Cofan Survival Fund - Close Call and a New Year

 Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,
I write with unsettling news. Last weekend, Randy Borman, the Executive Director of the Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofan (FSC), our Ecuadorian counterpart, suffered a heart attack. After the insertion of two stents and a short stay in the hospital, he returned to his house near Quito. I spoke with Randy on Friday via Zoom. To my great relief, he seemed fine. The doctors say his prognosis is good. Thankfully, he got treatment just in time. If he were in his rainforest community of Zábalo, I’d probably be writing a very different kind of letter

I hesitated to share this news with you, but I know how close many of you are with Randy. And the fact is that the CSF would not exist without him. He worked with U.S. allies to found our organization in the late 1990s to have a nonprofit vehicle for his fight to save the Cofan homeland and way of life. Randy has been leading this fight since the 1970s.

For those of you unfamiliar with Randy’s story, he was born in Amazonian Ecuador to North American missionary-linguists. He grew up in the Cofan community of Dureno, speaking the Cofan language and hunting with a blowgun. Despite his Euro-American heritage, Cofan people accepted him as one of their own. He married a Cofan woman and had three beautiful Cofan children. He was one of Dureno’s first elected leaders. With other Cofan activists, he secured the community’s land title in the late 1970s, just as the oil industry began to show the Cofan how destructive it would be. By the mid-1980s, Randy and his Cofan allies left Dureno in search of forests and rivers unaltered by oil. They found them on the land that became Zábalo. Randy was Zábalo’s first elected president and remained so for many years; currently, he’s the community’s vice-president. In the 1990s, Ecuador’s Cofan population elected Randy as president of their ethnic federation, which represents them all.

I’ve known Randy since 1994. That year, I interviewed him about his leadership of Zábalo’s struggle to eject an oil company from its territory. Randy and other community members kidnapped oil workers, burned their heliports, and took over an exploratory drilling rig. After a tense standoff with the Ecuadorian military, Randy and the Cofan won. The company left. To the best of my knowledge, it was the first time an Indigenous community had successfully removed an oil company from its land. As a 20-year-old anthropology student and environmental activist, I wanted to figure out how Randy and the people of Zábalo did it. At a time when I was deeply pessimistic, Randy and the Cofan gave me real hope for the future of the world’s biological and cultural diversity.

With Randy’s leadership, the Cofan have accomplished so much. People thought the Cofan would disappear after the oil industry invaded their territory in the 1960s. Instead, over the next four decades Randy led the Cofan’s struggle to achieve legal control of over one million acres of their rainforest homeland, the most biodiverse place on earth. On newly titled lands, Randy created models for community ecotourism and conservation programs that became essential to Cofan lifeways. Randy also created the Cofan Park Guard Program, which ensured a rate of zero deforestation in legalized Cofan territory. It’s no exaggeration to say that Randy and the CSF have been essential to the survival of the Cofan as a thriving Indigenous People with a homeland that, for the moment, is secure.

Randy’s accomplishments have come at a price. Over the decades, he’s faced death threats from actors who want to profit from Cofan territory’s natural resources. While doing conservation work in 2002, Randy developed a near-fatal case of equine encephalitis. As a leader of the Cofan Park Guard Program, Randy’s oldest son Felipe was kidnapped in 2012. (Luckily, he escaped after 40 days in captivity.) There are still parts of Ecuador where Randy cannot travel because the Cofan’s enemies are determined to stop his activism by any means necessary. And now, the years of constant threats, stress, and grueling treks to protect Cofan territory have culminated in the heart attack that nearly took Randy’s life.

Randy will continue to be part of the Cofan’s fight for their territory and way of life until the day he dies. But no one knows when that will happen. That’s why the CSF has been supporting Cofan education projects since its inception. The Cofan know that without leaders like Randy and organizations like the CSF, their future is far too uncertain. As a Cofan man from Zábalo once said to me in his native language, “Vendi pa’nin’jan, ma’caen ingi canse’faya?” (If Randy dies, how will we survive?).

Reproducing Randy’s political skills in the next generation of Cofan leaders has always been a primary CSF objective. The Cofan need leaders who can speak English, Spanish, and the Cofan language; leaders who are just as comfortable hunting tapirs in Amazonian forests as they are confronting government officials and oil-company executives in contentious urban meetings; leaders who know Ecuador’s legal and political system well enough to secure Cofan land titles and advocate for laws and policies that benefit all Indigenous Peoples; and leaders capable of attracting the aid of international allies—allies like you—to sustain the Cofan struggle.

With years of your support, the Cofan have developed an incredibly promising group of young scholars and activists who are almost ready to take over Randy’s work. As you’ve seen in previous newsletters, Gissela Yumbo now has an engineering degree with a focus on health. Carlos Descanse is in university studying tourism, an essential, ecologically benign income-generator for Cofan communities. Felipe Borman will finish his MA in rural territorial development, and Raúl Quieta will complete his own MA in intercultural justice and the rights of nature. Finally, Hugo and Sadie Lucitante are pursuing doctoral degrees in anthropology here at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where I’m advising them. They plan to return to Cofan territory and use their Ph.D.’s to protect the traditional knowledge, cultural heritage, and economic livelihoods of their people.

