Cofan Survival Fund December Newsletter

Coming in 2017 – A New Reserve?

2016 saw 40,000 acres added to the Cofan lands. 2017 promises to bring another major addition. Randy and the others at the Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofan (FSC) are making good progress on gaining title to 18,000 acres adjacent to the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, a reserve that’s included Cofan territory since 1991. The land survey and property description are complete; the process will be finalized as soon as the additional $10,000 needed to cover the remaining costs can be found. As Randy notes, “Gaining title to 18,000 acres for $20,000 – a little over $1.00 an acre – is the sort of deal we should all hope for!”

On Board with the Cofan

Mary Hason has been on board with the Cofan for many years, making generous donations and attending Randy’s talks when he visited Chicago.  But earlier this year she got on board literally, jumping into a canoe that took her and two friends on a two-day camping trip on the Río Zábalo.

“My Cofan river guide, Alphonso, paddled as I watched two blue morpho butterflies lazily flutter overhead until the end of their territory where another pair took over and traveled with us. Three different kinds of kingfisher birds noisily announced our arrival in each new territory along with troops of monkeys swinging through the trees and watching us. The diversity of the plants and birds was incredible.  Alphonso paddled me close to beautiful flowers and even a baby anaconda so that I could take pictures.

“The most fun was when he caught a good-sized fish that pulled us into the bushes along the shore.  I paddled us back out as he slowly got the fish into the canoe. Next he paddled to the shore where he hopped out, cut a length from a 2” sapling, and knocked out the fish. That night at our campsite as we ate our delicious fish, I thought about our perfect day.

“The Amazon Rainforest Ecotour was one of the best experiences of my life.  Randy’s ability to weave stories about the cultural and scientific importance of local plants, people, and ecology was captivating. Experiencing the daily lives of the Cofan in their village of Zábalo, eating their tasty foods, and falling asleep to the sounds of the rainforest in our very comfortable accommodations was wonderful.”

Jungle-Keeping

This fall, Randy enlisted two long-time supporters, Geoff Corriveau and his wife Sue, to help with a major jungle-keeping project – clearing and restoring Park Guard trails in the Cofan area surrounding the Gueppi River. 

Once highly protected by routine Park Guard patrols, the area was now the victim of diminished Park Guard program funding. The Gueppi was left unpatrolled; illegal hunting and fishing became more and more frequent. It was time to reopen the trails and repair the vandalized ranger station and Geoff and Sue signed on. 

From Randy’s report: “Cutting away logs and tree falls with the chainsaw…clearing the trail with machetes, hacking through re-growing brush and masses of vines…. The trail is in verified Bad Condition…camp at a pleasant rocky stream…almost out of gas for the chainsaw…at 4:30 p.m., we’re a long way from the nearest good campsite…begin to run along what remains of the trail to make it to the Uttetsu Nai’qui with time enough to make camp…a couple of large turkey-like birds fly up…by 7:30 p.m. turkey stew is bubbling…finally descending to a Gueppi tributary…the boat trip down the Gueppi is always amazing…as we move down the stream, the sensation of timelessness is strong…monkeys crash heavily through the trees; on the bank, countless birds fly up as we cruise down.”

The trail is now clear again, the ranger station repaired. "Returning, we half walk, half run as we move easily along the trail. Spix’s Guans fly up off the trail, woolly monkeys stare down at us, a small herd of collared peccaries runs parallel to the trail for a while..."

For now, the cleared trail and repaired ranger station will signal that the Cofan are watching. But unless regular patrols resume, the forest will again be in danger.  $1500 a month is all it will take – a park guard’s salary, food, and transportation. Perhaps a day or two of Cofan “jungle-keeping” would be a nice addition to your Christmas list?

Cofan Survival Fund September Newsletter

Making It Real

We reported in March that after eight years of FSC leadership and on-the-ground work, 40,000 acres of Andean land in critical Amazonian headwaters along the South American Continental Divide came under permanent protection--at least in theory. Now Randy and the FSC staff are in the thick of creating the regulations, management plans, and tax infrastructure needed to turn the legislation and documents that created The Provincial Area for Conservation and Sustainable Use in the Eastern Mountain Range of Carchi into a working system that will guarantee that this land maintains its biodiversity and provides essential ecological services for centuries to come.

FSC Leads the Way - Again!

