Why should you support the Cofan?

Why should you support the Cofan?

With the holiday season almost upon us, we at Cofan Survival Fund are reaching out to our supporters and asking for their help to keep our organization going.

We started formal Cofan conservation activities with almost nothing in the late 1980s, and spent several years doing the best we could with the funds we could access from ecotourism, village collections and the like. As threats escalated and pressures increased, we formalized Cofan Survival Fund in 1999, learned how to access more funding and gratefully accepted help from others outside the immediate Cofan sphere. With this, we became far more effective both in protecting our forests and culture and making a difference for the world.

As funding has become harder for us to access, we have had to make difficult decisions about what to cut and what we can most easily afford to lose, both internally as an indigenous people and as caretakers of a global heritage.But the bottom line is, we can't afford to stop doing what we are doing: we MUST adjust and figure out how to make do. What makes us different from the average NGO is that we don't have the option to quit. We're in this because it means survival for our people, our culture, our forests and our future. I am convinced that it is also an important part of the answer for survival of the globe as we face climate change, water shortages, extreme weather emergencies and the like, and that our contribution to our planet’s sustainability is very important. But as the Cofan, we don't have the luxury of ending conservation activities because we don't have enough funding.

So, we will continue to field as many Cofan rangers as we can afford to protect the most vulnerable locations in the best possible manner we can afford. We will continue collecting Charapa turtle eggs, caring for babies and releasing them into the wild. We will continue sending as many young Cofans as we can to quality schools and universities so they can grow up and take leadership roles for the Cofan Nation.

I want to encourage each of you to be part of the solution. Don’t think of yourself as too far away to be concerned. Take a look at this video to see exactly what your gift will help protect.

Please, become a partner with the Cofan in our mission to save one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet. Make a tax-deductible donation today!

Take care, and thanks for your support!

-Randy

Randy Borman to speak in San Francisco

Randy with members of the Cofan community of Zábalo

Randy Borman was born only months before his parents, missionaries and linguists, ventured into the Ecuadorian rainforest to live among the Cofán natives. This set in motion a life that, over five decades, has helped shaped the Cofán community into a model for success in the struggle for biodiversity conservation and indigenous land rights.

Borman and the Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofán are fighting hard to save the rainforest and their culture. Watch his recent TED talk here.

On the eve of Nov. 25th, Randy will speak in San Francisco about the Cofán's rich culture and their ongoing battle to preserve it, then open to a Q&A discussion (Randy is perfectly trilingual: English/Spanish/Cofán). With an encyclopedic knowledge of Amazonian culture, ecology and Ecuadorian political landscape, Borman is a pioneer of the Save the Rainforest movement and one of the most fascinating humans you are likely ever to meet. Please come, bring a friend, and help us spread the word!

WHERE: Activate McCoppin. McCoppin Street and Valencia Street, San Francisco, California.

WHEN: Monday, November 25

TIME: 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm

We've been busy! Cofan ranger course, GIN conference keynote speech, turtle news and more!

The end of September/October has been a busy time for Cofan Survival Fund! Read on for a roundup of some of the projects we have been working on this year:

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Cofan Ranger Program

First up is the Cofan Ranger training course. In September Cofan Survival Fund carried out a 2-week Cofan ranger training course with support from the Institute for Conservation and Environmental Training (ICCA in Spanish). Ten experienced Cofan rangers, four women and six men who have been working as rangers for years, came to the FSC office in Quito.

This course, funded by USAID, was a refresher for these experienced rangers, and topics covered GPS use, environmental law, professional ethics and first aid among others, and also focused on the implementation of a new control and monitoring tool from the Escuela Latinoamericana de Áreas Protegidas de Costa Rica (ELAP). This tool is a way for Cofan rangers to systematize, organize and generate products from activities that Cofan rangers, FSC and FEINCE carry out in protected areas. This tool will make it easier for Cofan rangers to manage and present the data they collect in the field and organize and report on their field activities. The rangers left Quito anxious to try out their new knowledge and ELAP tool in the field.