I once heard an old friend of Randy’s call him “Randy ‘Lazarus’ Borman.” He’ll bounce back from his heart attack as he has from all his other near-death experiences. But he won’t be here forever. That’s why I’m urging you to continue supporting the CSF. Our near-term goal is to protect Cofan territory; our longer-term goal is to help produce new Cofan leaders who will carry Randy’s and the Cofan’s struggles forward. Randy has been essential to what the Cofan have accomplished so far; future Cofan activists will produce achievements of their own. With our support, I have no doubt they will be successful.

So please keep giving to the CSF, and if possible, increase your level of support. Your contributions are more important now than ever. Let’s help Randy do all he can while the world can still benefit from his efforts. And let’s help equip the Cofan youths who will take his place with the best training available. Nearly five centuries ago, the Cofan survived the Spanish Conquest. Not long before that, they withstood the Inka’s attempted takeover of their homeland. I’m convinced that with the support of each and every one of us, Cofan people—with their language, their culture, and their precious rainforest territory intact—will be here for another 500 years. With climate change intensifying, all our lives depend on Indigenous Peoples’ protection of their forests. The Cofan are on the frontlines, but the rest of us are right behind them.

While our fundraising has been substantial in 2021, we are not even halfway to our goal of securing the $250,000 that the FSC needs to cover its core projects each year. We need more funds to maximize the effectiveness of Randy’s “Rapid Response Team,” whose political and legal work from Quito to the farthest corners of Cofan territory is never-ending. We need more funds to give additional Cofan students the opportunity to get undergraduate and graduate degrees in Ecuador’s best universities. And we need more funds for our “smaller” projects: enrolling more Cofan families in Ecuador’s “Seguro Campesino” healthcare system, creating a new reserve in the Andean foothills near the town of Cuyuja, starting a program to ensure the effective transmission of cultural knowledge from elder Cofan women to young Cofan girls, and sustaining the success of our Charapa Project, which has brought endangered river turtles back from the brink of local extinction while providing income to impoverished Cofan households. Finally, our long-term dream is to revive the Cofan Park Guard Program, which at one point had 50 Cofan rangers patrolling the entirety of Cofan territory to stop the illegal activities of miners, loggers, and other forest destroyers. Unfortunately, the money simply isn’t there. One day, we believe the world will pay Indigenous Peoples the money they deserve--and need--for their time-, energy-, and resource-consuming work to maintain the ecosystems on which our planet’s health depends. But we’re not there yet. Until that day arrives, people like me and you need to help the Cofan as much as we can.

You can join the fight by contributing to the CSF online by clicking the “donate” button below or going to our website: www.cofan.org. Or you can mail a check to: Cofan Survival Fund, 53 Washington Boulevard, Oak Park, IL 60302. Another way to give, if you shop at amazon.com, is to go to smile.amazon.com and select the Cofan Survival Fund as your designated charity. Then, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of every one of your purchases to the CSF.

The CSF is a completely volunteer-run organization. We have no overhead. All your donations go directly to the initiatives, programs, and projects Randy and his Cofan allies lead. If you have any questions about our work, or if you'd like to discuss the possibility of making a larger commitment, feel free to contact me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu.

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

CSF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. For gifts of $250 and larger, you will receive a receipt for tax purposes.

Cofan Survival Fund November 2021 Newsletter

Earlier this year, I shared the CSF’s proposed “Stability Fund.” Based on internal studies, we’ve decided we need to provide Randy Borman and our other Cofan partners approximately $250,000 a year so they can do their most essential work. There are two “core missions” the money covers: 

A rapid-response team based in Quito, with political, legal, and logistical capabilities to act across Cofan territory. This team maintains constant alertness to changing laws, policies, and events at national, provincial, and municipal levels to prevent incursions into the Cofan homeland, solidify and expand Cofan land rights, establish new conservation areas, and seize on opportunities to secure governmental and nongovernmental funding for forest protection.

High-quality education for promising Cofan students. Elementary, secondary, and university education programs are essential for Cofan youth to bolster their mastery of the Cofan language and cultural traditions, help them learn Spanish and English for fluid interaction with the outside world, and specialize in legal, scientific, and other fields to negotiate the long-term security of Cofan culture and forests in the 21st century. Education ensures new generations of strong, globally capable Cofan leaders.

I want to make a major announcement: your increased donations have put us over the $100,000 mark to sustain these core missions. That’s INCREDIBLE progress; we’re so thankful for your support. But it also means we have plenty of work to do. The goal is to support the core missions with our Stability Fund for the next decade. After that, based on our analysis of global trends, we believe the market for carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services will provide enough support to fund the Cofan’s core missions and major projects. To access those future funds, however, we must make sure Cofan territory and people remain in position to get them. And that’s where your donations are essential. Without them, we cannot ensure the protection of the Cofan's rainforest territory for even the next ten years.

Although we must cover the Cofan’s core missions first, we’re always searching for grant opportunities to fund other projects, whether they involve community-based conservation initiatives like the River Turtle Repopulation Project or our commitment to return the Cofan Park Guard Program to full force. But without the Cofan’s Rapid Response Team and Education Project, the present operations and long-term sustainability of our Cofan partners’ efforts cannot be assured.