Later this year, Randy will join colleagues to lead a workshop on developing long-term conservation strategies for Colombia's Rio Mira watershed. The workshop will bring together local and provincial governments, local communities, and NGOs to begin planning for the protection of this critically important river system, which descends from the Andes Mountains to the lowland forests of Colombia's Pacific Coast, close to the Ecuadorian border. Known throughout South America (and beyond) as an expert in building broad-scale land protection and conservation structures, Randy's leadership will be a critical factor in the success of this work.

Climate Change Hits Home

Home in this case is the Cofan village of Zábalo, which Randy and his Cofan friends and family members founded in the early 1980s when oil companies and nonindigenous settlers despoiled the area where they had previously lived. Zábalo sits along the banks of the Aguarico River, which provides not only water for drinking, cooking, and bathing, but the turtle eggs and fish that are important parts of the Cofan diet. The community's homes are designed to withstand the normal seasonal floods with no problems. This year, however, the floods reached record highs and, instead of lasting a few days, lasted well over a month. Many in the village had to use boats to get to and from their houses. And so it happens that even those living in the lands we are counting on to keep us from the worst of global warming are now experiencing its effects.

FSC Park Guard Program Update

FSC is advocating aggressively for the government to hire Cofans as park guards in Cofan territories.

The well-established FSC Park Guard Program is operating at a reduced level due to diminished funds. One area of hope: the government now pays for some park guard positions throughout the country. In the Cofan territories, at least, they are hiring only university students, not the Cofans already trained as park guards, thus hindering both the effectiveness of the program and the ability of a good number of Cofan to make a decent living while protecting their land and chosen way of life.

For the foreseeable future, it's clear the Park Guard Program, and its proven cadre of effective rangers, will depend in large part on the continued support of its U.S. fans to remain viable and effective.

Up Next - A New Reserve?

Just south of the Cofan community of Zabalo, there are 20,000 acres of pristine forests outside the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, and only nominally under Cofan control. FSC is in the middle of a surveying project here, a first step in bringing these additional 20,000 acres under official protection. Once again, FSC and the Cofan people are making conservation happen where it otherwise wouldn't.

GOODSEARCH: Giving through Shopping

Here's a fun way to support CFS through shopping: before making an online purchase, go to goodsearch.com and type in the name of the store from which you want to make a purchase. The site will tell you whether this store will make a contribution to your favorite cause and how much. The first time you use the site, you will have to choose a cause. Enter cofan.org and it will come up automatically in the future every time you make a purchase through the site. Click on the store's link from the goodsearch.com page and shop away! REI, for instance, will make a contribution of 2.5%.

FSC is advocating aggressively for the government to hire Cofans as park guards in Cofan territories.

We Did It!

Monday, December 7th of 2015, the provincial Carchi government made history by creating the an unprecedented reserve of cloud forest and mountains on the Pacific slope of the Andes, covering a total of 16,800 hectares. We have been sitting on the edge of our seats waiting to receive the final word, but finally, on December 14, 2015, we have the physical Acta de la Session (legal council documents), signed, sealed, and now irrevocable!  

The road to this reserve— “Area de Conservacion y Uso Sustentable Provincial a la Cordillera Oriental del Carchi”— has carried so many stops and sights since we began down the path fourteen years ago that we needed the papers in hand before we dare announce victory.  

The story begins with the Rapid Biological Inventory in the Serranias Cofan that we conducted with the Field Museum of Chicago in 2001. That project brought us to some of the wildest and most pristine country left on the face of the earth as we sampled the biological richness of the montane and cloud forest habitats in the headwaters of the Aguarico, San Miguel, and Mira rivers.  During that three week trip, our goal was to inventory the biodiversity of Cofan territories in the Amazon drainage of the Sucumbios Province but we quickly became aware that a much larger region— beyond the scope of the Cofan territory— was vital to conserving this biodiversity.  

Subsequent work led to the creation of the Reserva Ecologica Cofan Bermejo, protecting 55,000 hectares (about 125,000 acres), the legalization of the Territorio Rio Cofanes under the Cofan Nation’s name, with an additional 35,000 hectares (75,000 acres), and, in 2009, the creation of a completely new model with 70,000 hectares (155,000 acres) as a municipal reserve, the Reserva Municipal La Bonita. While these reserves had successfully created conservation areas spanning most of the headwaters of the Aguarico and part of the San Miguel—tributaries of the Amazon River— we still lacked protection over the critical area on the other side of the continental divide, where the Pacific watershed of the Mira river begins.  

