Report on Park Ranger Program

Dear Cofán Survival Fund Supporters,

We are always happy to write with good news, and today we are writing to share the ongoing, critical work to reinstate the Cofán Park Guard Program… and how your continued support is driving that success.

While threats to the land increase, so does our ability to meaningfully intervene. Vince McElhinny, CFS Board Member since 2018, brings us this newsletter after speaking with Randy and Felipe Borman about the history and future of the Park Guard Program.

Vince McElhinny is Senior Director of Environmental and Social Accountability in the Global Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Center at Conservation International. 

Cofán Park Guard Program

The Cofán Park Guard Program is the backbone of sovereign control by the Cofán Nation of its 450,000 hectares of intact rainforest. The program represents the unique contribution of the Cofán to preserving the Amazon rainforest in ways that are currently undervalued in economic terms but that are increasingly recognized as essential to conservation success. The Park Guard Program has also been instrumental in strengthening Cofán culture, creating a deep sense of Cofán national identity, and providing a critical source of income and training to Cofán men and women.

Our short-term target for the restoration of the Park Guard Program to its full potential is $200,000 annually for each of the four main Cofánterritories that depend on Park Guard protection. Our medium-term goal is $1,000,000 per year to fully operationalize the Park Guard Program as a centralized force managed by the Cofán Nation through the FSC.

The Cofán Park Guards have provided scientific insight that has illuminated the meaning and value of Amazonian and Andean environments and ensured the health of important ecosystem services. In addition, the Guards have anchored the cultural identity of generations of Cofán men and women. The program has pioneered surveillance, landscape management, and logistics techniques that are cost effective. Indeed, other Indigenous Nations have adopted some of the techniques originally created as part of the Cofán Park Guard Program. The future Park Guard Program will build on these achievements to respond to the combined challenges of climate change, threatened loss of cultural identity, intensified resource extraction, territorial dispossession, and flagging state capacity to enforce land-use norms and laws.

Program History

In response to oil company and settler encroachments in the 1970s, families in different Cofán communities organized into work groups, each spending two weeks per year to clear and guard boundary trails for the Cofán’s first two legalized landholdings: the villages of Dureno and Duvuno. The regular presence of the work groups was fairly effective in deterring the invasion and destruction of Cofán territory.

While the positive impacts of these efforts were clear, the voluntary commitment of multiple weeks per year in the service of protecting Cofánterritories represented significant personal expenses for families. At times, it also placed them at great risk due to confrontations with forest invaders. Dedicating weeks to patrolling land and clearing boundaries meant families could not do the everyday work needed to maintain their livelihoods. In other words, the initial small-scale efforts were not a sustainable solution.

The problem worsened during the 1990s. Legalized Cofán territory grew to include four additional, and much larger, forested areas, putting hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest in the Cofán’s hands. The resulting strain on community patrols became untenable. People did not have the time or resources to take months off from subsistence activities and periodic wage labor to protect what had become an expansive Cofán homeland.

To be sustainable, the Cofán Nation needed to find a way to compensate people for putting their lives on hold so they could dedicate themselves to full-time protection of their land. Otherwise, their families would be left without food and other resources that had become essential to Cofán life in the 21st century.

Expanding the Park Guard Program: A Decade of Success

By the early 2000s, the Cofán had recovered legal rights to over 200,000 hectares of their ancestral homeland. Effectively guarding this extensive territory was something voluntary family work groups could not do. Thanks to the work of the CSF, funding from large institutional donors finally became available to launch a professional Park Guard Program with a full-time presence on Cofán lands. The program trained, equipped, and paid two rotating teams, each with 27 men and women. Each team had two groups: one carried out dispersed, mobile field missions while the other staffed permanent stations at particularly vulnerable access points into Cofán territory. While one team worked, the other team rested. The teams rotated each month.

Each month’s work involved three patrols of five people each who moved from one site to another to maintain boundaries, monitor threats, and confront invaders. The mobile patrols were complemented by six two-person units who managed the permanent stations. At the end of the one-month work periods, the guards returned to the central program office in Lago Agrio, where they wrote reports, picked up paychecks, had debriefing meetings with CSF directors, and then returned to their villages.

The program created a regional awareness of the Cofán’s ability to be present in any corner of their land and to call on the full force of a united CofánNation. This deterrent was particularly apparent to oil and mining companies, to whom the ability of a uniformed group of tough young men and women showing up from the depths of the forest to take pictures and radio in GPS coordinates was extremely intimidating.

Additionally, the guards enjoyed the formal recognition of Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment, giving them full police powers. Rather than directly engage intruders with force, however, the guards typically called in allies from the military or police to deal with potentially violent situations.

Not only successful for minimizing deforestation, the Park Guard Program also served as an important cultural link. The jobs were directly related to the forest environment, which is the foundation of Cofán culture and language. Moreover, the Park Guard Program strengthened a sense of Cofán national identity. The teams and patrols mixed people from different villages. In doing so, they created a sense of common purpose and identity of one nation fighting for one homeland. Previously, community identity was far more important than national identity, including in matters of forest protection.

Each patrol group also had at least one older person. The oldest members shared stories each night when the patrols were preparing to sleep in forest camps. Younger people assimilated this essential cultural knowledge of myth, history, and ecosystem functioning. This intergenerational knowledge and culture transmission formed a group of highly trained and motivated Cofáns. The skills they learned while working as Park Guards led many to assume leadership roles at the community level. 

Of the Cofáns who have trained and worked as Park Guards, over a third have been women. Most of these women served as active rangers in the field. In the past, married couples staffed the permanent stations.

Unfortunately, international donor organizations began to withdraw their funding of the Park Guard Program in 2013 due to various changes in the global economy and the conservation funding landscape. Simultaneously, the Ecuadorian government introduced its Socio Bosque Program, a well-intentioned means of providing payments for protecting environmental services to rural peoples such as the Cofán. However, the low, restricted, and unsteady level of Socio Bosque funding made it insufficient for sustaining anything more than minimal ParkGuard activities at the level of individual communities rather than the Cofán Nation as a whole.

Once more, each community faced the task of protecting its territory on its own with limited time and resources. Socio Bosque has kept the Park Guard Program alive in some sections of the Cofánhomeland, but it has not been able to sustain the program at anything close to its previous level of functioning.

The Park Guard Program Today: A Vision for the Future

Felipe Borman now manages the ParkGuard Program in its current form. Felipe has orchestrated the model to optimize available skills and resources, involving a rotation of temporary, community-based guards that work one month on, one month off.

The current work focuses on boundary maintenance and threat engagement in the least protected and most at-risk Cofánterritories. For example, this past spring Felipe led a team of 10 guards that took one month to complete the rehabilitation and maintenance of the boundary trails delimiting the Cofán-Bermejo Ecological Reserve, within which four Cofáncommunities are located. The training component continues to be a galvanizing step in the formation of the Cofán ParkGuards, but as Felipe has observed, training must remain in step with the evolving demands of the work.

Training in basic technology, logistics, and first aid now occurs at the FSC’s Quito headquarters. But as Felipe highlights, the technology needed to protect Cofánterritory is changing. The Cofán need people capable of GIS mapping and analyzing drone imagery. They also must be able to produce data visualizations of emerging threats and achievements. Finally, they must possess the skills and tactical knowledge to engage an ever-more complex social, economic, and political situation in contemporary Ecuador.

To do this work, the CSF has helped secure essential initial investments from the Azimuth World Foundation and the Houser Foundation. With grants from these institutions, Randy and Felipe now know what they must do to bring the Park Guard Program back into full operation.

With ever-increasing threats from mining, logging, commercial hunting and fishing, and the illicit economy in narcotics along Ecuador’s border with Colombia—the heart of Cofán territory—returning the Park Guard Program to full strength is more important than ever.

Support from the Azimuth World Foundation and the Houser Foundation led directly to successful missions in 2023 and 2024 to protect and monitor Cofán boundaries in the most vulnerable parts of their territory.

