LOS CEDROS BIOLOGICAL RESERVE

The
Rainforest Information Centre helped establish Los Cedros in 1988 and we have been
supporting it  ever since. Due to the
tireless work of reserve director Jose Decoux, the reserve has flourished in
spite of the degradation of most of the surrounding rainforests.

Two
US academics who have done research at Los Cedros are   University of
Oregon Professor  Bitty Roy who says that  “Los Cedros is the best preserved rainforest
in  Western Ecuador” and Blanca Rios Touma PhD UCLA who reports that
Los Cedros is the only intact watershed on the west side of Ecuador.

Please
support Los Cedros by making a donation (tax deductible for Australian tax
payers) at our crowdfund
site. US donations over $200 are tax deductible via our partners, the Earthways
Foundation.

JANUARY 11 2016

As
you'll see from Jose's email below, the government has handed the local
communities responsibilities which
include patrolling the reserve, maintaining the boundaries, training
park guards and promoting environmental education in the local schools.  This is a giant leap forward from having the
inept and corrupt government responsible for these things but (of course!) no
funding has been provided.

Los
Cedros is the last intact watershed in Western Ecuador, please donate
generously at our crowdfund
site.

For
the Earth

John
Seed

-----Original
Message-----

From:
Josef DeCoux [mailto:[email-masked]]

Sent:
Sunday, 1 January 2017 4:03 AM

To:
John Seed; Daniel Thomas

Subject:
New Years Update

31
de Diciembre 2016-Los Cedros

John

Could
you get this little unhappy year end roundup out to the interested parties:

2016 is over and the situation is not very
bright for conservation here in Ecuador.

The
reserva Los Cedros has counted on the support of many of you folks receiving
this.  I want to thank you all and get
you the year´s activities.

First
off the process of community comanagement is still an ongoing process.  We did get the comanagement agreement signed
in a formal ceremony before the governor (representative of the president of
Ecuador), the Ministry of Environment and our parochial government.

There
was no provision for funding the activities and responsibilities assumed by the
three local communities given the tasks agreed upon.

These
include patrolling the reserve, maintaining the boundaries, training park
guards and promoting environmental education in the local schools.  The Ministry of Environment agreed to
recognize the comanagement organization which would lead to the creation of an
NGO but little progress has been made though meetings continue to be
arranged.  The Ministry of Environment
missed the last one two weeks ago where their legal staff were to have
presented models of organizational statues for a first reading and modification.  This process will continue in ´17.

This
year three inspections of a problematic area where we continue to have
squatters active, 8 meetings with Environment representatives, 2 in Ibarra,
were attended by the comanejo comunities and two processes to legally remove
squatters initiated by the Ministry of Environment.

On
a national level the persecution of environmental activists continues with the
closure of Accion Ecologico, an NGO dedicated to advocating resistance to
extractive industry, and the declaration of martial law in Indigenous
communities affected by Chinese investments in open pit copper mines in the
Cordillera del Condor.  It is fair to say
that a militant reaction to the forceful removal of a community resulted in the
death of a police official in unclarified circumstances and prompted this
intervention.  With the uncertainty of
oil investments making them less attractive, the government is bending over
backwards to allow mega-mining projects to fund their development agenda.

A
positive development has become a national issue.  The kickbacks and outright bribes being
collected by government officials in the oil and public works (Petroecuador,
Odebretch) sectors are public knowledge and concern.  In my humble opinion the same corruption will
become evident in the speculative mining concession investment industry.

So
things are looking grim as the government continues to bestow mining
concessions to transnational interests, many of which appear to be purely for
speculation.  In the area of Los Cedros
the concessions granted are still under consideration, though they cover more
than half of the primary forests of our parish with the addition of new titles
over all the adjacent 6000 hectares of the El Chontal Protected Forest.  New environmental legislation, passed
December 20, 2016, codificando responsibilities (Art 166) permit the revocation
of protected status, after declaration of public domain, by a simple
administrative declaration by the Ministry of Environment.

So
..... happy new year!

Jose

These  maps show clearly the situation we are facing.