To visualize the landscape, imagine a huge set of mountains, highland paramos (Andean grasslands), and cloud forests, divided rather arbitrarily by the highest points of the terrain.  There is not a single “ridge” forming the continental divide. Despite their best attempts, map-makers cannot accurately anticipate which way precipitation will flow.  Warm air coming in from the Amazon cools as it hits the mountain barrier, and dumps its moisture in industrial quantities over the region, with little regard for which side of the continental divide it is wetting down.  This heavy condensation results in rivers pouring out of the high elevation, some headed back eastward via the Amazon drainage and others going westward toward the Pacific.  The rivers going toward the Pacific are the most economically important at the moment, as they provide water both for urban centers and agriculture in the fertile inter-Andean valleys, and then continue their runs down across the coastal plains and on into the Pacific.  

But agricultural expansion and lumber and mining interests have been steadily eroding the forests on the western slopes, until there are very few intact forests left.  However, a key asset in our pursuit of conservation was the general awareness that the water coming down the hill was correlated with intact forests.  This understanding brought unexpected allies, ranging from urban politicians concerned for their city’s water supplies, to sugar plantation owners watching their irrigation water dwindling, to small scale tomato and onion farmers waiting for rains that aren’t coming as frequently any more.  

By 2011, ten years after we began planning the reserve, we had almost universal endorsement of the reserve. In 2014 we rallied a coalition of long-time supporters and collaborators including The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Hamill Family Foundation, and Naturaleza Y Cultura International to make this reserve a reality.  

The consensus we built led to a new model for northern Ecuador:  a provincially-managed conservation area dedicated to guaranteeing the conditions for long-term water production.  While the primary motivation is sustainable water production for the region, the result is protection of one of the most important ecologies in Ecuador, with astonishing rates of biodiversity and among the world’s rarest and most endangered animals and plants. 

Final Remarks:

This road to creating this reserve in Carchi highlights the changes in our understanding of conservation. The days in which we tried to “do conservation” for the benefit of a tiny frog or a subspecies of an orchid are gone.  While in no way do I wish to downgrade the importance of biodiversity, or the need for protected areas to maintain our endangered species, what we are learning from this new reserve is that the real motivation for conservation is for the preservation of us!  What we drink, what we eat, what we breathe… the new reserve in northern Ecuador is about these basics, and we are proud to be able to share with all of you the excitement we feel as this reserve becomes a reality.

A message from Randy Borman, Executive Director, Cofan Survival Fund

I wanted to share with all of you an update about what transpired in 2014. On July 2, 2014 we experienced a major oil spill on the Aguarico River. A 37 year-old pipeline running along the major road near the Cofan village of Dureno broke in the early hours of the morning, and ran unchecked for at least an hour, dumping an estimated 10,000 barrels of petroleum into the nearby stream. By dawn, the Aguarico River was running black with oil.

I was travelling from Quito to the Cofan community of Zabalo that morning when Roberto Aguinda called me. “The pipeline broke at Poca Ttonocho. We are in emergency mode over here.” (Roberto is a long-term board member of the CSF's Ecudador-based sister organization, Fundacion para la Sobrevivenicia del pueblo Cofan "FSC" and currently serves as president of the Cofan Federation.)

When I arrived at the site, the military had buttoned up the access to the spill location and were doing their best to keep people from taking photos. Official reporters were not being allowed in, but it was easy to see the effects on the Poca Ttonocho River as we drove across the bridge. A thick sludge of bubbling crude rode the swift stream, the edges were black with gunk, and the workers were covered in grime from head to toe.

In Dureno, the main Aguarico River channel was heavily marbled with huge streaks and swirls of petroleum, and the air reeked of oil. A canoe full of “reporters” for the government owned TV channels were crossing as we drove up. Their boat was covered in black scum, but they seemed singularly uninterested in the oil spill. One of the reporters had interviewed me several times before, but now climbed into the waiting pick-up truck without even offering me a greeting. The message was clear. Monkey hear no evil, see no evil, say no evil. The next morning, I began a round of meetings with emergency staff people from the national oil company PetroAmazonas. I was joined by fellow leaders of other affected communities and government officials.

