Cofan Survival Fund July 2021 Newsletter

Greetings Cofan Survival Fund Supporters!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

Cofan Survival Fund June 2021 Newsletter

Greetings Cofan Survival Fund Supporters!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

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

Cofan Survival Fund April 2021 Newsletter

Greetings Cofan Survival Fund Supporters!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

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

Cofan Survival Fund October 2019 Newsletter

The FSC's Work Continues!

Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you,

Michael L. Cepek

President of the Board, Cofan Survival Fund

Cofan Survival Fund May 2018 Newsletter

The Threat of Gold Mining in Cofan Territory

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

Cofan Survival Fund January Newsletter

Keeping the Cofan Park Guards Active

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

Seeing a Harpy Eagle Up Close

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

Fighting for Cofan Land Rights

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

Cofan Survival Fund June Newsletter

Take Action NOW to Support Our Global Safety Net

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

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

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

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

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

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

Living in a Dream World

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

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

Meanwhile, in the Real World

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

Cofan Survival Fund December Newsletter

Coming in 2017 – A New Reserve?

2016 saw 40,000 acres added to the Cofan lands. 2017 promises to bring another major addition. Randy and the others at the Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofan (FSC) are making good progress on gaining title to 18,000 acres adjacent to the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, a reserve that’s included Cofan territory since 1991. The land survey and property description are complete; the process will be finalized as soon as the additional $10,000 needed to cover the remaining costs can be found. As Randy notes, “Gaining title to 18,000 acres for $20,000 – a little over $1.00 an acre – is the sort of deal we should all hope for!”

On Board with the Cofan

Mary Hason has been on board with the Cofan for many years, making generous donations and attending Randy’s talks when he visited Chicago.  But earlier this year she got on board literally, jumping into a canoe that took her and two friends on a two-day camping trip on the Río Zábalo.

“My Cofan river guide, Alphonso, paddled as I watched two blue morpho butterflies lazily flutter overhead until the end of their territory where another pair took over and traveled with us. Three different kinds of kingfisher birds noisily announced our arrival in each new territory along with troops of monkeys swinging through the trees and watching us. The diversity of the plants and birds was incredible.  Alphonso paddled me close to beautiful flowers and even a baby anaconda so that I could take pictures.

“The most fun was when he caught a good-sized fish that pulled us into the bushes along the shore.  I paddled us back out as he slowly got the fish into the canoe. Next he paddled to the shore where he hopped out, cut a length from a 2” sapling, and knocked out the fish. That night at our campsite as we ate our delicious fish, I thought about our perfect day.

“The Amazon Rainforest Ecotour was one of the best experiences of my life.  Randy’s ability to weave stories about the cultural and scientific importance of local plants, people, and ecology was captivating. Experiencing the daily lives of the Cofan in their village of Zábalo, eating their tasty foods, and falling asleep to the sounds of the rainforest in our very comfortable accommodations was wonderful.”

Jungle-Keeping

This fall, Randy enlisted two long-time supporters, Geoff Corriveau and his wife Sue, to help with a major jungle-keeping project – clearing and restoring Park Guard trails in the Cofan area surrounding the Gueppi River. 

Once highly protected by routine Park Guard patrols, the area was now the victim of diminished Park Guard program funding. The Gueppi was left unpatrolled; illegal hunting and fishing became more and more frequent. It was time to reopen the trails and repair the vandalized ranger station and Geoff and Sue signed on. 

From Randy’s report: “Cutting away logs and tree falls with the chainsaw…clearing the trail with machetes, hacking through re-growing brush and masses of vines…. The trail is in verified Bad Condition…camp at a pleasant rocky stream…almost out of gas for the chainsaw…at 4:30 p.m., we’re a long way from the nearest good campsite…begin to run along what remains of the trail to make it to the Uttetsu Nai’qui with time enough to make camp…a couple of large turkey-like birds fly up…by 7:30 p.m. turkey stew is bubbling…finally descending to a Gueppi tributary…the boat trip down the Gueppi is always amazing…as we move down the stream, the sensation of timelessness is strong…monkeys crash heavily through the trees; on the bank, countless birds fly up as we cruise down.”

