CHILDREN'S TROPICAL FORESTS NEWS

Volume 3 January 1998

Editor: Roger Littlewood

ECUADOR

CTF WORLDWIDE CO-OPERATES TO COUNTER NEW ROAD THREAT TO JATUN SACHA

Our Front Page Map shows the route of a road shortly to be built between the Western and Eastern sections of the Jatun Sacha Biological Station, the primary rainforest reserve in Amazonian Ecuador which has been the principal focus of CTF UK's rainforest preservation efforts for the last two years. The construction of the road, which has been approved by the Local Authorities at the request of the leaders of 12 local communities, is certain to go ahead.

As you can see from the map, the 161 hectares comprising the Western section of the Reserve is currently separated from the main block, although the intervening land not owned and protected by the Biological Station is still forested. This intervening strip of forest, through which the road will be built, is owned by five farmers and has recently become a prime target for logging. The main problem that the road causes for the integrity of the Jatun Sacha reserve is not the 5 to 10 metre strip of the forest that will be cleared to link the local communities with the outside world, but the fact that the five forested properties will be made accessible by the road and then logged. A one kilometre (1000 metre) wide strip of primary forest between the two sectors of the Jatun Sacha Biological Station will be permanently lost.

In a letter to the worldwide network of Children's Tropical Forest groups, Michael McColm, who is Vice President of the Jatun Sacha Foundation, says that the only solution is to buy the entire area fringing the new road to unite the Reserve into one block. This is shown on our map in hatched green. 'If we are not successful in connecting this Western block to the larger remaining forested portion of the Reserve, the 161 hectares will become an island. This will isolate the already few existing mammal populations and the outstanding biodiversity inside Jatun Sacha will be reduced. The 532 bird species (one in eighteen of all the species in the World) and 863 butterfly species (just over 60 species in the whole of Britain) and countless other lifeforms will be threatened if pastures replace mature forest on both sides of the road'.

The cost of purchasing the entire strip is just under $60,000 (approx £38,000) and Michael McColm has appealed to the CTF Network worldwide to raise these funds as a matter of immediate urgency. Hence Robin Jolliffe's appeal to the supporters of CTF UK which accompanies this Issue of CTF News.

The CTF Network has already responded with $23,000 in immediate support from Sweden and Germany and a total of $5,000 from the two CTF groups in the United States. CTF UK has already pledged $1,500 from its existing resources but with your help we are sure that we can make a further significant contribution to the protection of this wonderful forest. Also on this page of CTF News, The Jatun Sacha Foundation's pioneering work with the Local Communities living around the edge of the Reserve.

JATUN SACHA - ECUADOR

CONSERVATION AND THE LOCAL COMMUNITIES

It is now widely accepted that rainforest conservation programmes will only be sustainable in the long term with the support and active participation of local people. This view is strongly endorsed in the latest report from the Jatun Sacha Foundation to Children's Tropical Forests UK. The Foundation manages the Jatun Sacha Biological Station in Amazonian Ecuador, a 2,000 hectare wet tropical forest reserve in the foothills of the Andes which has been designated the Second International Children's Rainforest and on which CTF UK is currently concentrating its financial support. 'After eleven years of field experience, we have learned that rainforest conservation is not accomplished by land purchase alone. Offering something tangible and satisfying to

The Jatun Sacha Foundation manages three medium sized forest reserves in Ecuador; the 2,000 hectare Jatun Sacha Biological Station; the 400 hectare Guandera Reserve (Andean Cloudforest); and the 2200 hectare Bilsa Biological Station (Pacific Coast Wet Upland Forest). the surrounding communities is important if we want these reserves to be viewed as community institutions. Besides offering education and interesting activities, extension programmes must convince local people to implement practical and ecologically compatible activities; otherwise important forests are going to be lost'.

Along with the Children's Tropical Forest Network, which has provided much funding for the rainforest purchase critical for the protection of the biodiversity of the area, two American charities, the Liz Claibourne Foundation and the Art Ortenberg Foundation have provided ongoing support to Jatun Sacha for five years in environmental education. Now Jatun Sacha has asked the two American Foundations to fund two Ecuadorian biology teachers to work with key communities and families near the Biological Station. Quichua is the first language of many of the children living near the reserve and one of the Jatun Sacha educators will need to speak their language. The report from the Jatun Sacha Foundation stresses the need to focus its educational efforts on communities and families living nearest to the Reserve boundaries. 'Recently, the programme has become too diffuse to provide the concentrated effort needed to alter children's behaviour and perceptions towards their environment. Trying to work in schools adjacent to the Reserve, in nearby communities and in the more distant towns of Mishauli and Tena, education programme leaders were spreading their message too thinly.' 'Now hopefully, local students of all ages will be regularly involved on a weekly basis in lectures, scientific experiments, biological simulations and art activities to enhance their appreciation and valuing of the forests where they live. Every other month, students from participating schools will come into the reserve to take part actively in a wide variety of 'hands on' experiments, practical reforestation work, medicinal plant investigations and agroforestry projects, all designed to teach them about the rainforest.'

