, a government surveyor and his sidekick to accompany the cutters and certify that this line on the ground does indeed correspond to that on the map, making it all legal.
"The Australian-based Rainforest Information Centre was the only organisation to be working with the Huaorani in any meaningful way"
Then wildling chonta-dura palms from the forest are planted every metre or so along the line to make a permanent living fence to mark the park borders. We ourselves got to plant out a kilometer or so one day with Casimiro's wife, Margarita and we also helped her collect and boil up the ayahuasca vine for our moonlight vision ceremonies.
Demarcation is central to rainforest conservation in S America. RIC/CIBT's first demarcation was of the Awa Tribal Reserve in the late '80's. We then worked with the Huaorani to demarcate their vast reserve in the early '90's. This work was recently applauded in Joe Kane's book "Savages"(5). In his review of "Savages", Tim Flannery writes: "Only one conservation group wins approval from Kane. That is the Australian-based Rainforest Information Centre. He says that despite the presence of so many conservation groups, the RIC was the only one to be working with the Huaorani in any meaningful way" (Sydney Morning Herald, Weekend Review Aug 24-25 1996).
Two days walk back to our thatched palace near Archidona was followed by a beautiful 2nd birthday party for Doug and Martha's little boy Lizan and the tortuous busride up the Andes, back to Quito.
LOS CEDROS See
www.reservaloscedros.org
A few days later, we drove north-west out of Quito and made our way to Don Pepe's ranch and the end of the road. From there, with mules to carry provisions, we stumbled through 3 hours of muddy mule-path alongside the glorious, furious Magdalena River until the 3-hour climb through the jungle to Los Cedros began. It was steep! Finally, at about 1400 metres, we reached the plateau where the Los Cedros river runs.
Difficult access and up to 8 metres of annual rainfall (one of the wettest places on Earth) meant that only a few colonists had started to clear the rainforest on this plateau for crops and cattle when Jose Decoux convinced CIBT to try and protect the area in the late '80's . Now, with the help of AusAID, Threshold and other US foundations and many groups and individuals, all these colonists have sold their land to CIBT while the Ecuadorian Government has donated the remainder of the 6000 Ha. which now form the duly constituted Los Cedros Scientific Reserve.
I only saw the sky once in the week that I was there and came to fully appreciate the aptness of the title of Greg Gordon's book about the project: "Gringo's in the Mist" (6).
The Los Cedros reserve, providing habitat for monkeys, the spectacled bear, armadillos, pumas and jaguars, is important in it's own right. However, it's greatest significance lies in the location of Los Cedros adjacent to the Cotocachi-Cayapas National Park and providing a physical and psychological obstacle to its colonisation.
The 200,000 Ha. Cotocachi-Cayapas contains the most diverse forest on Earth and represents the crown of the biota of western Ecuador. Project director Jose Decoux chose the site for Los Cedros strategically, to halt the colonisation, poaching and illegal logging that have been undermining the Cotocachi-Cayapas in spite of it's status as a national park and a UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Reserve.
The area has been extensively studied by researchers from the Missouri Botanical Gardens. They report 20,000 vascular plant species in Ecuador compared to 17,000 in the whole of North America. More than 1,600 species of bird are found there with high (20%) endemism.
When I got to Los Cedros, I found a bunch of volunteers from Australia, the US, Sweden, South Africa, Columbia and Ecuador who are building the facilities for a world-class scientific reserve. Friends and I are now preparing a brochure to send to all relevant US, Australian and European universities addressed to Biolo gy Department notice boards promoting the virtues of Los Cedros for scientific investigators, including testimonials from scien tists who have worked there. I will also be posting this material around the WEB. I believe that the use of Los Cedros by an in creasing number of scientists for research purposes is the key to its financial stability.
