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