If we can get 15 more people to give $10,000 per year, we’ll have our core missions covered. If we can get 30 to commit $5,000 annually, we could do the same. Of course, we deeply appreciate everyone who can only give smaller gifts, which have sustained much of our work over the past two and a half decades. All our CSF board members make sizable annual donations to the organization. Some exceptionally generous individuals have given tremendous amounts to keep the Cofan’s core missions in operation. But we need others to step up for the welfare of Cofan people and for the future of our global climate and the earth’s biological and cultural diversity.

In anticipation of the holiday season and Giving Tuesday, please consider the CSF and the Cofan while deciding to whom you will donate. I’ve been working with the Cofan Nation for nearly three decades. As a professor, I’ve studied the Cofan’s core missions and other projects in great detail. Based on all my work, I have complete faith in the power and practicality of the Cofan vision for protecting their people and rainforest territory. Remember, our annual Stability Fund amounts to $250,000, which means that we’re offering an opportunity to protect the Cofan's one million acres of legalized territory, some of the most precious lands in the world, for the cost of $.25/acre. That amount is an extremely low sum compared to resources requested by other international conservation organizations. I can’t think of a wiser investment for all who care about the future of our planet and its best custodians: Indigenous People like the Cofan.

A gift to the CSF directly aids the Cofan Nation; as a U.S.-based fundraising organization, we have no overhead, and all your contributions go directly to the Cofan people who know exactly what to do with them. You can contribute online by clicking the “donate” button below or going to our website: www.cofan.org. Or you can mail a check to: Cofan Survival Fund, 53 Washington Boulevard, Oak Park, IL 60302. Another way to give, if you shop at amazon.com, is to go to smile.amazon.com and select the Cofan Survival Fund as your designated charity. Then, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of every one of your purchases to the CSF.

As always, if you have questions about the CSF or would like more information on what exactly the Cofan could accomplish with a larger gift, email me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu.

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

CSF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. For gifts of $250 and larger, you will receive a receipt for tax purposes.

Cofan Survival Fund September 2021 Newsletter

Greetings Cofan Survival Fund Supporters!

As Cofan Survival Fund (CSF) President, I’m writing to thank you once more for your support and to let you know what we’re accomplishing with it. This month, I want to share a letter of appreciation to the CSF from Raúl Quieta, a young Cofan father who is participating in our “Cofan Higher Education Project.” The program receives substantial funding from the Betty Lou Smith Fund of Chicago, which has done so much for the Cofan Nation. Yet our existing funding is not enough. It cannot support all Cofan students who want to pursue higher educations in Ecuador’s best universities. Nor can it cover the rest of the CSF’s costs as we struggle to protect Cofan territory and the Cofan way of life, which are constantly threatened by mining, logging, and oil production at ever-increasing rates.

Raúl has proven himself to be a hardworking student and a dedicated defender of the Cofan Nation. We know that with continuing aid, he will finish his studies and return to help his community. In my English translation of his letter, Raúl—who appears in the picture above alongside his daughter Mia and his son Max— writes:

“I want to thank each one of you for the support you’re providing to the Cofan Higher Education Project, which is helping me and my two elementary-school children. The project pays for our enrollment, tuition, and living expenses in Quito.

“My name is Raúl Quieta, and I’m from the Cofan community of Duvuno. Working toward my degree is the most challenging time of my life. I’m completing an MA program in the “Rights of Nature and Intercultural Justice” at the University Andina Simón Bolívar. The program lasts two years and is divided into seven modules. Six modules consist of classes that last three months each, and the last module includes six months of fieldwork. I began my classes in October 2020, and I will finish them in March 2022. My fieldwork will be completed in October 2022, when I will graduate with my MA. My thesis project in my home community will focus on ecological and social threats. I’ve entitled it ‘Large-Scale Logging of Primary Forest and Challenges Associated with the Planting of Taro Cash Crops in the Ancestral Cofan Community of Duvuno.’

“In addition, I want to thank you for the support you’re providing for the primary educations of my daughter and son, Mia and Max. They’re also receiving economic help from the CSF. It’s an important form of aid for my family. The only way to make my education work is to have my wife and children with me, and my children need to be in school, too.

“Having a family shouldn’t impede one’s educational progress; with effort, determination, and dedication, we can overcome all the obstacles standing in our way. Financial aid is essential, as the principal limitations for Cofan people studying in the city are economic. This aid permits Cofan students to reach their dream: obtaining degrees from prestigious universities. I hope that the Cofan Higher Education Project will continue to help even more Cofan students in the future.

“When I finish my MA degree, I’m committed to helping Cofan communities. I plan to create community-development projects that will involve all village residents in environmental conservation efforts, which will benefit them directly and also ensure the welfare of the entire Cofan population.

“With sincere thanks, Raúl Quieta, Cofan MA Student”

As they witness the success of the Cofan Higher Education Project, more and more Cofan youths hope to enter the program to get their degrees and become the skilled leaders their communities need. The CSF is absolutely committed to helping them on their educational paths. Unfortunately, we need more funding to do so. Having six Cofan students with high-quality educations—our current number in the project—will be a tremendous asset for the Cofan Nation. But 20 students with BA’s and MA’s would help to create even more innovative solutions to protect Cofan people and their rainforest territory. Increasing resource extraction and devasting climate change are not slowing down, and the Cofan need to take steps to combat them now. We at the CSF are doing our best to confront these problems, but many Cofan people in Ecuador are eager to join the fight. Only university educations will allow them to become truly effective global activists.