It was the first time in almost a decade that the Park Guards had visited these areas to make sure they remained protected. Problems and threats exist in all of them, but even the initial Park Guard work has served as a powerful deterrent to forest destroyers. The success of these initial missions is undeniable. Guards reported numerous sightings of and interactions with illegal resource extractors (see photo below of an illegal logging camp.) Simply showing up, explaining who they were, and expressing their determination to protect their land were critical interventions. Once again, the Park Guards have become effective, yet so much more remains to be done.

The recent work of the Park Guards also profited from new mapping and imaging technologies that allowed the teams to work more efficiently, effectively, and safely.

The equipment provided thanks to the generosity of the Azimuth World Foundation and the Houser Foundation has given the Park Guards a more holistic and precise view of what their future work must accomplish.

These two institutional allies have provided essential resources to the Park Guard Program, but the individual contributions of you, our CSF supporters, have also been critical. Without your donations, the guards would have less equipment and less of the political, legal, and logistical oversight that only our Rapid Response Team, led by Randy Borman and our legal specialist Freddy Espinosa, can provide.

Securing Success: Goals for the ParkGuard Program in 2025

Based on lessons we have learned during the Park Guard Program’s 22-year history as well as the recent work supported by the Azimuth World Foundation, the Houser Foundation, and you, we now have a vision of what it will take to make the Park Guard Program the effective institution Cofán territory, and the whole world, need.

Our revamped Park Guard Program would support 60 guards divided into teams that would rotate work each month. The 30-person teams would include three active patrol groups of 5-10 individuals who would clear and maintain territorial boundaries, monitor ecological changes, collect and analyze biocultural data, and head off confrontations with gold miners, drug traffickers, loggers, commercial fishers and hunters, and illegal settlers.

To secure Cofán lands at especially vulnerable, high-friction locations, the guards will also reestablish their system of permanent stations. For both patrol and station work, the guards will need constant access to transportation, field equipment, a communication network, and logistic support to maintain control and integrity of the areas they oversee. The program would involve periodic meetings of the entire guard force with Ministry of Environment officials. Additionally, the 30-person team that is rotating off will meet with and update their incoming counterparts before returning to their communities.

The program would require formalizing and ensuring consistent funding for a team of operational and management support staff that will specialize in spatial analysis, finance/logistics, communications, and funder management.

Our short-term target for the expansion of the Park Guard Program is $200,000 for each of the four main Cofánterritories that depend on its protection: the Río Cofanes Territory, the upper Cayambe-Coca Territory, the Cofán-Bermejo Ecological Reserve, and the portion of the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve managed by the community of Zábalo.

Our medium-term goal requires an extra $200,000 to fund our support and management team. With these funds, the total annual cost of a fully functional ParkGuard Program is $1,000,000 per year. As for “in-kind” contributions from the CofánNation, Cofán individuals will be doing extremely arduous and dangerous work that depends entirely on their knowledge of and commitment to the land in question.

We view these funding goals as transitional steps to a more sustainable and permanent income source. Ecuador, like many tropical forest countries, is committed to gaining international investments to support the essential ecological services—including climate-change mitigation—provided by intact ecosystems such as those protected by the Cofán Nation. Access to global carbon and biodiversity funding will require extensive monitoring, reporting, and verification mechanisms. We seek to integrate these mechanisms into the ParkGuard Program, which will make an Indigenous People a direct beneficiary of global conservation funding, a novel yet necessary development.

As carbon and biodiversity funding solutions come online in the near future, we seek bridge funding to ensure that the ParkGuard Program will enjoy long-term financial commitments from the global community. Without this funding, the Cofán Nation will not be able to sustain their long-term commitment to keep their forests standing.

The lands bordering the Cofán's are in many cases severely degraded. It is no mystery why Cofán lands have not suffered the same fate: through individual, community, and nation-wide efforts such as the Park Guard Program, the Cofán have succeeded in protecting lands that others have not, including the Ecuadorian state.

The Cofán Nation now controls approximately 450,000 hectares of the most biodiverse territory in the world, territory that is essential to mitigating climate change. For little more than $2 per hectare, this land can remain intact.

For those who think in terms of acres—each hectare equals two and a half
acres—the Cofán Park Guard Program promises to protect the most ecologically rich and valuable land in existence for less than $1 per acre. After decades of failed conservation schemes at both small and large scales, we believe that funding a proven, Indigenous-managed conservation force at the cost we propose is one of the best bargains imaginable.

Vince McElhinny is Senior Director of Environmental and Social Accountabilityin the Global Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Center at Conservation International. Vince leads a Global Safeguards Team, providing technical support and oversight to CI project teams and advancing an institution-wide Safeguard System. Vince has over 20 years of experience in environmental and social impact assessment and management, negotiation capacity building, monitoring and evaluation, and policy and program management. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and is based in Charlottesville, Virginia and has been a CSF Board member since 2018. All views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policies or opinions of Conservation International. 

Our Contact Information

Cofan Survival Fund

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Oak Park, IL 60302

(331) 218-4246

http://www.cofan.org

Higher Education Project: Big News!

Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,

Hello, everyone! I just returned from my annual trip to Ecuador and Cofan territory. It’s always great to see friends, collaborators, and ritual relatives. (See the picture above!) But it’s also a reminder of how many challenges remain for the Cofan Nation—a point my recent visit drove home. So many people are sick, impoverished, and struggling to protect their lands with the few resources they have. As always, the CSF is doing everything it can to help them fight for survival.

Rather than write about the challenges, however, I want to share an EXTREMELY positive development. In the last newsletter I sent, I noted that the support the Betty Louise Smith Fund has supplied for our Cofan Higher Education Program was coming to an end. Without the fund’s generosity, we wouldn’t have the strong group of young, highly educated, and quickly developing Cofan leaders we do. They’re the ones who will carry the work of the CSF into the future. Without them, everything we’ve fought for could disappear.

Once in a blue moon, something I write in a newsletter catches the eye of just the right person. It just so happens that one of our supporters recently began working for the Leopold Bachmann Foundation (LBF) in Switzerland, a donor institution that focuses on education. When she read my short comment about our higher education program losing its funding, she wrote and said she might be able to help.

After a series of meetings and emails between this supporter and myself, Randy Borman, and Felipe Borman, the LBF decided to provide the CSF a grant that will fund the ENTIRETY of the Cofan Higher Education Program for at least the next four years! The students who have just started their degree programs will finish, and a new cohort is getting ready to enter. We’re looking especially for young Cofan men and women who want degrees in communications (digital or otherwise), accounting, and education, three fields that are essential to the work of the CSF and Cofan political struggles more generally.

Even better, the LBF suggested that if the first two years of the program go well, they might be interested in bringing an additional cohort of students on board. This kind of institutional support—from a like-minded organization that is very familiar with the challenges facing students like the Cofan—comes around once a decade, if we’re lucky. We can’t let you know how happy we are that the LBF sees the value in our vision and is willing to help us reach our goals of protecting the lands and lives of the Cofan Nation.

In an additional sign of their commitment, the LBF also decided to fund shorter-term education programs. With the LBF’s support, we’ll provide extensive training in GIS technology to a large group of Cofan leaders. With the knowledge of how to use GPS units to map their lands and fight their territorial battles, these leaders will have a tremendous new weapon at their disposal.

We’re still working on projects involving primary and secondary education, but the Cofan Higher Education Project has been one of our core priorities for years. Now, the LBF has committed nearly half a million dollars—and potentially more—to fund this essential effort. And you know what that means: no more annoying pleas from me asking for money to support our Cofan college students! It’s a win-win-win situation for us all. Learning that the LBF had decided to support the Cofan Higher Education Project was one of the happiest days of my life.

Of course, Cofan higher education is only one of our initiatives. We’re still in the midst of serious struggles to protect Cofan territory. Recently, the Azimuth World Foundation and the Houser Foundation stepped in to fund the Cofan Park Guard Force on a series of field-based projects to secure some of the most threatened Cofan lands along the Bermejo River and Cofanes River. But we need to expand this work to cover the entirety of the Cofan Nation’s legalized homeland, which includes more than a million acres of the most biodiverse, climate-change-mitigating forests in the world.

