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.