To support the Cofan Higher Education Project and our other work, please consider donating to the CSF or increasing your existing donation. A gift to the CSF directly aids the Cofan Nation; we have no overhead, and all your contributions go directly to where they’re needed most. You can contribute online by credit card by clicking on our website:  www.cofan.org. Or you can mail a check to: Cofan Survival Fund, 53 Washington Boulevard, Oak Park, IL 60302. Another way to give, if you shop at amazon.com, is to go to smile.amazon.com and select the Cofan Survival Fund as your designated charity. Then, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of every one of your purchases to the CSF.

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

CSF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. For gifts of $250 and larger, you will receive a receipt for tax purposes.

Cofan Survival Fund July 2021 Newsletter

Greetings Cofan Survival Fund Supporters!

As Cofan Survival Fund (CSF) President, I usually write newsletters that report on the important work we’re doing to protect Cofan territory and the people who rely on it to sustain their way of life and maintain our global climate system. I also like to share the inspiring stories that emerge from our education projects, which are producing the next generation of Cofan leaders to carry our work into the future. Today I want to share a story about something else. It might not seem as important as our other work, but to so many Cofan individuals, it can mean the difference between life and death.

Very few of you have met Freddy Espinosa, an Ecuadorian citizen who has worked for the CSF since it was founded. As a motorcycle-driving “pizza delivery boy,” Freddy met our executive director Randy Borman when Freddy was still a very young man. Slowly, he learned to help Randy negotiate the ins and outs of Ecuador's capital city to make our legal and political work possible. As a native Quiteño (Quito resident), Freddy’s Spanish is flawless, and he knows just how to relate to Ecuador’s elected leaders and bureaucrats to convince them that the Cofan are the right people to protect the country’s most biodiverse landscapes. After many years with us, and after finishing his university degree, Freddy became our main legal coordinator. Without Freddy’s help, so many of the Cofan Nation’s land rights, territorial treaties, and mechanisms for securing governmental and nongovernmental support—financial and otherwise—would not exist.

But Freddy and the CSF do so much more for the Cofan Nation. As soon as we established our Quito headquarters in the late 1990’s, our offices became short- and long-term homes to Cofan activists, students, and individuals and families seeking medical care. More than anyone else, Freddy helped them organize the government meetings to achieve their goals. He convinced high school and university administrators to enroll Cofan students and provide them scholarships. And he has helped dozens of Cofan people to negotiate Ecuador’s public and private healthcare systems to get the medications, treatments, and operations that keep them alive and healthy. Cofan people are brilliant in many ways, but when it comes to making things happen in Quito, Freddy’s aid is essential.

I am in Quito right now working with Cesario Lucitante—an elder and shaman from the community of Duvuno—and his son Octavio. Living in an apartment and obeying the proper COVID protocols as an isolated “pod,” we’re analyzing the research materials that will allow me to write my next book, which will list Cesario as a full co-author. Every day Cesario teaches me something new about Cofan cosmology and his complex healing techniques. Octavio helps me to interpret, record, and write down his father’s words. As an accomplished shaman, Cesario’s abilities are astounding. But as a 78-year-old Ecuadorian citizen who is only minimally conversant in Spanish, he finds the country’s bureaucratic system perplexing, to put it mildly.

Shortly after Cesario arrived, we learned that his cédula (government ID card) was out of date. Without a current cédula, Ecuadorians face fines and are unable to access essential government services, including healthcare. They can’t even make basic purchases at many stores, as official receipts must include a person’s cédula number, which can only be “proved” with an up-to-date card that is checked against a national database.

Perplexed by what to do, I called Freddy. Within a matter of minutes, he arrived at our apartment. With masks on and windows open, he drove us to Quito’s Registro Civil, the government office responsible for renewing cédulas, granting passports, and providing other essential documents. With his typical charisma and confidence, Freddy spoke to the officials and got Cesario to the front of a very long and thankfully socially distanced line, explaining that Cesario was an Indigenous man of tercer edad (old age) who deserved special treatment. In a matter of minutes, Cesario’s cédula was renewed—as you can see in the above photo, with Freddy at Cesario’s side—and we were on our way home. Without Freddy, getting the renewal in Quito would’ve been impossible given how little I, Cesario, and Octavio know about how to negotiate Ecuadorian bureaucracy.

Freddy’s aid to Cesario is just one example of how he keeps Cofan people safe and secure while also helping to create the legal structures and agreements that do the same for their Amazonian homeland. His help for Cesario might seem like a minor matter in the grand scheme of things, but for Cofan individuals, such aid can be a lifesaver. On our drive back from the Registro Civil, Freddy told us about two Cofan people whom he had recently helped to secure medical care in the city. One has metastatic stomach cancer. Though she likely won’t survive, Freddy helped her attain the palliative treatment that will keep her as comfortable as possible. The other had a baseball-sized tumor-like growth on his neck. We feared it was another case of cancer, but with Freddy’s aid, the man spent weeks in one of Quito’s best hospitals with insurance that Freddy and the CSF helped to secure for members of his community. Luckily, the growth was “just” a massive cyst, and the man will make a full recovery. If he hadn’t gotten the proper care, the infection could’ve spread and the outcome could’ve been very different.