When our Cofan Park Guard Force was at full strength a little more than a decade ago, it achieved a rate of zero deforestation in legalized Cofan territories. The surrounding region, in contrast, suffered some of the most extreme deforestation rates in the world. The program has continued at a smaller scale, but we want to return it to full strength as one of the world’s most innovative and effective conservation efforts.

In our next newsletter, two of our board members—Vince McElhinny and Serena Himmelfarb—will describe the past and present of the Cofan Park Guard Force, how successful it has been, and how promising it can become again if the right resources are available. Though our projects in education, healthcare, and sustainable development are central to our mission, protecting Cofan territory is the basis of everything we do. As dozens of Cofan people have told me over the years, “If we lose our forests, we will no longer be Cofan.” It’s a deep principle at the heart of Cofan history, identity, and hopes for the future.

Illegal mining and logging are bigger threats than ever, as are invasions of the Cofan homeland by illegal settlers. The CSF is committed to helping the Cofan Nation hold onto land it already has, but we also want to expand that territory so Cofan people can inhabit and protect even more of their ancestral homeland. Just recently, Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment approached the Cofan about taking control of nearly 100,000 acres of the western Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve and making it into a Cofan territory and community. Why would the Ecuadorian government want to do this? Because they know the Cofan will protect the land in a way no one else can, including the Ecuadorian state. To secure this new land, we will need more resources, and the Cofan Park Guard Force will have to be at full strength. Illegal settlers have already occupied parts of this supposedly “protected” area. We need to stop the invasion before any more forest is destroyed.

As always, my visit to Cofan territory served as a reminder of how beautiful and important the Cofan homeland is as well as how kind, committed, and capable Cofan people are. (They’re also some of the funniest people I’ve ever met, but I’ll leave that for another newsletter.) With higher education covered thanks to the LBF, please consider expanding your support of the CSF. The Cofan Park Guard Force needs you, as do Randy and our Rapid Response Team in Quito. Without them, nothing we do would be possible.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me 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.

March Park Guard Report

This is from the voice memos sent to board member Serena Himmelfarb about the Park Guards trip.

Summary:

March 4th - 18th 2024, a team of Cofan Park Guards went into the Rio Cofanes/Chispa area to work on reestablishing Cofan presence in this important Cofan territory (head waters of the Aguarico River) that is over 30,000 hectares. Some activities accomplished on this trip were reestablishing presence, cleaning an old Cofan settlement called Chispa, clearing boundary trails and notifying intruders (miners, hunters, land squatters) that this area is Cofan territory that is under conservation. 

There was clear presence of and engagement with illegal camps, squatters, and reports of someone selling protected land under fake titles. 
Most of the boundary trails for this territory have not been opened up yet and with the increasing pressure from mining and land squatters it's important to finish opening the boundary trails. The guards cleaned about 20% of the total boundary trail and are hoping to return in the next upcoming months to continue to work in this territory if they can get the funds together.

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3/27/24

At the start of this month, a team of Park Guards embarked on a mission to the Rio Cofanes Territory for the first time in 6 years, for a 14 day mission to reestablish presence in the area, secure and clear the boundary trails, and determine the presence of illegal activities in the area such as gold, mining and land grabbing. 

Older, experienced park guards were alongside new park guards on their first mission. All five Cofán communities were represented (Zabalo, Dureno, Chandia Nae, Duvuno and Sinagoe).
Rio Cofanes, is a Cofan ancestral territory that FSC played a key role in securing under a land title in 2008 covering about 30K hectares, around 70k acres. At that time, there was no Cofán community there but with this title, there was a plan to form the community of Chispa. 

To accomplish that and to conserve the land, the Cofan nation decided to put the whole territory into the Ecuadorian Governments Socio Bosque program. Because this territory was gained under ancestral rights, it was to be managed by the Cofán Federation, based in Lago Agrio. The money from the Socio Bosque program was about 74k annually that was to go to caring for that territory, including the park guard program, and sustaining the community of Chispa.

But through self-interest, bad management and corruption, that money disappeared. Because that money was misspent and there was no way to show the Socio Bosque program administrators that the money was used responsibly, there was no more funding. So the whole project fell through, and there was no money for the guards or other programs. The people who had begun living in the territory to start the new community, Chispa, were unable to stay where they were because there was no more support.

Another problem that emerged from the management of this territory through the Cofan Federation was that conflicts with miners wanting access to the territory were sometimes handled under the table, which disincentivized community members to live in Chispa because they no longer had a say in what was done with resources, or who could come in to the area.

There is still one family in the area maintaining a CFS property which serves as a base before hiking to Chispa, a 4-5 hour trek. That family accompanied the park guards on this trip.

On this trip, they got to the base around noon to hike to the Chispa community. They arrived in the old community around 5 PM and found everything was overgrown with forest (Serena: Ask Felipe for photos). So the first few days were spent cleaning the house area.

There was a squatter there, an elderly illegal gold miner, an older person told the guards he couldn’t get a job in the city; he wasn’t taking much - a gram or two in a week. But in the next few days of cleaning up, they ran into other miners, one with a full camp and one with a dredge. The Park Guards talked with them and let them know it’s private property and they aren’t supposed to be there. The minute the guards leave, they expect miners will be back. 

Gold miners working on their own or in small groups is that they can be more dangerous to confront, because they are working for their own profit and are often armed, as opposed to other resources where the workers are hired by someone who stays back in the city. 

The Park Guards have to gauge every interaction carefully and have a range of tactics for approaching any given situation.

After cleaning for a few days, they began cleaning up the actual boundary trail. The boundary of the territory is on the cliff sides, so they could not make the trail on the actual GPS line, but rather a little further back along the ridge, where they can monitor the territory.

In all, they spent twelve days on that boundary work. They would spend each day clearing trail, come back to sleep at camp, then the next day pack up and move the campsite to where they finished cutting trail the previous day, and continue clearing trail the rest of the day, pressing forward.

The goal for this trip was to make it to the Sofia ridge, which goes all the way to Chalares (Ask Felipe for Map), but they needed one more week of work to get there.

The Cofan Park guards came out of the Rio Cofanes Chispa area on March 18th. The next day they drove up the Sofia area to talk to local contacts and start planning their entry in August that they hope to start from a different point. They hope to return before then, in April, to finish the last leg of boundary clearing, the trail from Chispa to the Sophia ridge.

Other reports that came out of the trip were that there had been an illegal land grabber selling plots of the territory, along the trail and road, made fake land titles, and was trying to sell them off, but someone from the their team had an accident on one of the cliffs bring the operation to a halt for now. But it was obvious that there is high interest in the area for resources the area has to offer, pointing to a need for the guard program.

Gold mining reports and sightings were heavily present, a few highly illegal ones, actually working on gold veins, using chemicals like cyanide to extract, which pollutes the nearby community of Sophia, and the headwaters of the Rio Cofanes, which pollutes the Agua Rico River that runs into the Amazon River. 

May Newsletter

Dear CFS friends and supporters,

 After Mike’s newsletter last month, we thought it would be a good idea to introduce you to the U.S side of the Cofan Survival Fund. In our two and a half decades of existence, we have gained a lot of supporters, and there have been a lot of developments, so we wanted to take some time to give our newer supporters a broader overview of the work and the projects you support. 

With that in mind, our next few newsletters will be written by members of the board, who will introduce not only themselves but the projects happening at CFS/FSC. We’ll also be inviting you to join us for a live event with Felipe Borman and others working at the heart of these projects. This will be an opportunity to ask questions, and to gain a deeper understanding of the territories, the threats the Cofán people and lands are facing, and what your investment in this work makes possible.

In this newsletter

Danica Novgorodoff and Serena Himmelfarb, the two newest board members and both artists, briefly share experiences and photos from a recent trip to some of the Cofan territories.