Over half of th 40 Cofan families in our Zabalo community depend directly on the river for all water needs other than drinking water, which is collected in rain barrels. The rest have part-time access to stream water; but only when the river is low. We needed to get emergency water to at least twenty of our families immediately and we needed back-up plans to cover the rest of the community. We were not alone in these needs—the rest of the people on the river were facing the same issues.

After some heavy discussion with PetroAmazonas, we were able to get a promise to supply funding, gasoline, barrels and a pump so we could canoe to clean water sources, fill up barrels with water and distribute it. The company also accepted our demand for pumps and tubing to be able to bring water in from clean sources in our pristine forests behind our communities

The next few days, involved meetings and more meetings with officials, politicians, and oil people in neighboring Cuyabeno, Tarapoa, and Lago Agrio.

The most disturbing aspect of this disaster was the total silencing of the press. Especially in the wake of the politics regarding state-sponsored drilling in the Yasuni National Park, it seemed that the government was petrified by the very thought that any information should leak out and re-ignite a popular rejection of the Yasuni oil exploitation.

Thanks to the support of the Cofan Survival Fund, the Cofan have an organized presence and we continued our demands of the oil company. Eventually, the company sent a team to collect oil-contaminated leaves and branches along the river side, and by the middle of August, most of the obvious signs of contamination were pretty much gone. As clean-ups go, it was definitely the best one yet, but ultimately, nature was the real star; naturally-occurring bacteria were the main workers involved.

The Cofan continue to live with this and similar disasters—waters oozing petroleum, inedible fish, and constant work to get fresh water to our people. Luckily, rains were constant and heavy following the spill. We all have rain water systems of one sort or another, and so we survived, as we have countless times before; but the impact remains, with blighted fields, a contaminated well, and with oil once again a noxious substance directly affecting our lives.

Documentary Oil & Water Tells Cofan Story

A documentary released in 2014 helped to spread the word about the Cofan efforts to protect its land and its very existence. Oil & Water is the true story of two boys coming of age as they each confront one of the world’s worst toxic disasters. Shot over the span of six years, the film is an independent documentary produced and directed by Laurel Spellman Smith and Francine Strickwerda of Stir It Up Productions, a Seattle-based documentary company. The film was funded by Independent Television Service (ITVS) and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation and made for broadcast on PBS. The film features Cofan Hugo Lucitante, 27, who was born and raised in Zabalo, EC. But at 10 years old, was selected by his parents and tribal leaders to begin a Western education in the United States with American graduate student, Miranda Detore, as his legal guardian. The hope was that he would return to the Ecuadorian Amazon to provide leadership the Cofan desperately need.

Hugo Lucitante, left, and David Poritz address attendees at a Brown University screening of Oil & Water

Oil & Water also tells the story of David Poritz, who was just a sixth-grader when he learned of the oil disaster in Hugo’s homeland. With the blessing of his mother, David started a humanitarian project that led him away from his home in Amherst, Massachusetts to spend much of his youth in the Amazon. The two teenagers meet by chance during a shared canoe ride, and then again, when David travels with Hugo to tour the damage caused by the 18 billion gallons of oil waste that was dumped on Hugo’s ancestral lands. The film follows the boys back to the U.S. as their lives and the situation in Ecuador get more complicated.

During the multi-year filming, the viewer sees Hugo struggle with the demands of learning to be a Cofan tribal leader, becoming a husband to his wife, Sadie, and father to their daughter Asha, while Hugo and Sadie both attempt to finance their college educations on minimum-wage jobs.

The film premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival in June 2014 and was screened dozens of times around the country and even at the Rio De Janerio International Film Festival in October. The Cofan Survival Fund Board recognized the opportunity the documentary created to engage individuals interested in rainforest preservation and the rights of indigenous people and sponsored screenings in Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.

At a screening at Evergreen State University, Randy Borman said, “It’s not about a poor indigenous group out in the middle of the jungle that needs to preserve their culture, although that is a component,” Borman said. “It is about the survival of the globe and I don’t know how to get that across to people effectively. We need that million acres of rainforest as a human race to be able to survive climate change. We need many millions of acres, not just that one.”