As we continue to fight for the future of the Cofan homeland and way of life, the CSF will do all the “little things” it always has. More than anyone else, Freddy makes those little things possible. Like all our Ecuadorian staff, when our funding has dwindled to a trickle, Freddy has gone months without a paycheck. Yet he has never thought about abandoning the CSF or the Cofan, even with a degree and legal credentials that could bring him a much more substantial income. As is the case with me, Randy, and the rest of our team, Freddy is a Cofan “lifer,” and the Cofan Nation is extremely thankful for his service and commitment.

As always, it’s time for my pitch. If you want to help Freddy and the CSF continue our work, please consider donating for the first time, increasing your donation, or becoming a recurring donor. We promise to use your support as efficiently as possible to do all the “little” and “big” things to ensure the welfare of Cofan people and their rainforest homeland. If you want to have a direct conversation about about how we can do that, feel free to send an email to my personal address: michael.cepek@utsa.edu. You can contribute online by credit card by clicking on our website: www.cofan.org. Or you can mail a check to: Cofan Survival Fund, 53 Washington Boulevard, Oak Park, IL 60302. Another way to give, if you shop at amazon.com, is to go to smile.amazon.com and select the Cofan Survival Fund as your designated charity. Then, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of every one of your purchases to the CSF.

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

Cofan Survival Fund June 2021 Newsletter

Greetings Cofan Survival Fund Supporters!

I always appreciate it when you, our supporters, let me know what you’d like to hear about in our newsletters. (Always feel free to email me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu.) One of you recently suggested that I remind us all what we’re fighting for. We at the Cofan Survival Fund are not just dedicated to the welfare of Cofan people, we want to make sure we provide them the resources they need to protect the forests and rivers they call home. And the Cofan’s forests and rivers are some of the most diverse, beautiful, and important in the world.

Between 2001 and 2009, scientists from the Field Museum of Natural History joined Cofan natural historians to catalogue the astounding diversity and ecological importance of Cofan territory. Their results were shared in a series of “Rapid Biological Inventories” (RBI’s). Each inventory told the world—and the Ecuadorian government—how deserving of protection the Cofan homeland is. And each either helped create a Cofan-controlled protected area or strengthened one that already existed.

In the RBI “Ecuador: Serranías Cofán–Bermejo, Sinangoe,” a Field Museum team surveyed the upriver Cofan territory that eventually came under Cofan control as part of the Cayambe–Coca Ecological Reserve and the entire Cofán–Bermejo Ecological Reserve. This region is “where the most diverse mountain range in the world rises out of the richest lowland forest on Earth.” The RBI continues: “These are the Serranías Cofán, rising up from the Amazonian lowlands in a complex tangle of topography and biodiversity. We were drawn to them because the distinctive climate and geology of their transitional forests—intermediate between the snowcapped peaks to the west and the hot Amazonian plains to the east—have fostered unique biological communities, where plant and animal communities from the lowland forests rub shoulders with the Andean flora and fauna, in the company of hundreds of endemic and undescribed taxa. In a day’s climb here, a biologist can eat breakfast in an Amazonian forest and dinner in an Andean one, stopping for lunch in the narrow, mid-elevation ribbon where two of the world’s most diverse biotas overlap briefly in a mix of species found nowhere else on Earth.”

In the RBI “Ecuador: Cabeceras Cofanes–Chingual,” which helped convince the Ecuadorian government to grant the Cofan legal rights over a large portion of the Río Cofanes watershed, Field Museum scientists wondered again at the ecological riches of the Cofan homeland: “Following the tracks of a mountain tapir, one can descend from the surreal, windswept páramos of Cabeceras Cofanes-Chingual through the precipitous slopes of cloud forests dripping with mist and orchids all the way down to tall Amazon forests in the lowlands. . . . The streams that drain the region are the sources of the Aguarico-Napo river system, one of the most important fluvial systems of western Amazonia. The Cofanes and Chingual rivers, which join to form the Aguarico, are some of the last unfragmented mountain rivers in Ecuador and provide crucial habitat for aquatic biota. Páramos and forests filter rainwater and modulate river flow in these headwaters, protecting critical sources of water for domestic and agricultural uses. . . . The intact vegetation of Cabeceras Cofanes-Chingual allows free movement of bears, tapirs, macaws, and other wide-ranging species up and down the mountains in search of food, mates, and nesting sites. The forested slopes buffer the effects of climate change because they allow species to migrate in response to hotter, wetter, or drier conditions.”

In a third RBI, “Ecuador, Perú: Cuyabeno–Güeppí,” the Field Museum investigated the region surrounding Ecuador’s northeastern border with Peru and Colombia, home to the Cofan people of Zábalo. This community has legal control over approximately 375,000 acres of incredibly rich forests, rivers, and wetlands, which overlap with the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve. The report begins: “Located in a remote region that may be the most diverse on earth—at the trinational border of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru—the forests we surveyed held high promise for species new to science or new to each country. . . . Our findings surpassed our expectations. Although these results still need further analysis, the preliminary numbers are impressive: 1 genus of plant and 13 species (11 plants, 2 fishes) are new to science. And, 4 plant genera and 22 species of plants and fishes had never before been recorded in Ecuador. . . . This region offers opportunities for protection of diversity unique not only in Ecuador, but on earth.”