Randy at the Global Issues Network Conference

Randy was invited to participate in the Global Issues Network (GIN) 2013 Conference, which this year was held in Quito at the American School from October 18th to the 20th. GIN Conferences empower young people to develop sustainable solutions to address global problems and to implement their ideas with the support of the network. The key ideas are based on the book, High Noon- 20 Global Problems, 20 years to Solve Them by Jean Francois Rischard. Hundreds of high school students from around the world converged on Quito to attend the conference.

One theme students can choose to focus on is “Sharing our planet: Issues involving the global commons,” and centers on global warming, biodiversity and ecosystem losses, and deforestation, so Cofan Survival Fund fit right in! Randy was one of several keynote speakers, and also conducted a workshop entitled “How to save the rainforest: An indigenous community’s struggle against destruction and the conservation model that emerged” about carbon footprints, how the Cofan rangers stop deforestation and help reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, and how all of us can do our part to lower our own carbon footprints. Cofan Survival Fund also set up a table at the conference’s NGO fair. 

Socio Bosque (Forest Partner)

Another project we have been working hard on is applying for more Cofan territory to be included in the Socio Bosque Program. The Socio Bosque Program is a government initiative that pays landowners for maintaining their forest intact through 20-year contracts. Cofan Survival Fund has already successfully gotten three Cofan territories contracts in this initiative: Rio Cofanes Territory, Zábalo and Dureno. We have been working to include the Cofan Bermejo Reserve, the Cofan-managed zone of the Cayambe Coca Reserve, and the Sinangoe community.For the last two rounds in May and October of this year, for reasons outside our control (which were very frustrating) we were unable to include more Cofan territories in the initiative. This would have meant almost 150,000 hectares would have been earning funds for their environmental services, which would have gone to the Cofan for conservation and development projects.

We were pretty disappointed when we found out that our three applications couldn’t be approved…but, seemingly out of nowhere Socio Bosque officials contacted us to submit paperwork for an additional 40,000 hectares of the Zábalo territory to be included! This would raise Zábalo's annual budget to almost $120,000 total, a significant sum which would cover pretty much all of our control and vigilance activities in addition to providing administrative and community development funds for the community, essentially making Zábalo autonomous in protecting its territories. So, currently we're waiting to hear official word if our application was approved or rejected.

The Charapa Project

In our last update about the Charapa Project we told you about the $20,000 grant we got from Petroamazonas to support the project and the business plan we turned in to the Ministry of Environment to be able to sell part of the Charapa harvest, funds which would finance the project.Well, we have gotten another, smaller grant from Petroamazonas that was given directly to the Zábalo community to finance the upcoming harvest, specifically the bonus that will be given to the families who will find and monitor the turtle nests. This will be enough for about 10,000 baby turtles.

We still don’t have the permit to be able to commercialize a part of the Charapa harvest, but it hasn’t been rejected yet, so that’s good news. Stay tuned for future updates!

Friday Foto

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Rawr! Today's Friday Foto is a pic of a jaguar, caught by a camera trap in 2009 in Machintsaiqui in the Ecuadorian Amazon region.

Thanks to Cofán park rangers' efforts to patrol both Cofán ancestral territories and Ecuador's national parks, beautiful animals like these are less threatened by illegal poaching and their forest homes are kept intact. Keep our ranger program going by donating!

Friday Foto

In today's Friday Foto, Cofán women taking a Spanish course in Quito visit the Presidential Palace, among other historical sites, and pose with the presidential guards.

One skill we have determined to be crucial for inclusion in conservation work and advocacy, not to mention communication with government entities and national institutions is the ability to speak Spanish. Beginning in 2007, our Spanish classes for women have involved study and taking classes in Quito, including excursions into the city so the women have the chance to use the language. These classes contribute to an increase in self-esteem and empowerment, and have resulted in the improved capacity and greatly increased participation by the women in Cofán politics and overall conservation management.

How to make a Cofán backpack

Watch Carlos as he shows us how they use a leaf from a certain palm in Cofán territory in Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve in the Ecuadorian Amazon to make a comfortable (really, it is!) backpack. The Cofán use these packs when they need to carry heavier loads, and they can also be lined with bigger leaves on the inside so they are able to carry smaller things. The strap goes either across your forehead or your collarbone, and they last about a week. Talk about being green!

