Dear friends,
Short version:
I’m going to South America to try and help save the Cloud rain forest. Will you sponsor me? If you sponsor me more than £15 you get a bag of coffee beans or sugar (your choice).
Please distribute/forward this email to anyone you know who may be interested in protecting the rain forest and wildlife.
Thanks.
Full version:
In September I will be travelling to Ecuador, South America, to work with two local organisations to protect and restore the Ecuadorian mountain cloud forest (Bosque nublado). The cloud forest is the Amazon rain forest where it goes up into the Andes.
Because of its unique geography, from 2000m to 4000m in altitude, on the equator and on the pacific west coast of south America and because it has had very little impact from modern human activities; the cloud forest has one of the highest levels of biodiversity in the world. The forest also stabilises the soils on the mountain sides, regulates the flow of rain in to rivers which are used for domestic purposes by local people. Additionally, as all forests do, the cloud forest produces oxygen for the world to breathe, stores carbon in its trees and soils and installs a sense of awe and wonder with its complexity and enormity as a living, functioning natural ecosystem.
The cloud forest is recognised as a biodiversity hotspot. This is a region with exceptionally high levels of biodiversity and/or biodiversity which is endemic (found only in that region) but that the biodiversity there is under threat of destruction or degradation.
You may or may not know that last year I travelled to the cloud forest as a paying volunteer as a part of a scientific project organised by Earth watch. This is a large, well renowned institute, working all over the world on environmental and cultural projects where globally important sites are endangered. Volunteering on an Earth watch project is fairly expensive and I spent all of my final student grant and loan on the trip (I still managed to get my Bsc Environmental science without the grant payment). Whilst there I was introduced to one of the founders of an NGO (non-governmental organisation) called Cambugan (cambugan.org). This organisation are working to protect cloud forest where it is threatened by clearance for farming, mining and oil extraction; they are also building a tree nursery to produce saplings for replanting cloud forest and providing environmental education for children.
My trip this September will be working with Cambugan to finish the building of the tree nursery and help establish propagation programmes (collecting seeds, germination, hardening, planting up, etc). I think/hope that my building experience and forestry training will make me useful there (failing that I can just do the donkey work!).
I will also spend 2 weeks volunteering at the forest reserve we were based at on last years Earth watch project. This is the Santa Lucia forest reserve (
http://www.santaluciaecuador.com/). Here I will clean, cook, make/repair mountain trails and play football (they are mad for football) you haven’t played till you’ve played at 3000m in the jungle!
Both of these organisations are initiated and run by local people who see the value and splendour of the forest and believe they can make a difference to their situation by their own actions. This is a very brave thing to do in their circumstance as the forest is seen by some as an exploitable, expendable resource. People are killed in Ecuador for trying to prevent development of forest. You wouldn’t get a camp of ‘tree huggers’ (no offence intended) living in the trees stopping the bulldozers, they’d be bulldozed too, (probably)! So these groups and many other small groups like them are working ‘intelligently’ by ensuring government protections are enforced, strategically buying margins of protected regions, repairing and restoring where they can, the damaged forest and offering ‘ecotourism’ to allow people to witness the value of the cloud forest not only for its invaluable ecological function and biological resource but also for its beauty and energy as one of the most full and complex expressions of the evolution of life on earth.
I have already bought my plane ticket, the most expensive bit, but I will have living costs while I’m there. If you would like to sponsor my work, I would be very grateful. Any sponsorship will go firstly, directly to my costs of the trip: plane fare, taxi and bus transfers, hostel accommodation between locations, food, etc. Any surplus, I will split 50/50 between the two organisations in Ecuador-Cambugan and Santa Lucia and the Sussex wildlife trust and Butterfly conservation; because these are groups in England who are similarly motivated and equally deserving of support.
I am booked and doing this work from my own initiative and from my own expense. The notion of asking for sponsorship came late. However as an incentive, anyone who sponsors me £15 or more will receive a bag of coffee or sugar from the Santa Lucia reserve. The coffee is quite unique and delicious and the sugar is amazing, golden and natural. I will buy your sponsorship reward direct from the Santa Lucia reserve, where they grow sugar and coffee to support themselves and supplement income. It’s as fair trade and organic as you can get as it will come direct from the grower!
Please distribute/forward this email to anyone you know who may be interested in protecting the rain forest and wildlife.
Thanks.
Sponsor me by cheque to above address payable to Anthony Flint. I will provide an account of costs and donations when finished.
Email me via here if you would like to support.
Tony