A note from Serena

Hi, I’m Serena Himmelfarb (they/them) I joined the CSF board in 2020, joining my aunt Susan Himmelfarb and father John Himmelfarb. Like them, I became involved because of our connection to their cousin Randy Borman, and our shared passion for the environment. I am an art professor with an interest in science, most recently teaching at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.

 A note from Danica

Hi, I’m Danica Novgorodoff (she/her), and I’ve been on the CSF board since late 2021. I first became involved with the Cofán after visiting Zábalo on an ecotour with my husband in 2015 (on our honeymoon!). Randy Borman was our guide, and inspired me deeply to get more involved. I’m an artist, writer, and graphic novelist, and I recently published a children’s book on scientist Alexander von Humboldt’s South American explorations. I live in Louisville, Kentucky with my two daughters and husband (after considering New York City home for 16 years). 

In February, Danica and Serena arrived in Ecuador with a group of five others (including Danica’s mom). In ten days, we visited a Cofán project site in the mountains and two Cofán communities in the rainforest: 

Maps for our Ecuador Feb. 2024 Trip 

Day 1 (18) Arrival in Quito, transport to our Guayllabamba hotel, El Cano

Day 2 (19) El Mitad del Mundo, Quito

Day 3 (20) Left Quito after breakfast, traveled by car to Miskiyacu, crossed river in canoe (Felipe at the helm, against currents!), hiked for about 45 minutes to get to the camp site in Loreto, the “Lifeboat Garden” there has over 60 plant species they are cultivating as it gets too hot from climate change in the Zabalo community for some plants to survive. Toured and harvested edible plants with chef Ken, which he then turns into a marvelous chicken dinner cooked in the outdoor kitchen, on an open fire. The chickens name was “El Enimigo,” for his persistent habit of waking everyone up at 4:30 or 5AM.

Day 4 (21)Travel to Tierras Orientales by car then Zabalo by boat (3 hour drive, 3 hours boat.) The sun set during boat ride, which meant Felipe (on the motor in the back) had to work with Ken (at the tip of the boat) to navigate, using a flashlight to signal direction and obstacles in the water.

 Day 5 (22) Day For Girls presentation in AM, then met up with medical brigade, Seguro Campesino. Excited to see in person what we’ve been working to fund through CSF. Carlos, on staff at the Quito headquarters for our NGO, is the administrative and logistical bridge between the Cofan communities and the Ecuadorian governments public medical program, and without him this team of doctors would not have been able to come to this community. Catfish dinner, stunning silver with black and white stripes.

Day 6 (23)  Trip up the Zabalo River to see wildlife. Lots of Squirrel Monkeys, a Red Wooly Monkey, plus we hear a Howler monkey…it is far away, but sounds like a train blasting by. We see beautiful blue Morpho butterflies, and are escorted by Kingfishers who make sure we find our way out of their territory. Feels like around 100 degrees, with full humidity. Miraculous pineapple slushies when we returned from boat ride. Dinner is a beautiful spread of traditional foods, on a ‘tablecloth’ of palm. Too hot to sleep, experiencing impact of climate change. 

Day 7 (24) Back on boat, 3 hours, saw pink dolphins on return trip. 

Day 8 (25) Travel to Chandia Na'e on Columbian border. We eat watermelon on the canoe, it is very hot. During a very shallow portion of the canoe trip we are asked to get out to lighten the load, and we take the opportunity to swim and ride the current a bit. The men hired to take us, along with Ken and Felipe, often have to hop out an push the canoe.  After eventual arrival we meet our hosts, who live in an stunning house.

They serve us an amazing lunch. After lunch, some of us go out exploring, look at mushrooms, are introduced to “mountain grapes.” Spend the night in tents in the community center, an open air shelter near the soccer field. Wake up at 3 AM to record jungle sounds. 

LISTEN: RECORDING IN CHANDIA NA’E AT 4:00 AM

Day 9 (26) Travel back by canoe again, then van. Hard to imagine leaving already.

Day 10 (27) Dinner with Claire Nicklin, CFS board member, then 45 minutes to airport for flight back to USA. 

March Update: Who's Who at Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofán?

Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,

Where did February go? Where did March go? For all of us here at the Cofan Survival Fund, it has been a busy time. (Have I ever not written that at the beginning of a newsletter?) It’s high time I provide a short overview of what our Ecuadorian team has been working on so you know exactly what your donations are funding.

Freddy Espinosa: Freddy is our legal and bureaucratic expert. He does just about everything. An especially important achievement this month was pressuring the Ecuadorian government to legalize the newly elected community leaders of the Cofan and Ecuador’s other Indigenous Peoples. Ecuador has experienced extreme governmental transitions and is suffering a lack of funds, so the director who signs off on community leadership changes was . . . nonexistent—literally. No one was in the position. And without officially recognized leaders, Cofan communities can’t access resources, stay financially afloat, or sign checks or contracts or agreements. Freddy staged a one-man “sit in” at the office where this director was supposed to be and didn’t leave until someone assumed the position. Finally, someone did, which means Cofan and other Indigenous communities can now function. Freddy is also working with the new president of Zábalo to confront several developing land conflicts and to make sure titling issues for other Cofan lands are addressed. Freddy is a ball of energy, and we rely on him for so much.

María Luisa Lopez: María Luisa has been our accountant for decades. It’s impossible to run a nonprofit without solid accounting, and that’s what María Luisa does for us. Given how “irregular” our funding can be, her job is extremely complicated, and she has to perform miracles at times. Recently, she’s worked on end-of-the-year reporting for the Ecuadorian government and organizing insurance payments and policies for our Ecuadorian team. Without extra insurance, people like Randy would either be bankrupt or dead. And without car insurance for our Ecuadorian staff, we’d be unable to do anything. Unlike some wealthier organizations, our personnel do all their work—whether in cities, Amazonian forests, or Andean valleys—in their personal vehicles, which suffer terribly as a consequence. One day, we’d love to have a truck or two for our team. . . .

Carlos Menendez: Carlos is like Freddy: a force of nature who never stops working. Currently, Carlos handles our healthcare programs, especially the Seguro Campesino Project, which aims to cover the entire Cofan Nation. Seguro Campesino is a government program that’s a combination of Medicare and Social Security for Indigenous Peoples and others living subsistence lifestyles. But to become a member, people have to pay and enroll, both of which are impossible for many Cofan families. Through Carlos, we cover those obligations. Another activity Carlos organizes are the visits of Seguro Campesino medical teams to Cofan communities. There, doctors perform urgent procedures and do diagnostic work to identify problems and arrange for their treatment. Additionally, Carlos helps Cofan individuals and families negotiate the logistical and bureaucratic complexities of Ecuadorian medical institutions. He’s been aiding me with care for two Cofan people with whom I’m very close, both of whom are receiving life-saving treatments. One has bladder cancer, and the other has late-stage diabetes. If it weren’t for Carlos making everything work, they’d be in very bad shape and perhaps no longer with us.

Felipe Borman: Felipe is now the on-the-ground director for our land-protection and conservation work. And so much more. For the past year, he’s been coordinating and participating in all the fieldwork of the Cofan Park Guards in the two hotspots of the Cofan-Bermejo Ecological Reserve and the Río Cofanes Territory. Felipe just returned from Río Cofanes, where he led a team of 12 guards as they cleared boundary trails, reestablished Cofan strategic and residential sites, and let illegal miners know that it’s time to get off Cofan land. Felipe is just as courageous as Randy, and he’s the one member of our team who can handle all that the forest, the rivers, and the mountains throw at him. Without Felipe, our work to protect the Cofan homeland would be impossible.

Randy Borman: And what has Randy, our Executive Director and founder, been up to? Though no longer as spry as he once was, his health has returned. Randy remains our leader, our strategizer, and our visionary. He led the visits of two groups of important supporters to the far corners of Cofan territory, and he helped them understand what we do, why it’s important, and what else we could do with more resources. If you haven’t made a visit to Zábalo and met Randy, it’s time to do it. He knows more about his people than anyone else—certainly more than me, a mere anthropologist—and he also knows the Amazonian environment inside and out. Plus, he’ll convince you why the CSF is the Indigenous rights and forest-protection force the world needs. Randy steers the ship: he does all the research and organizes all the decision-making. Plus, he’s our main point person with all the individuals and organizations who support our work and keep us afloat. Though the rest of our Ecuadorian team is stellar, Randy is the axis around which everything revolves. And that’s a full-time job of emails and meetings and reports and trips to the field.