Here is the finished product:

backpack

Friday Foto

grey-breasted mountain toucan

Take a peek at this photo of a grey-breasted mountain toucan enjoying a snack in the Cayambe Coca Ecological Reserve, one of the areas patrolled by Cofán rangers, taken by Leo, an experienced Cofán ranger (and a good photographer!). This species of toucan is found in high, humid forest and has declined due to habitat loss.

Support the Cofán rangers and their work to save beautiful birds like this toucan by donating on our website.

18-year anniversary of battling Chevron

November 3rd, 2011, marked the 18th year in which the Cofán have been fighting Chevron, on a legal battleground, for the legacy of contamination the oil company left in its wake since Texaco started operations in the Ecuadorian Amazon in the 1960s. Amazon Watch's Mitch Anderson went to the Cofán community Dureno recently and wrote about his experience on the NGO's blog, and also recorded the following video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6qY8mq1WRc&feature=player_embedded#!

"Lago Agrio, Ecuador – The sprawl of scorched pavement and crumbling cement buildings in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. This city, once a small oil boom town founded by Texaco in the late 1960s (and given, appropriately, the name "Sour Lake" after Texaco's hometown in Texas) is now a bewildering and feverish mess of oil workers, drug-traffickers, street children, shop owners, impoverished farmers, and indigenous people stripped of their ancestral territory and forced to survive, as the Cofán people say, in the kokama kuri sindipa ande (the white man's world of money).

Just several days ago, at the edge of the pavement on the outskirts of the city, where the Cofán people have recovered (yes, purchased) a narrow tract of their ancestral territory, I spent the afternoon with Marina Aguinda Lucitante, an elder of the tribe. She was born along the banks of the Agua Rico river. She was married at a young age to a Cofán Shaman, Guillermo Quenama, who died, she says, "because the oil company poisoned him with alcohol." She remembers when the forest was filled with animals. And she remembers when the river ran black with crude oil. She seems to remember everything – and all of her memories are divided: Life before the oil company and life after the oil company.

It has been nearly 50 years since Texaco began oil operations here in the northeastern Ecuadorian Amazon. Nearly 50 years since the death of Marina's husband, Guillermo Quenama. And over that time, the impacts of Texaco's (now Chevron's) reckless pump and dump oil operations have been well documented. The abandoned oil pits littered throughout the rainforest, the billions of gallons of toxic wastewater dumped into rivers and streams, the felled primary forest, the noxious gases rising into the sky from 24 hour-a-day flaring, the crude oil sprayed on the roads, the towering black plumes of smoke from spilt and burning crude, the resultant public health crisis racking indigenous and mestizo farmer communities, including cancer, spontaneous miscarriages, and birth defects.

But what has not been documented – what cannot possibly be understood by anyone who has not been here to endure the last 50 years of oil operations – is how the oil conquest has affected the spiritual life, the inner world, of those who live here.

Today, which marks the 18th anniversary of the monumental legal struggle against Chevron for massive environmental crimes in the Amazon rainforest, Marina has asked me to share with the world a song that she has been carrying within her for these last 50 years. Marina is one of the last Cofán women who remember how to sing in the way of her ancestors. This is her song."

Friday Foto

A bit of nostalgia for today's Friday Foto. A pic of the school in the Cofán Dureno community, constructed in the traditional way high off the ground with a thatched roof, open sides and walls of bamboo.

Taking inventory, Amazon-style

Hola! In 2008, scientists from the Field Museum of Chicago came to Ecuador to carry out a Rapid Biological Inventory in the Cuyabeno region of Ecuador and the Gueppi region of Peru. The goal of these inventories, both biological and social, "is to catalyze effective action for conservation in threatened regions of high biological diversity and uniqueness." These inventories don't try to produce an exhaustive list of species, but they identify important biological communities in the site and determine if these communities are significant in a regional or global context.

After the results were in, the scientists found a "spectacular" amount of biodiversity in this region, among which were 13 species of plants and fish in Ecuador completely new to science. And in only one month! Imagine what other surprises are hidden in the rainforest!

Here is the first in a series of videos about the RBI #20

To see more videos, visit the Field Museum's YouTube site.

To read more about the RBIs, please visit the Field Museum's website.