The best way to experience the wonders of the Cofan homeland is to see it yourself. Cofan communities are always eager to host visitors, so if you want to meet the leader of our work, Randy Borman, in his home community of Zábalo, let us know. Ecotourism has long been a reliable source of sustainable, environmentally benign income for Cofan people. Just as importantly, it has allowed them to create close, personal relationships with outsiders, many of whom have become crucial allies. It was only after I met Randy in 1994 that I committed to a lifetime of advocacy for the Cofan Nation and its homeland.

As Cofan people constantly remind us, they’re protecting their lands not just for themselves but for the whole world. The more than one million acres of ecologically intact territory they control are crucial to mitigating the effects of climate change, maintaining essential hydrological and climatological systems, and ensuring that our planet does not lose a priceless portion of its biodiversity. Without the Cofan’s vigilance, many of these lands would already be destroyed. But to do their job well, they need our support. Preventing deforestation and the despoliation of waterways requires constant legal work in Ecuador’s cities, a park guard force with first-rate equipment and logistical capabilities, and an educational program that will produce new generations of Cofan activists ready to take on loggers, miners, and oil companies while creating sustainable income sources for their people. These are the causes to which we direct all your donations. Please help us continue the fight to protect the Cofan homeland—for all of us.

You can contribute online by credit card by clicking on our website: www.cofan.org. Or you can mail a check to: Cofan Survival Fund, 53 Washington Boulevard, Oak Park, IL 60302. Another way to give, if you shop at amazon.com, is to go to smile.amazon.com and select the Cofan Survival Fund as your designated charity. Then, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of every one of your purchases to the CSF.

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

CSF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. For gifts of $250 and larger, you will receive a receipt for tax purposes.

Cofan Survival Fund April 2021 Newsletter

Greetings Cofan Survival Fund Supporters!

As President of the Board of the Cofan Survival Fund (CSF), I’m writing with two updates on the work we’re doing to help the Cofan protect their homeland, maintain their way of life, and ensure their survival into the future. One is “good,” and the other is “bad,” but both illustrate the tremendous challenges facing the Cofan Nation and what we can do to help the Cofan overcome them.

First, the good. We’re proud to announce that Gissela Yumbo, a resident of the Cofan community of Zábalo, has successfully defended her thesis in engineering at SEK University in Quito! Gissela is a beneficiary of our Cofan Higher Education Project, and she’s also the first Cofan woman to finish college. The fact that she chose such a difficult subject is a testament to how driven and capable she is. We’re confident Gissela’s engineering skills will be of immense use in the Cofan Nation’s struggles to find sustainable income sources for its members.

And now, the bad. I recently received a report from Carlos Descanse, another participant in our Cofan Higher Education Project. Carlos’s studies in Quito are going well, but his home community of Chandia Na’e is facing a tremendous threat. Recently, illegal gold miners have invaded the land bordering Carlos’s community. You can see one of the pits they excavated in the above photo, which Carlos took. His village is one of four Cofan settlements inside the Cofan-Bermejo Ecological Reserve (RECB), a 140,000-acre protected area the CSF helped to establish in 2002. The reserve is unique in that Cofan people have the legal right to co-manage and co-administer it alongside Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment and Water. Unfortunately, the integrity of the RECB is now in danger because of the Ecuadorian government’s inability—or unwillingness—to protect it and its Cofan inhabitants.

The RECB was created with the expectation that Cofan people would be the ones to care for it. While our Cofan Park Guard Program was in full force, Cofan rangers regularly patrolled the reserve and kept miners, loggers, commercial hunters, and settlers out. After the gradual loss of funding for the program, however, the only people left to protect the RECB are a government-appointed manager and his small team of rangers. Rather than put Cofan people into these positions, the government has given them to non-Indigenous city dwellers, who have neither the capacity nor the motivation to confront the miners, destroy their camps, and confiscate their equipment, all of which the Cofan Park Guards once did on a regular basis. Instead, the government employees spend nearly all their time at the RECB “headquarters,” a small office many miles away in a non-Indigenous town.

With your increased support, we can work with our Cofan partners in Ecuador to pressure the government to return control of the RECB to the Cofan themselves and give them the positions and resources to protect their land. Now that more and more Cofan individuals like Gissela and Carlos are receiving college degrees through our Cofan Higher Education Project, more Cofan people will have the formal credentials necessary to assume government posts, including at the RECB. Even with a group of willing and capable Cofan candidates, however, convincing Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment and Water to give them the jobs will take tremendous political lobbying. And even if we do secure these positions for Cofan people, our real goal is to reestablish the Cofan Park Guard Program, which could protect not only the RECB but the Cofan’s entire legalized territory, which amounts to more than one million acres.