Other news: Amelia Quenamá continues to oversee our new Lifeboat Garden Project, which involves transplanting all the plant species essential to Cofan medical care and sustenance to a higher-altitude area, where we hope to keep them secure in a time of intensified climate change. Amelia is also working with Emmy Borman and Gissela Yumbo on our efforts to create a truly bilingual and bicultural school curriculum for Cofan communities.

Finally, our Cofan Higher Education Project is still at work. However, after this year, we have no funds to sustain this foundational program. This year, two Cofan MA students are finishing their theses in rural territorial development and intercultural justice, and two BA students are finishing their degrees in engineering and tourism administration. Without highly educated leaders, the Cofan Nation will not be able to weather the challenges it faces. It has hundreds of people who maintain traditional knowledge and ways, but the Cofan also need engineers, doctors, lawyers, and businesspeople if they hope to survive another 500 years. Education is one of our core missions. Please, if you have the interest or ability, consider donating to our Higher Education Project. We have brilliant young people finishing high school and looking to get a high-quality college degree. Without us, they can’t do it. Currently, the whole project runs on $50,000 a year. If we can no longer fund it, the long-term welfare of the Cofan Nation will be at tremendous risk.

If you’d like to discuss our Higher Education Project or anything else, feel free to write me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu so we can schedule a conversation. Once more, I’d like to remind you that our U.S.-based team is all-volunteer. Our board is always at work even though we have full-time jobs that put bread on our tables. 100% of your money goes to the staff and projects in Ecuador described above. Please help us keep them at work, as the future of a proud people and their rainforest homeland—which are essential to mitigating climate change and protecting biodiversity—is essential to our future as well.

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.

January 2024

Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,

Hello from—cold, hot?—San Antonio, Texas. Yesterday started off at 34 degrees but made it to 75 in the afternoon. The climate of Cofan territory is extreme, too, but 40-degree single-day shifts don’t happen there. Reportedly, Texas will return to the 20’s tomorrow, so I’ll definitely be dreaming of the Amazon.

Many of you likely have seen news of the ongoing political violence in Ecuador. In short, criminal gangs allied with Mexican cartels are battling for control of the country’s Pacific ports, from which they ship cocaine grown and processed in Colombia. Ecuador’s new president has declared an “internal war” against the gangs. The situation has calmed over the last week, but it’s a very uncertain time for Ecuador. Luckily, none of the turmoil has reached Cofan territory. But if the country slips into the instability that has plagued Colombia and Mexico, it will bring a whole new set of challenges to the Cofan. After all, the narco economy is closely tied to the mining economy, and mining is one of the main threats facing the Cofan and their land.

We have good news and bad news. First, the good. With the generous support of your donations and grants from the Azimuth Fund and the Houser Foundation, our Project Manager Felipe Borman has doubled his efforts to protect the Cofán-Bermejo Ecological Reserve from gold miners. The Cofan Park Guard Program has returned to a level of activity it hasn’t seen for years. My long-term goal as CSF President has always been to extend the program to the entirety of Cofan territory.

Our Executive Director, Randy Borman, has well-set plans to move the guards into the Río Cofanes Territory as well as the community of Zábalo’s norther border area, both of which are experiencing illegal incursions. Now, all we need is Felipe’s continued direction and additional financial resources to purchase equipment and supplies, move Cofan guards over long distances, and compensate them for their risky work, which keeps them away from their families for months at a time.

Despite the good news about the Park Guard Program, the Cofan Nation continues to struggle with medical issues despite the important contributions made by our Seguro Campesino Project, which is largely supported by the All Peoples Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Louisville, Kentucky. (Thank you SO MUCH, All Peoples!) Seguro Campesino has already saved Cofan lives; it has also allowed Cofan people to see and walk again.

Today, Octavio Lucitante, a close friend in the community of Duvuno, called and told me he was diagnosed with stomach cancer this morning. Luckily, a CSF team went to his village last year and signed his family up for Seguro Campesino. The service will save him tens of thousands of dollars—which he doesn't have—and hopefully his life.

Seguro Campesino and supplementary health insurance have also saved Randy, who has earned the nickname “Lazarus." He has finally recovered from the health problems of the last two years: a heart attack, skin cancer, and urinary-tract and kidney infections that went septic. Without your donations, Randy and the rest of our CSF team in Ecuador would have no wages and no safety net to deal with medical emergencies.

Beyond the Seguro Campesino Project, our Ecuadorian team helps keep Cofan people alive and well in other ways. Not every Cofan person is signed up for Seguro Campesino; we have yet to bring the project to all communities for lack of resources, and some Cofan individuals are hesitant to sign up because of bureaucratic hurdles. For example, signing up sometimes means temporary lapses in small-but-important welfare payments mothers and elders already receive. We are trying to remedy the issue.

With personal funds, I and other members of the CSF team have worked hard to fill the gaps. The money is important, but the logistical skills of CSF staff in Ecuador make the real difference. I recently offered to pay for an elder’s cataract-removal surgery, which typically costs $3,000. But CSF’s trusty legal expert, Freddy Espinosa, was able to locate a high-quality medical-care facility in Quito that offered a “free week” of the surgery.

Freddy got the elder an appointment, I paid for his tests and travels, and Freddy paid for his food and arranged his lodging at CSF headquarters in Quito. Now, the elder is cataract-free in one eye. In a few months, he’ll get the same operation for his other eye. He’s overjoyed with the results and grateful for CSF support. When his operations are done, I’ve promised to arrange the same surgery for another elder.

All too often, however, things don’t work out as we wish they would. You might be wondering who the two beautiful elders are in the photo at the top of this newsletter. Their names are Elena Criollo and José Queta. They once lived in the Río Cofanes Territory, where they worked closely with the CSF to protect the area from miners. When our resources for their work dwindled, we could no longer compensate them. They returned to their home community and a life of fishing, hunting, gardening, gathering, and doing anything they could to make the small amount of money they needed.

Yesterday afternoon, Elena and José drowned while panning for gold in the headwaters of the Aguarico River. The river rose unexpectedly and their small canoe capsized. In the community of Sinangoe, Cofan people saw their bodies pass in the turbulent waters, but they were unable to retrieve them. The search for their remains is ongoing.

Unlike other miners, Cofan people use a handmade wooden tray, an iron rod, and manual labor to find small amounts of gold. There’s no machinery, no mercury, and no cyanide. It’s one of the most environmentally friendly “jobs” available to the Cofan. But it’s also dangerous. We have long been interested in promoting safe, sustainable, artisanal mining techniques for Cofan communities. Unfortunately, Elena and José passed away before we could create a way for them to earn the income they needed without putting their lives in jeopardy.

The CSF is a one-stop-shop for Cofan welfare. If we had the resources to implement all our projects, no Cofan person would be exposed to such dangers. No rivers would be despoiled by toxic mining. No communities would have to negotiate political turmoil without formally educated, Spanish-speaking leaders. No family would have to maneuver through a byzantine medical bureaucracy without adequate support. And the Cofan Nation could rest assured that their rainforest homeland would be protected far into the future—and that they would find ways to access the income they need without putting their bodies, rivers, and forests at risk.

There is much more to say, but it’s simply too urgent and emotional a time. All of us are grieving the loss of Elena and José, and we’re afraid for the health of Octavio. As soon as I send off this newsletter, I’ll turn to working with our CSF team in Quito to make sure Octavio gets the care he needs to survive his impending battle with cancer.

If you’d like to discuss any of our work or the challenges the Cofan Nation faces, feel free to write me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu so we can schedule a conversation. I’d be happy to speak to you about our project needs in our three core areas: land protection, healthcare, and education. I want to remind you that our U.S.-based team is all-volunteer. None of us receive a paycheck; rather, we donate our own money, as well as our time and energy, so CSF staff in Ecuador can make use of all your donations to get their work done. If you want to fight for the welfare of Indigenous Amazonian Peoples and the most biologically diverse, carbon-rich forests in the world, giving to the CSF is a great way to do it.