Oil & Water Co-Director Lauren Spellmen Smith (second from Left) with with Joshua Borman, Micah McCarty, Randy Borman and Tom Waterer

Already shown on public television’s Global Voices channel on September 22, 2014, the film will broadcast in the Seattle-area in January 2015 on KCTS9. The Cofan Survival Fund Board has purchased the rights to screen the film and invites anyone interested in organizing a screening to the Cofan Survival Fund Board.

Stufflebeam "Tripper" Reunion Held

by Kathleen Rauch, Tripper '86 & '87

Other than Randy Borman, Doug Stufflebeam may be the one person most responsible for introducing hundreds of people to the Cofan Nation.

Doug Stufflebeam and Kathleen Rauch in Lago Agrio airport, circa 1986

Stufflebeam dealt with life on his own terms and created his dream job as owner and sole guide for International Collegiate Expeditions (1978-2001); guiding hundreds of U.S. college students on adventure (or in his words “kick-ass”) trips to Tanzania, Kenya, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, Egypt and Alaska. The Cofan villages in Dureno, Ecuador and Zabalo, Ecuador were primary destinations for the expeditions and over 23 years, hundreds of individuals made the journey.

He passed away in March 2012 at the age of 67, but the result of his work was evident during a reunion of “Trippers” held November 1, 2014 in Mercer Island, WA. The Stufflebeam Adventure Tripper Reunion with honored guest, Randy Borman brought together a diverse and multigenerational group of people who either traveled to Cofan territory with Stufflebeam or who had other connections with Stufflebeam, Randy Borman and the Cofan.

Randy Borman (second from left) with Rutger Stufflebeam, Ernst Stufflebeam and Wolfgang Stufflebeam (From left to right)

For me, as a former tripper (’86, ’87), I experienced the gathering as an early Thanksgiving. I delighted in the opportunity to connect with people, who across time and geography, have made a deep and lasting impression upon me. The connections with the Stufflebeam community and the Cofan tribe have informed the trajectory of my life and my passions.

Tom Waterer (foreground) and guests at the Tripper reunion enjoying great food and friends

I so appreciated the reconnection with Christine Kohnert, Doug’s wife, and their three sons, Wolfgang, Ruger and Ernst. Christine remains the fierce and lovely matriarch who included all of us Trippers in her extended family and has held each through the years. The “boys” that I remembered from my late teens and early twenties have become powerful young men, exuding both a sense of adventure and compassionate hearts

Host Kathleen Rauch '86 & '87 with Geof Corriveau '81 and Mary Corriveau

Although I had not seen Randy in 30 years, I immediately recognized the spark of vitality and the profound humanity that Randy embodies. Life in the Amazon has informed Randy in a deep and powerful way that comes through in subtle ways, even in a modern, Western setting. I reveled in meeting Randy’s youngest son, Joshua along with fellow Cofan tribal member, Hugo Lucitante, Hugo's lovely wife, Sadie and daughter, Asha. In 30 years, much has changed, although the essential remains the same. I felt a surge of gratitude to meet the future generations.

Attendees came from far and wide to celebrate the connection with this remote Amazonian tribe whose wisdom has touched the hearts and opened the eyes of those of us privileged enough to make a journey to this wild, invaluable Amazonian landscape.

50,000 Additional Acres to be Added to Cofan Conservation Efforts

Thanks to generous individual donors and support from the MacArthur Foundation, a project to create five new municipal ecological reserves in the Ecuadorian provinces of Carchi and Imbabura is underway. This will add over 50,000 acres of wild mountains, paramos, and cloud forests to the 1 million acres we currently conserve in northeastern Ecuador.

In the process of protecting the vital headwaters of both the Aguarico River flowing toward the Amazon and the Mira River flowing toward the Pacific Ocean, we will also protect many endangered species such as the spectacled bear and mountain tapir. This project will be a big push for the Cofan this year and next. CSF Executive Director Randy Borman is confident that by the end of next year, these new reserves will be both legal and practical realities.

2013 Recap: Turtles, rangers and our MacArthur award!

Para español, haz clic aquí

2013 has been a year of many challenges for Cofan Survival Fund, but we've faced them with determination, never "dándonos por vencidos," or giving up. Here are a few highlights of our accomplishments this past year:

Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofán was one of only 13 nonprofit organizations around the world to win this year’s MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions! The award recognizes exceptional grantees who have demonstrated creativity and impact, and invests in their long-term sustainability with one-time grants.