COSTA RICA

THE SUN RISES ON THE GREAT GREEN BRIDGE

In the Summer 1997 Issue of CTF News, we reported that the acquisition of just one more piece of land would put the final building block into the 'Bridge' reforestation scheme on Costa Rica's Continental Divide. The 'Bridge' will re-establish a continuous rainforest link between Guanacaste National Park on Costa Rica's Pacific Coast and Rincon de la Vieja National Park in the heart of the eastern cloud forest. The driving force behind the 'Bridge' is American ecologist Dan Janzen and we record the expression of his sheer joy at the realisation of his dream in the letter he sent to all the supporters of the project. The final building block is a 533 hectare farm which the ACG (Area de Conservacion Guanacaste) has agreed to purchase from the sole owner, local businessman Sr Hernan Rodriguez Arce. Sr Arce never fully developed the agricultural potential of the farm, so, fortunately, it has remained a mosaic of virgin forest, secondary regenerating forest and pasture. It is the most lowland rainforest portion of the entire Area de Conservacion Guanacaste, lying between 400m and 500m, and its acquisition probably increases the species richness of the 'Area' by another 3-5%. The existing forest fragments on the farm, a few fragments to the East and the ACG to the West will all contribute major numbers of animals and plants to the restoration process in the Rodriguez pastures, which will now begin to regenerate their forest.

Our map shows, in hatched green, the land already acquired by ACG to link Guanacaste N.P. and Rincon de la Vieja N.P., and, in solid green, the newly purchased area.. The cost of this final building block for the 'Bridge' is around $500,000 (imprecise because the actual land area of the farm has still to be accurately surveyed) of which a $150,000 downpayment has already been made. The International Children's Rainforest Groups in Germany, Sweden and the US made a huge contribution of $66,000 to this critical first payment. CTF UK's first donation to the 'Bridge' project is going towards a second $83,000 payment due now (January 1998). Another $150,000 is payable on 30 June 1998 and the balance on 30th January 1999. No interest is payable on any part of the unpaid balance, but the owner can continue to graze his livestock on the grass pasture portions until the last payment is made. Dan Janzen says that 'the presence of some grazing cattle in these pastures is not particularly bothersome for the next year'. Janzen again: 'This piece of forest, once restored, along with the restoring pastures in the remainder of the 'Bridge' purchases, will serve as an adequate biological connector between the Cacao and Rincon Sectors of the ACG. It will, unambiguously, fulfill the original goal of the 'Bridge' - to render the wet northern portions and the wet southern portions of the ACG into a single wet eastern unit that can absorb and ameliorate the impact of the unavoidable drying of the Western part of the ACG as global climate change comes onto us'. 'This connector can also be improved by yet further widening and the ACG will be continually on the lookout for opportunities to make such widening purchases'.

The Jatun Sacha Foundation, which owns and manages the Second International Children's Rainforest at Jatun Sacha in Amazonian Ecuador, has been selected by Care-USAID to manage a $3.5 million community reforestation project in the Esmeraldas province in N-W Ecuador.

23 July 1997
Mr Robin Jolliffe,
Children's Tropical Forests,
FAX 44-1733-555-663

Dear Robin,
Just got here and found with great surprise and delight your check (US spelling) for $2,600 toward the 'Bridge' land purchase. Mucho help, and this will go directly into the growing pool toward the $83,000 payment to make in January 1998.
Sincerely yours
Daniel H Janzen
Professor of Biology.
University of Pennsylvania,

18 June 1997
Dear All of You
THE SUN DOES RISE AFTER ALL
It is with an enormous sense of relief that I can tell you all that today, Sigifredo Marin signed an agreement on behalf of the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste, to purchase a 533 hectare (1316 acre) rainforest farm that closes the bridge between the Rincon Sector of the ACG and the Cacao Sector of the ACG. Dan Janzen.

ECUADOR

MORE FUNDS TO JATUN SACHA FROM CTF UK AND ENVIRON AS RAINFOREST CHARITIES CO-OPERATE

Once again, thanks to a generous response from our schools supporters around the country - and many other people - we have sent a further $1,600 (£1,000) to the Jatun Sacha Biological Station in Amazonian Ecuador for rainforest purchase. This is in addition to the $1,500 recently pledged to help the Jatun Sacha Foundation protect the rainforest corridor threatened by the construction of a new road through the Western side of the reserve (See Page 1 of this Issue). The funds were sent to Jatun Sacha by special courier, the cost of which was shared with Environ, the Leicester-based environmental charity, which was sending a donation of approximately $9,600 (£6,000) to the Jatun Sacha Foundation at the same time as us.

ICTF NETWORK

AMERICAN SCHOOLGIRL'S PARKING METER IDEA RAISES MONEY FOR RAINFORESTS

An ingenious American schoolgirl wrote to Bruce Calhoun of Save the Rainforest Inc., with details of how she obtained and installed a parking meter in her school and surrounded it with a rainforest display - and how her fellow pupils have responded by putting money in the slot for rainforest preservation. Bruce has adopted this brainwave as Save the Rainforest's fund raising idea for the year and other American schools have been contacting him for information on just how the scheme works. Save the Rainforest Inc., which is one of the two American charities in the Children's Tropical Forests Network, raised around $60,000 for rainforest conservation in the 1996/97 American school year.