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.

November 2023

Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,

Despite months between newsletters, the Cofan Survival Fund (CSF) is alive and well! Each day, our Ecuadorian team continues and expands the work you’ve supported over the past two and a half decades: protecting the one-million-acre Cofan homeland, educating a new generation of Cofan leaders, and providing lifesaving medical care for members of the Cofan Nation.

Though CSF’s work has always been a collective effort, no one has been more important to it than Randy Borman, who is pictured above in his earlier years. Randy is founder of the CSF and Executive Director of our Ecuadorian counterpart, the Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofan. He is also one of the most celebrated Indigenous activists in Latin America. Cofan individuals and communities have elected him as their leader many times, first in the community of Dureno, then in Zábalo, and then as the President and Director of Territory of the Cofan ethnic federation. Over and over, the Cofan have relied on Randy to lead their fight for survival—and he continues to fight as hard as ever.

Randy’s battles for his people and their rainforest homeland, however, have taken a toll on his wellbeing. From the death threats of his early days fighting the oil industry to the kidnapping of his son Felipe during conflicts between the Cofan Park Guards and gold miners, Randy has had many reasons to give up, but he never has.

The costs to Randy’s body have been extreme; a life fighting for the forest comes at a steep price. 21 years ago, I was living with Randy in Quito when he suffered a near-fatal case of equine encephalitis. The fever raged for weeks, and Randy’s brain underwent severe trauma. With a destroyed pituitary gland, Randy has relied on hormone-replacement therapy ever since just to stay alive. The side effects are tough, but so is Randy.

Recently, the threats to Randy’s life have returned. A year ago, I wrote to let you know that Randy had suffered a heart attack. As always, he pulled through that health scare with grit and determination.

The last two months have been some of the hardest. Living on the equator and spending so much time on mountains and rivers and wetlands have damaged Randy’s skin. Years ago, doctors detected carcinoma (cancer) on Randy’s face, but they removed it before it spread. Two months ago, they discovered that the cancer had come back with a vengeance. Four carcinomas were deep and threatening to spread to other parts of Randy’s body. A week of surgeries and recuperation in the hospital put the cancer at bay. The cancerous flesh cut from Randy’s nose and ears left him looking like he’d been in a fight with a jaguar, but the scars are the perfect adornments for the kind of warrior Randy is.

Even though the cancer is gone, the experience put a great strain on Randy’s immune system. A month ago, he developed a urinary-tract infection that made it all the way into his kidneys. Then, his body went septic. So it was another week in the hospital so the doctors could keep him alive and get the infection under control. He survived the latest threat to his life just as he’s survived the others.

Many of you know Randy personally, which is why I wanted to give you this health report. I also wanted all of us to remember that Randy is an incredibly courageous and determined man. He did not ask for this life of service. Indeed, one of the great ironies of his life is that his battle for his people’s rainforest homeland has prevented him from enjoying it. Randy’s political work keeps him in cities and government offices, whereas what he’s always wanted is to fish, hunt, and tend his garden in Zábalo with his Cofan family and friends. Life in the forest is his true love.

I’ve never met a person as brave, determined, ethical, and selfless as Randy. When I poked my nose into his business in 2001 to start writing about the CSF for my dissertation in anthropology, Randy invited me to live with him and his family. He gave me total access to the organization’s records, reports, grant applications, and account books, and he let me tag along to all his meetings. He only made two demands. If I wanted to write about him and his work, he said, I had to learn the Cofan language A’ingae and spend at least a year in his home community of Zábalo to understand how other Cofan people feel about him, his leadership, and the CSF. The demands assured me of Randy’s honesty and authenticity. I can’t imagine many other leaders, Indigenous or not, making a similar offer.

Each of Randy’s brushes with death reminds me of all that he, the CSF, and the Cofan Nation have accomplished. No one thought the tiny “tribe” would survive the onslaught of the oil industry in the 1960’s, but they did. And then, often led directly by Randy, the Cofan went on to recuperate one million acres of their ancestral territory and to protect it more effectively than almost all other Indigenous Peoples—as well as Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment and National Park System. Many Cofan leaders have been essential to this story, but Randy has been the most important of them all.

You, our supporters, should rest assured that we’ve long been preparing for the day when Randy is no longer able to lead the fight. His son Felipe, armed with BA and MA degrees and fluency in English, Spanish, and A’ingae, is now managing most of our projects. CSF board member Hugo Lucitante, now working on his PhD in anthropology, will also be a key player in the future of the Cofan Nation. Gissela Yumbo received her BS in engineering with the support of our Cofan Higher Education Project, and she’s part of the Cofan team working to create a truly bicultural, high-quality curriculum for schools in Cofan communities. Raúl Queta, who received his MA in intercultural justice and the rights of nature with CSF support, is now working with Gissela through his position with Ecuador’s Ministry of Education. And there are many more Cofan youth ready to take over when Randy makes the decision to “retire.” Personally, though, I know that as long as he’s breathing, Randy will fight. It’s simply who he is.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States. I wanted to write this newsletter to express my own incredible thankfulness for Randy and his invitation, offered three decades ago, to become part of his life and the Cofan struggle. Additionally, I’m thankful for the love and support of all my Cofan friends and collaborators. Finally, I’m very thankful for YOU. Without your aid, the Cofan Nation would be in a treacherous position; I hate to think what the oil companies, loggers, gold miners, narcotraffickers, and settlers would’ve done to Cofan people and territory without you.

All of you have played an essential role in the miraculous story of Cofan survival. With your continued support, the story will have many more chapters, each more affirming and hope-inspiring than the last. Few of us have put our lives on the line over and over again like Randy, but more than anyone else, he knows that none of his accomplishments would’ve been possible without you.

So please keep the support coming! Last year was one of the CSF’s most financially stable in a long time, but there’s so much more we could do if we had additional resources. Your contributions truly mean the difference between life and death for many Cofan people and all the beings that inhabit their homeland, the most biodiverse place on earth. Cofan land is also essential to all our futures given the increasingly dire climate crisis. If Cofan forests don’t continue to stand, we’ll all be in an extremely precarious position. Ultimately, Randy, the Cofan, and the CSF are fighting for the world’s survival, not just their own.

If you’d like to discuss a project, idea, or donation, feel free to write me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu so we can schedule a conversation. Right now, we have a particular interest in donors who can help fund our Cofan Higher Education Project. Jon Will and the Betty Louise Smith Fund have supported Cofan education for years, but their aid is coming to an end as they spend down their endowment. I’d be happy to speak to you about this need or anything else. I’m a big believer in the CSF: as a volunteer, I don’t just donate my time and energy to the CSF, I also donate my money. I’d like to tell you why that choice was one of the best ones I’ve ever made.

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.

July 2023

Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,

Once again, I find myself writing a newsletter I should’ve sent months ago. To put it simply, we at the Cofan Survival Fund (CSF) are overwhelmed with work and travel. Whether we’re U.S.-based volunteers searching for funding or Cofan activists using that funding to sustain our initiatives in Amazonia, we hardly get a day of rest. But to us, it’s well worth the effort.

Today, I write from the Andes Mountains and Ecuador’s capital city, Quito. Tomorrow, a Cofan family will arrive to stay with me. Others are already here. Some are CSF employees who are using your donations to fight for Cofan lands in government offices, and others are depending on your support to battle illnesses in Quito hospitals. In a week, I’ll be in the forest working with Cofan collaborators to finish research for a book on the role Cofan shamans play in protecting Cofan territory. Two more Cofan individuals—CSF board member Hugo Lucitante and project manager Felipe Borman—are in Leticia, Colombia. With their expenses paid by scholarships, they’re attending an academic conference to share Cofan lessons and accomplishments with Indigenous leaders, human rights activists, and anthropologists from around the world.