In my last newsletter, I announced our new funding campaign, which intends to supplement our strong and diverse group of small donors with a core of 20 to 25 “Cofan Partners” who can give at least $10,000 a year. I’m happy to report that a few gracious individuals have stepped up to the challenge, and Chicago’s Betty Lou Smith Fund has almost single-handedly funded the Cofan Higher Education Project. However, we need more donations of all amounts to secure the $250,000 annual sum that will enable us to fund Cofan conservation, land-rights, and education campaigns at the levels they require. By now, you’re probably expecting my familiar plea: $250,000 sounds like a lot—and it is—but it amounts to $.25 an acre to protect some of the most beautiful, biodiverse, and carbon-rich forests in the world as well as the livelihoods of the Cofan people who call them home.

If you’re interested in giving for the first time, increasing your donation, becoming a recurring donor, or giving at the level of a Cofan Partner, feel free to reach out to me personally at michael.cepek@utsa.edu. As an anthropologist who’s been studying, supporting, and donating to the CSF for more than two decades—and who receives no compensation for my CSF-related work—I’d be happy to let you know why I believe this effort is so important. I’d also love to arrange an online meeting between you and our Cofan partners in Ecuador at the Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofan. As a U.S.-based nonprofit, the CSF has virtually no financial overhead, which means that all your contributions go directly to the Cofan activists who know exactly what to do with them.

You can contribute online by credit card by clicking on our website: www.cofan.org. Or you can mail a check to: Cofan Survival Fund, 53 Washington Boulevard, Oak Park, IL 60302. Another way to give, if you shop at amazon.com, is to go to smile.amazon.com and select the Cofan Survival Fund as your designated charity. Then, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of every one of your purchases to the CSF.

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

CSF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. For gifts of $250 and larger, you will receive a receipt for tax purposes.

Cofan Survival Fund October 2019 Newsletter

The FSC's Work Continues!

Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,

Thanks to your emergency donations over the last four months, the Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofan (FSC) has survived its financial crisis and is continuing its important work in Ecuador. Our appeal for help brought in nearly $40,000. We can’t thank you enough for your support. With it, the FSC was able to pay off much of its debt, provide a lifeline to its staff, and keep its office doors open.

Your emergency donations also gave us the time to apply for larger-scale institutional support, including a National Geographic Society Conservation Grant. With intense efforts, our all-volunteer team at CSF was able to help Randy and the FSC submit the proposal in time. If successful, our application will help restart a significant portion of the Cofan Park Guard Program. Although individual Cofan communities continue to use Cofan guards to protect their lands, a program for the entirety of the Cofan Nation’s legalized territory—which stands at more than one million acres—hasn’t been active for more than five years because of a lack of funding.

The National Geographic grant would help, but the FSC will need more money to support a full implementation of the Park Guard Program and other projects in education, conservation, territorial protection, and sustainable development. We are now following leads for securing additional institutional and individual supporters. Our dream continues to be able to fund all the FSC’s work with long-term grants or a conservation endowment that would provide the FSC $500,000 a year. That sounds like a lot of money, but it would allow the Cofan to protect their way of life and their incredibly rich forests and rivers for $.50 an acre—a true bargain for a world being destroyed by climate change, loss of freshwater reserves, and accelerating species extinctions.

In the Amazon, raging fires continue to threaten indigenous lands. In Ecuador, extreme political turmoil and a government administration committed to increasing mining and oil extraction threaten Cofan territories directly. Randy, other FSC staff, and Cofan community members are on the front lines. In addition to supporting anti-mining efforts, Randy has taken the lead in making sure the Ecuadorian government continues its Socio Bosque program, which provides financial support to communities that have committed to protecting their forests. Randy has been meeting with high-level government officials to improve the program and even to have ineffective program directors removed.

With FSC support, Cofan students continue to receive high-quality educations. In the community of Zábalo, CSF board member Felipe Borman is still overseeing the Cofan’s heralded river turtle conservation program. This year, the community has tens of thousands of young turtles ready to be released into the environment. The program needs more funding to be truly successful, but Felipe and the people of Zábalo are doing what they can with scarce resources.

Even though so many of you came through with emergency aid, the FSC urges you to continue and even to increase your regular contributions. The challenges to Cofan territory never disappear. Indeed, they become greater and greater each year. But the FSC is prepared to confront them and to show the world that when it supports their efforts, indigenous peoples can protect the earth’s most essential environments—environments that ALL of us depend on for our future survival.

Thank you,

Michael L. Cepek

President of the Board, Cofan Survival Fund

Cofan Survival Fund May 2018 Newsletter

The Threat of Gold Mining in Cofan Territory

Over the past month, the problem of gold mining in Cofan territory has received international media attention. The Guardian recently published an article on the threat posed by mining in the Cofan community of Sinangoe, which lies far up the Aguarico River in the Andean foothills. For more than four centuries, nonindigenous people have invaded Cofan land in search of gold and other minerals. The confrontation in Sinangoe is just the most recent example of how outsiders seek to profit from Cofan territory and end up destroying its forests and rivers while imperiling the health of its indigenous inhabitants. For the past two decades, the Cofan Survival Fund has been instrumental in confronting miners and working to expel them from Cofan territory. Many Sinangoe residents learned how to protect their territory during their time in the Cofan Park Guard Program, a CSF-funded effort that built guard stations and boundary trails and sent teams of Cofan rangers to the farthest corners of their homeland. Today, Randy Borman and other Cofan leaders are working in the nearby community of La Sofia to mobilize its residents to oppose the mining companies that threaten to pollute their rivers with mercury. With your help, the CSF can once again send groups of Cofan rangers throughout the Cofan homeland to confront miners as well as settlers, loggers, and commercial hunters. It all takes money, though—please consider renewing or increasing your donation to CSF today!