The trail is now clear again, the ranger station repaired. "Returning, we half walk, half run as we move easily along the trail. Spix’s Guans fly up off the trail, woolly monkeys stare down at us, a small herd of collared peccaries runs parallel to the trail for a while..."

For now, the cleared trail and repaired ranger station will signal that the Cofan are watching. But unless regular patrols resume, the forest will again be in danger.  $1500 a month is all it will take – a park guard’s salary, food, and transportation. Perhaps a day or two of Cofan “jungle-keeping” would be a nice addition to your Christmas list?

Cofan Survival Fund September Newsletter

Making It Real

We reported in March that after eight years of FSC leadership and on-the-ground work, 40,000 acres of Andean land in critical Amazonian headwaters along the South American Continental Divide came under permanent protection--at least in theory. Now Randy and the FSC staff are in the thick of creating the regulations, management plans, and tax infrastructure needed to turn the legislation and documents that created The Provincial Area for Conservation and Sustainable Use in the Eastern Mountain Range of Carchi into a working system that will guarantee that this land maintains its biodiversity and provides essential ecological services for centuries to come.

FSC Leads the Way - Again!

Later this year, Randy will join colleagues to lead a workshop on developing long-term conservation strategies for Colombia's Rio Mira watershed. The workshop will bring together local and provincial governments, local communities, and NGOs to begin planning for the protection of this critically important river system, which descends from the Andes Mountains to the lowland forests of Colombia's Pacific Coast, close to the Ecuadorian border. Known throughout South America (and beyond) as an expert in building broad-scale land protection and conservation structures, Randy's leadership will be a critical factor in the success of this work.

Climate Change Hits Home

Home in this case is the Cofan village of Zábalo, which Randy and his Cofan friends and family members founded in the early 1980s when oil companies and nonindigenous settlers despoiled the area where they had previously lived. Zábalo sits along the banks of the Aguarico River, which provides not only water for drinking, cooking, and bathing, but the turtle eggs and fish that are important parts of the Cofan diet. The community's homes are designed to withstand the normal seasonal floods with no problems. This year, however, the floods reached record highs and, instead of lasting a few days, lasted well over a month. Many in the village had to use boats to get to and from their houses. And so it happens that even those living in the lands we are counting on to keep us from the worst of global warming are now experiencing its effects.

FSC Park Guard Program Update

FSC is advocating aggressively for the government to hire Cofans as park guards in Cofan territories.

The well-established FSC Park Guard Program is operating at a reduced level due to diminished funds. One area of hope: the government now pays for some park guard positions throughout the country. In the Cofan territories, at least, they are hiring only university students, not the Cofans already trained as park guards, thus hindering both the effectiveness of the program and the ability of a good number of Cofan to make a decent living while protecting their land and chosen way of life.

For the foreseeable future, it's clear the Park Guard Program, and its proven cadre of effective rangers, will depend in large part on the continued support of its U.S. fans to remain viable and effective.

Up Next - A New Reserve?

Just south of the Cofan community of Zabalo, there are 20,000 acres of pristine forests outside the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, and only nominally under Cofan control. FSC is in the middle of a surveying project here, a first step in bringing these additional 20,000 acres under official protection. Once again, FSC and the Cofan people are making conservation happen where it otherwise wouldn't.

GOODSEARCH: Giving through Shopping

Here's a fun way to support CFS through shopping: before making an online purchase, go to goodsearch.com and type in the name of the store from which you want to make a purchase. The site will tell you whether this store will make a contribution to your favorite cause and how much. The first time you use the site, you will have to choose a cause. Enter cofan.org and it will come up automatically in the future every time you make a purchase through the site. Click on the store's link from the goodsearch.com page and shop away! REI, for instance, will make a contribution of 2.5%.

FSC is advocating aggressively for the government to hire Cofans as park guards in Cofan territories.