In my recent newsletters, I’ve described our important work in the realms of land rights, healthcare, and education. Today, I want to remind you of one of our smaller-scale efforts, but one that is equally essential: our partnership with the Cofan community of Zábalo to save two species of Amazonian river turtles, Podocnemis unifilis and Podocnemis expansa.

Zábalo residents began repopulating the Aguarico River with these threatened species decades ago. With creativity, determination, and the support of people like you, the turtle populations first stabilized and then grew. Not long ago, one could travel the entire Aguarico River and not see a single river turtle. Now, if you’re in Zábalo’s territory, you’ll see hundreds if not thousands sunning themselves on beaches and logs. The turtles are perfect symbols of how an Indigenous community, committed scientists, and international donors can collaborate to return an imperiled planet to health.

Zábalo residents devised their own method to save the turtles. Cofan people have long enjoyed eating river-turtle eggs, but when they realized how few turtles were left, they went into action. 30 years ago, they took the first steps to create what is now a proven process: first, prohibiting the capture of adult turtles; second, locating turtle nests and protecting them from flooding rivers; third, transplanting threatened nests to “artificial” beaches on high ground; fourth, putting newly hatched turtles into pools and feeding them for six to twelve months; and fifth, releasing the turtles into rivers and lakes after they have become strong and large enough to fend off predators. To see what the process looks like, watch this VIDEO from our project manager Felipe Borman.

As usual, Cofan ingenuity worked. The recovery of Zábalo’s river turtle populations is confirmed by everyday sightings, but scientific papers also document the Cofan’s success. In 2005, a Field Museum scientist and three Zábalo residents published “Cofán Indians’ Monitoring of Freshwater Turtles in Zábalo, Ecuador.” More recently, scientists from the World Wildlife Fund and Ecuador’s National Institute of Biodiversity, together with nine Zábalo residents, wrote “Assessment of the Charapa Turtle (Pelomedusoidea: Podocnemis) Community Management Program in Zábalo, Ecuadorian Amazon Region.” Both articles share decades of Zábalo data to describe the power of Cofan conservation.

Zábalo’s success has inspired ecologists, environmental organizations, and Indigenous communities to replicate Cofan techniques. What was once an idea conceived in a remote Amazonian village has become an international model for conservation success. At a time when anyone who cares about the environment can use a dose of optimism, the Cofan are here to assure us that with the right support, Indigenous Peoples can maintain biodiversity and protect forests in ways that will ensure a more sustainable future for us all.

The CSF is a “one-stop shop”: by giving to us, you’re aiding the survival of everything from newborn river turtles, to one million acres of rainforest territory, to two thousand Cofan individuals who are fighting to maintain their health, knowledge, language, culture, and autonomy. With your help, the Cofan will survive another 500 years as a thriving Indigenous Nation that will inspire us to imagine—and create—a world in which cultural and biological diversity are not doomed to disappear.

Against the odds, the Cofan have survived epidemic diseases, voracious extractive industries, and waves of non-Indigenous settlers who want to deforest Cofan land to produce beef, coffee, and palm oil. The great bulk of the credit belongs to the Cofan, but the generosity of individuals like you has played an important role in this miraculous story. As always, the Cofan want us to know that their fight is our fight. If they fail in their struggle, we’ll lose the biodiversity, freshwater resources, and climate-change-mitigating forests that are essential to us all.

Few other organizations work as efficiently as we do. Our U.S.-based nonprofit is an all-volunteer force. Our Ecuadorian team puts your donations to direct use. We don’t have bulky overhead: no do-nothing administrators, no public-relations teams, and no program consultants. In the U.S., we work hard to find funds; in Ecuador, Cofan people know exactly what to do with them. Our operating budget is less than a tenth of similar organizations, yet we believe our accomplishments are ten times as great.

Whether you give $10 or $10,000, know that you’re playing an essential role in the Cofan’s success. If you’d like to discuss what your gift can accomplish, write me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu so we can schedule a conversation. I’m always happy to speak to existing and potential supporters. I don’t just donate my time and energy to the CSF, I also donate my money—and I’d like to tell you why that choice was one of the best ones I’ve ever made.

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.

April 2023

Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,

Hello, dear supporters. It’s been months since we at the Cofan Survival Fund (CSF) have sent an update. And that’s partially because we’ve been so busy! We’ve been working nonstop: helping Cofan people battle illegal gold miners, protecting Cofan land rights in court, enrolling Cofan families in healthcare and eldercare programs, managing community-conservation projects, and convincing the Ecuadorian state to put park-guard positions and carbon-sequestration revenues in the hands of Cofan people.

Some very sad news has also diverted our attention. At least two Cofan elders have died since we last wrote. In addition, a Cofan leader in the community of Dureno—Eduardo Mendua—was killed in February. His death was part of the Cofan’s long struggle to survive the horrors of oil extraction. We knew Eduardo well. We’re monitoring the situation closely and ready to help in any way we can.

Thinking about the recent tragedies has made us realize that everything we do could disappear overnight if we don’t have a new generation prepared to take control. Our Cofan Higher Education Project, which helps Cofan students obtain undergraduate and graduate degrees, is one way to ensure our long-term stability. We also help younger Cofan students acquire world-class educations in Quito, Ecuador’s capital. But not all Cofan children can be part of these programs. We don’t have enough resources to pay their way. Additionally, many Cofan children don’t want to live away from their families and communities for years on end.

Cultural Transmission Project

To meet the needs of these students, we’ve begun a new effort: the Cultural Transmission Project (CTP). With generous support from Chicago’s First Analysis Institute, a team of three Cofan women is combining Cofan and Western knowledge to create high-quality, primary-school curricula that will prepare Cofan children to negotiate a rapidly changing world while maintaining their identity and culture.

The women directing the CTP are perfectly positioned. Amelia Quenamá is an elder born and raised in traditional Cofan ways. Gissela Yumbo graduated through our Cofan Higher Education Project with a degree in engineering and is a shining example of how capable Cofan students are when given a chance. And Emmy Borman has substantial teaching experience and an MA in early-childhood education. Working alongside them is Raúl Queta—another graduate of our Cofan Higher Education Project—who currently works for Ecuador’s Ministry of Education. Raúl is ready to help these women make sure their curricula receive official approval to be taught in community schools.

The CTP team is dedicated to truly bicultural education. Its members are interviewing Cofan people to determine what it means to be Cofan yet is in danger of being lost, including language, ecological knowledge, traditional medicine, handicraft production, subsistence practices, and Cofan foodways. With the data they collect, the CTP team is developing course modules and lesson plans. Cofan children can learn geometry as they produce palm-fiber thread and weave it into the intricate patterns of bags and hammocks. They can learn biology and ecology as they master Cofan hunting and fishing techniques. And they can learn botany and chemistry as they prepare dozens of Cofan plant medicines.

The idea is simple yet powerful: the right educational program can ensure the continuity of Cofan culture while preparing forest-dwelling students to handle a new world. Many will obtain high-school degrees and become valuable members of their communities. Others will move on to college to learn new languages and specialized skills, eventually becoming globally capable leaders. We hope the most dedicated follow the lead of Cofan students Hugo and Sadie Lucitante, who are now earning PhD’s in anthropology with me at the University of Texas at San Antonio. They are already preparing to manage a research and conservation organization allied with the CSF.

Despite the CTP’s incredible progress, it needs more resources—time, personnel, equipment, and financing—to reach its potential. Amelia, Gissela, and Emmy are collecting a tremendous amount of data in the form of audio interviews, video recordings, written notes, photographs, and pedagogical materials. They need to organize it in an easily accessible database, which will require additional computers, expensive software, and other equipment.

Ecuador’s Ministry of Education has always acknowledged the importance of bilingual and bicultural education. But the materials it produces are insufficient to meet Cofan needs. It’s up to the CSF to take on a responsibility that no one else can handle. The CTP’s work will never end: culture and circumstances change, and education must change along with them. But we hope that in the next few years, we’ll have a model that can aid Indigenous Peoples the world over.