Cofan Survival Fund January Newsletter

Keeping the Cofan Park Guards Active

The Cofan Park Guard Program is still doing all it can to protect the more than one million acres of Amazonian and Andean forest that the Cofan Nation controls. As always, though, the program is experiencing real problems. First and foremost, the FSC needs money to keep the guards equipped and on the land, doing their job. Second, the continued effectiveness of the program depends upon maintaining a good relationship with the Ecuadorian Ministry of the Environment. Recently, Cofan leaders have experienced a number of bureaucratic hurdles, so they're heading up to Ecuador's capital city of Quito to get the government to listen to them and provide them with the support they need. According to Randy Borman, FSC Executive Director, a group of Cofan leaders will engage government officials next week. If the meeting doesn't work, the Cofan are prepared to head to Quito en masse for a full-scale protest. They've done it before, and they're prepared to do it again.

Seeing a Harpy Eagle Up Close

Last week, CSF board member Claire Nicklin had a chance to visit the Cofan community of Zábalo with Randy, other Cofan people, and a group of tourists. Claire wanted to get a sense of community needs and to find out how the CSF can help the community to improve its ecotourism operation. While going for a canoe trip on the Zábalo River, Claire got a chance to take a close look at a harpy eagle, the strongest eagle in the world and an important being in Cofan cosmology. Cofan people call the bird "con'sin pindo," or "woolly monkey eagle." The name refers to one of the harpy's preferred prey species. These magnificent animals have the strength to carry large mammals to distant sites, where they eat them themselves or feed them to their young. If you ever get a chance to visit Zábalo, maybe you'll get a chance to take a picture like this one, which Claire took!

Fighting for Cofan Land Rights

Outsiders often like to think that all indigenous Amazonian people live in harmony with each other, but the reality can be much more complicated. Recently, the Cofan have watched as another indigenous group--the Secoya--have tried to take control of part of the Cofan community of Zábalo's official territory. The area in question is along the Lagarto Cocha River, at the eastern edge of Zábalo's land near the Ecuadorian-Peruvian border. The Cofan have long been friends of the Secoya, but as unoccupied lands become less and less available in the region, it's becoming harder for the Secoya to find lands of their own. The FSC is working with Ecuador's Ministry of Environment to make sure that all Cofan lands remain Cofan lands--and that the Ecuadorian government can find a place for the Secoya without taking away from the Cofan. After all, the Cofan have been occupying and managing the land in question for decades, and they want to make sure it remains protected from all the forces that threaten to despoil it.

Cofan Survival Fund June Newsletter

Take Action NOW to Support Our Global Safety Net

The world's wilderness regions sequester atmospheric carbon and other greenhouse gases, scrub pollutants from the air and water, control weather patterns, and regulate the world's fresh water supplies. As the U.S. government walks away from the Paris Climate Accord, let's remember that these wilderness regions remain the main global "damper" on climate change.

Protecting these areas remains an urgent imperative. It's what FSC has been doing in Ecuador for decades. Their work continues and grows in impact every year, protecting and managing ever-wider areas of these precious ecosystems.

This June, you have a unique opportunity to help FSC raise significant funds to support this work by donating through the crowdsource platform Global Giving. Please consider making a donation, large or small.

*ALL DONATIONS MADE ON JUNE 21st WILL BE MATCHED. All funds raised will support the Cofán's celebrated Park Guard Program that protects the Cofan territory from illegal mining, poaching, and deforestation.

*If the Cofan raise $5,000 from at least 40 donors by June 30th, Global Giving will include FSC permanently on their platform, bringing the Cofan to the attention of over half a million active donors every day.

*For more information on the project and to make a donation, go to: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/protect-an-acre-of-rainforest/

Living in a Dream World

Could Ecuador's Amazon Basin become a dream world free of palm oil plantations built on cleared land, where healthy rain forests, not cattle ranches, win out? Randy Borman and FSC are key leaders of a wide effort to create a Special Region for the entire area, where sustainable use of resources, alternate energy sources, ecotourism, and sale of environmental services are the law of the land.

The coalition working to pass this "Ley Amazonica" (Amazonian Law) includes local governments, scientists, national politicians, and other actors from the private and public sectors. The pieces are coming together, the stars are aligning, and the leadership of the FSC is central to making it all happen. Stay tuned for updates.

Meanwhile, in the Real World

With FSC leadership and guidance, progress continues on making the newly-created Carchi Reserve (reported in the September newsletter) operational and effective. FSC is now also working with two local governments in Imbabura Province on creating new reserves. And in the Cofan community of Zábalo, Park Guards are busy maintaining trails and patrolling the very first ecological reserve that Cofan people created 25 years ago. FSC fundamentals have withstood the test of time and are proving to be what the present and future need!