As a way to make the Charapa Turtle Project sustainable, FSC created a business plan that would make half of the year's turtles available to be purchased in local and international markets and used to repopulate other Amazon rivers.

September 2013 marked the 10th anniversary of the Cofan Ranger Program. In a world where the destruction of our remaining wilderness areas approaches 2% per year, and where even the Ecuadorian National Park System has lost over 15% of its pristine areas during the past ten years, our rangers have accomplished the incredible feat of ZERO DEFORESTATION in over 1,000,000 acres of forest during the same time period. That is an area the size of the entire state of Delaware.

We understand that only reading about a vast, biodiverse forest is not enough, so please enjoy  this video  about Cofan territory, which will take you on a visual journey through the windswept highlands, misty cloud forests and tropical jungles, not to mention the endangered plants and animals found within, that Cofan Survival Fund has played a major role in protecting for almost 15 years.

Today, we are facing even greater threats than ever before. Government policies promote large-scale infrastructure projects, including huge pit-mining operations, mega hydroelectric projects, and intense exploration and exploitation of petroleum reserves. Colonists continue to view our territories as empty lands not being “used,”and which should be opened to them to exploit and destroy. And while understanding and support for the intact forest as a source of environmental services is on the increase within Ecuador, short-term economic interests continue to exert pressure with little concern for future impacts.

We know how many organizations are asking for your donations right now, and each and every one tells you how important your donation is to them. We are a small organization that puts our programs first when it comes to funding. Without outside support, we will not be able to continue our work, and Cofan forests will begin to disappear along with the other forests of Ecuador and Amazonía as a whole…

You can be part of the solution. Don’t think of yourself as too far away to be concerned. Together, we can ensure that at least this million acres of forest continues to provide carbon sequestration, watershed protection, biodiversity protection and erosion control for all of our futures.

Friday Foto

Park guard station at Gueppi

Cofan rangers analyze a water sample at the Gueppi ranger station in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve in the Ecuadorian Amazon. / Guardaparques cofanes analizan una muestra de agua en la estación Gueppi en la Reserva Cuyabeno.

Northeastern Ecuador’s forests have some of the world’s highest species counts for plants and animals, are at the heart of the tropical Andes “hotspot” zone and are instrumental in Ecuador’s status as a mega-diverse country. However, their conservation presents a major challenge. Mining, petroleum exploitation, lumber extraction, mega-infrastructure projects and colonization are major threats, and even within national parks, agricultural expansion continues with little control.

A notable exception is forest within Cofan ancestral territory (CAT). CAT covers about 430,000 hectares (1 million acres) of some of the richest, best-conserved forests in Ecuador ranging from Andean highlands to cloud forest to tropical rainforest.

As a first line of defense, FSC trained and fielded a professional, effective force of Cofan rangers in 2003. This group, 60 members at full capacity, carry out on-the-ground protection and management of Cofan lands to ensure territorial security and zero deforestation. The Cofan Ranger Program (CRP) has trained over 100 Cofan men and women in the protection and management of Cofan territories, as well as people from other indigenous and non-indigenous groups.

ESPAÑOL

Los bosques del noreste del Ecuador tienen algunas de las cifras más altas del mundo de especies de plantas y animales, están en el corazón del "hotspot" andino tropical y son escenciales para la designación de "país mega-diverso" para Ecuador. Sin embargo, su conservación es un gran reto. La minería, explotación petrolera, extracción de madera, proyectos de mega-infraestructura y colonización son amenazas importantes, y incluso dentro de las reservas nacionales, la expansión agrícola sigue con poco control.

Una excepción importante es el bosque dentro del territorio ancestral cofán (TAC). TAC cubre alrededor de 430.000 hectáreas de bosques bien conservados y muy biodiversos en Ecuador, desde páramos andinos hasta bosque nublado y bosque tropical.

Como una defensa para este territorio, FSC entrenó y un grupo de guardaparques cofanes profesionales y eficaces en el 2003. Este grupo, 60 miembros en total, realizan la protección y manejo de tierras cofanes para asegurar seguridad territorial y cero deforestación. El Programa de Guardaparques Cofanes ha entrenado más de 100 hombres y mujeres cofanes en la protección y manejo de territorio cofán, además de personas de otras comunidades indígenas y no-indígenas.