Serving the World

As the CSF constantly stresses, the Cofan aren’t doing this work just for themselves, they’re doing it for all of us. Protecting their forests will maintain essential biodiversity and facilitate climate-change-mitigation strategies for everyone. The success of the CTP will help other Indigenous Peoples use schooling to assure their survival and protect their own lands.

To make sure the CTP and all CSF projects succeed, we need your aid. 2022 was one of our best fundraising years to date. Yet we still aren’t halfway to our goal of securing $250,000 a year to cover our core personnel and missions. Though it sounds substantial, that sum amounts to protecting each acre of the Cofán homeland for only $.25 a year. Few other organizations work as efficiently as we do.

Donating $100 or $1,000 a month is a highly effective way to secure the future of the earth and its biological and cultural diversity. Despite its successes, the CSF operates on a shoestring budget that is anything but stable. Our U.S.-based fundraising and communication team works on an all-volunteer basis. We wish we had the money to hire a full-time director, development coordinator, and communications team, but we don’t. Instead, every dime the CSF gets goes directly to Ecuador and the Cofan, who know exactly what to do with it.

You can help the Cofan protect their culture, health, and territory--and our own future--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.

If you’d like to discuss the possibility of making a substantial commitment, feel free to contact me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu. I’m always happy to hear from our supporters and tell them why I’ve made the choice to donate so much of my own time and money to the CSF.

Finally, I wanted to share one more piece of good news: my partnership with the Cofan Nation recently helped me win a Guggenheim Fellowship. A Guggenheim is a prestigious award for individuals working across the arts and sciences. In my case, it’s also a tremendous recognition of the importance of the Cofan struggle. With the announcement of the new Guggenheim Fellows, many individuals will see the words “Cofan” and “Cofan Survival Fund” for the first time. We hope the news will gain us more supporters; we also hope it will increase your own confidence in how much the Cofan and the CSF mean to the world.

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 Newsletter December 2022

Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,

With the holiday season upon us, I wanted to send one final end-of-the-year newsletter. Our November message told you how much the CSF has accomplished this year. In this note, I want to give you a more focused, visual report of one of our most important current projects: our effort to remove illegal gold miners from the Reserva Ecológica Cofán-Bermejo (Cofan-Bermejo Ecological Reserve) (RECB), a stunningly beautiful, incredibly diverse, and highly endangered area of approximately 140,000 acres that the Cofan Nation controls along Ecuador's northern border with Colombia.

The photos in this newsletter were taken by Felipe Borman, a long-time Cofan coordinator of our Ecuador work and also a recent participant in our Cofan Higher Education Project. Felipe is just finishing his MA degree in rural territorial development. While completing his graduate studies, Felipe and other members of our Ecuadorian team worked with 17 members of the Cofan communities of Avié and Chandia Na'e, both located inside the RECB, to help them learn how to become the highly effective caretakers their territory needs. For four days, these Cofan ecological stewards traveled far from their rainforest homes to stay in our Ecuadorian headquarters, which are located in the national capital of Quito. There, they underwent intense training sessions on how to negotiate the Ecuadorian legal system, how to use GPS units to map threats to their homeland, how to treat medical emergencies in back-country conditions, and how to carry out a patrolling plan to protect their territory and confront the illegal intruders who are trying to destroy it.

For two months, this new Cofan park guard team will reestablish the RECB boundary trails, confront miners and other forest intruders, generate reports on their work, coordinate with Ecuador's Ministry of Environment, and chart a path forward for the long-term care of their territory. They are in the field right now, and they will return to share what they've learned with our Ecuadorian staff on December 18th. This initial round of their work is funded by one of the CSF's most dependable partners, the Azimuth World Foundation.

In the below photos, you can get an intimate sense of what it looks like to save one of the world's most precious environments, which is heart of the Cofan Nation's ancestral homeland.

The beautiful peaks, valleys, and forests of the RECB. In 2001, a team of scientists from the Field Museum of Natural History carried out a scientific inventory of the area and determined that it is the most biologically diverse landscape in the world.

At the end of their training session in Quito, the members of our new RECB park guard team receive certificates that attest to their mastery of essential forest-protection knowledge and skills.

An employee of Ecuador's Ministry of Environment works with our Cofan team in Quito to pinpoint areas near the RECB where illegal gold-mining activities are known to be occurring.

Freddy Espinosa, our team's legal expert, explains key aspects of Ecuadorian environmental and Indigenous-rights law to training participants.

Participants receive special training on how to handle medical emergencies in remote areas, which are days and miles from roads, doctors, and hospitals. The park guard work is a necessity, but it's also incredibly dangerous. These people are literally laying their lives on the line to protect lands that are essential to their way of life but also essential to sequestering the carbon upon which the entire earth's future depends.

Felipe Borman (wearing a pink shirt in the center), helps the new Cofan park guards learn how to use GPS units that will be key to their work clearing the RECB boundaries and locating illegal mining operations.

Randy Borman, our Ecuadorian team's Executive Director, provides a lesson on the RECB's historical and political background to training participants.

After their training is complete, the guards travel back to their communities inside the RECB and prepare to begin their work in the forest.

A new Cofan park guard fords one of the RECB's many pristine streams, which are under direct threat from the mining invasion.

Cesar Lucitante, a member of the community of Avié with a long history of forest protection, maps a point with a GPS unit.

The park guards work in extremely rough terrain, carrying incredibly heavy packs filled with food and equipment and establishing temporary camps as they travel through the RECB.

Four Cofan guards take a moment to rest and relax after a day of hard work.

Cofan guards walk through a riverbed along the RECB boundaries to map another point with a GPS unit.

This initial effort to reestablish a Cofan park guard presence at the RECB will make an incredible difference to the future of this protected area. Knowing that the Cofan are organized, watching, and coordinating with the Ecuadorian government will convince many miners that it is no longer worth the risk to engage in their criminal activities. But we can't be naive: even if they leave, many will try to come back.

More than a decade ago, when the CSF still had strong relations with institutional donors including the MacArthur Foundation, USAID, and the Moore Fund, we were able to sustain a team of 50 Cofan park guards who maintained a full-time presence throughout the Cofan Nation's entire legalized territory: more than one million acres. After the global recession of 2008, these organizations gradually withdrew their support of our Park Guard Program. As CSF President, one of my personal goals has been to resurrect the entire program at full strength. To do so, we need at least $250,000 each year--an extremely modest sum, as it requires only $.25 to ensure the future of one acre of this precious portion of Amazonia. Protecting this land requires money: for equipment, logistics, communication, transportation, legal actions, and, most importantly, for our Cofan stewards. The guards have to spend months at a time away from their homes and families, leaving the latter without members who can hunt, fish, garden, gather, and engage in temporary wage labor to support the ones they love. When the park guards are working in distant lands to fight off miners, settlers, and loggers, they cannot be in their communities to care for their families. Consequently, we at the CSF have learned the hard lesson that our Cofan guards deserve a modest paycheck for their work. Without one, they cannot sustain their parents, spouses, and children, and none of us would ever ask them to make such an awful sacrifice.

All of the CSF's initiatives, including our new RECB park guard program, require resources that only the outside world can supply. The Cofan are an extremely rich people when it comes to their lands and their culture. But financially, they are some of the poorest people in the world. They could never sustain these efforts on their own. That is why it up to us--to you--to give them the tools they need to care for their homeland. All of us want the biodiversity of Cofan territory to survive. All of us want the Cofan to protect the forests and rivers that are essential to maintaining essential climatological and hydrological systems. And all of us want to mitigate global climate change, which will one day make our own lives in North America, Europe, and everywhere else impossible unless we do something to stop it. It's time for us to give the Cofan what they need to keep us and the entire world safe.

You can help the Cofan protect their culture, health, and territory--and our own future--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.

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. I'm always happy to speak to actual or potential funders of the CSF's initiatives. After all, I donate part of my own income to the CSF, and my work as CSF President is completely voluntary. If you're curious about my more academic involvements with the Cofan Nation, feel free to consult my PERSONAL WEBPAGE.

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.