UCLA Biology Professor Martin Cody was there with a bunch of his students and wrote: "for our purposes, the site and facility were near-ideal. Wonderful habitat and biota in general, ample support logistically. Though difficult to get into, this just added a feeling of remoteness from the trappings of civilization and closeness to the primeval. Hard to beat!"(7)
Many scientists have already worked at Los Cedros. We met Andy Hanneman there, a chemist from the University of Texas collecting orchids which fall from the canopy after every rain in order to explore the ways in which orchids manipulate their pollinators. He had built a walkway out above a little creek over to a fork in a fig about 100 feet away. On a platform there, about 100 feet above the ground he had set up an orchid garden and an apparatus consisting of a nicad powered air pump which samples fragrances being emitted by orchids at the moment when their pollinator lands on them. The fragrance is sucked into a graphite chamber and stored for later chemical analysis. A photograph of the pollinator is taken simultaneously. He is studying co-evolution, the ways in which plants and animals evolve together as a system. His nicads are recharged via another AusAID funded, Nimbin Rain bow Power Company (8) designed and installed water-powered tur bine which lights and powers the project.
While I was at Los Cedros, a local chainsaw whiz was cutting perfect boards, freehand, like a hot knife thru butter. In one week he cut enough planks to build (in six months when the timber is seasoned) the walls, floors, ceilings etc for the new scien tific centre which will accommodate 16 people including a kitch en, meeting halls, a lab etc. He was amazing to watch.
All in all, I was deeply impressed by the work that our friends in Ecuador are doing, and the experience strengthened my resolve to help them in any way possible.
The following quotes are from BIOLOGICAL EXTINCTION IN W ECUADOR by CH Dodson and AH Gentry, Annals of the Missouri Botanical Gardens, Vol 78, No2 1991 pp273-295
"The only two substantial tracts (of relatively undisturbed forest) left... encompass the Awa Reserve (80,000 Ha. with 120,000 Ha of uncommitted forest surrounding it) and the Coto cache Cayapas Ecological Reserve (204,420 Ha.)... We know from personal experience that an undetermined but clearly increasing portion of both reserves has already been cut by colonists and lumber interests."
"With the exception of the two threatened forest reserves at the northern extreme, very little natural forest remains in W Ecuador."
"These forests are of particular interest because they probably contain the highest biological diversity in West Ecuador comprising part of the Choco region which contains the most diverse forests on Earth (Gentry 1986b)... At this time, private initiatives may be the only effective means of true forest protection."
"We estimate that perhaps 12% of the flora of W Ecuador is at risk in the near future."
"If the Awa and Cotocache-Cayapas reserves are to be saved for posterity a major effort must occur soon... A substantial portion of the biological diversity of western Ecuador still persists within these two preserves. They are still of sufficient size that all resident flora and fauna can persist. However without these two preserves, massive extinction will surely occur.
International attention to the plight of the two reserves must be brought to bear now. Though the Galapagos are world renowned, have many endemics and spectacular tourism impact, the two reserves have much greater diversity, far more endemics and extreme potential impact from extinction."
FOOTNOTES:
(1). John Seed founded the Rainforest Information Centre in northern NSW, Australia, in 1981 after the successful direct actions to protect NSW's rainforests. He continues to work on RIC 3rd World conservation programs. back to text
(2). Doug Ferguson was part of the NSW, Tasmanian and Queensland rainforest campaigns before starting the World Bank desk at RIC. He first went to Ecuador in 1988 where he founded the CIBT. He may be contacted at C- Casilla 344-A Sucursal # 3 Quito ECUADOR back to text
(3). Martha Mondragon, CIBT's present director is a biologist from Columbia. CIBT may be contacted at Casilla 17-7-8726 Quito ECUADOR phone/fax 593-2-221324 back to text
(4) The RIC party included ecopsychologist Dr Elizabeth Bragg (Eshana), Patrick Anderson of Greenpeace International, Bodhi Seed from The Channon, Terri Nicholson from Terania Creek, Summer Joy from Tuntable Falls and Andy and Komala Frame from Mt. Nardi. back to text
(5) Savages by Joe Kane, Macmillan 373pp, $39.95 back to text
(6) Privately published, Greg Gordon, 669 Dearborn River Rd. Cascade MT 59421, USA, tel (406)984-6229 back to text
(7) Pers. Corr. 12/9/96 back to text
(8) Rainbow Power, RESHAPE 891430 891088 fax 891109 1 Alternative Way Nimbin Australia 2480 61 66 891430 fax 61 66 891109 rpcltd@nor.com.au back to text
Last Updated: 27 Dec 2001