Latest Posting: June '07

Youth friends--hello from Ecuador! Hope you´re doing well as the school year winds down. We´ve just returned from the Amazon--and it was incredible. As usual we were guided by Delio, the Siona (one of the native tribes in the rainforest) shaman (leader, medicine man) who´s also featured on the front of the NCP t-shirt. And when he showed us the pink dolphins, the sloth (moving very s-l-o-w-l-y in the tree overhead), the toucan, the snakes, and three kinds of monkeys, I thought we had seen it all. We never expect to see a jaguar--people just don´t see these stealthy creatures. And in some ways, one hopes not to--they´re large (up to 260 pounds), ferocious, and have been known to single out human prey when hungry enough. Delio himself had only seen the big cat twice before in his life--and he´s 56.

So after three days in the forest, we´re headed up the river on out way out of the Cuyabeno ecological reserve. Suddenly Delio says, El tigre! Right in front of us swimming in the river--I´m talking about 6 feet away--there was a large jaguar, its coat glistening as it paddled straight to the bank, about 10 feet to the right of our canoe. Once on the bank, it paused, looked at us, and then sauntered off into the forest.

What can I say....except we have to save this place--the rainforest, that is. And it´s going fast--about one-sixth of the Amazon is already gone, and if present rates of deforestation continue, it could all be practically gone in 50 years. That´s in your lifetime.

Why is it important? You know the facts--20% of the world´s oxygen, 18% of the world´s freshwater, 30% of the world´s species, absorbs 1000 pounds of CO2 per acre per year, home to dozens of native tribes. And maybe as important as anything, one of our last wild places--or maybe having jaguars in the wild isn´t important... what do you think?

Why is it going? The usual suspects: cattle ranching, farming, logging, povery (poor people looking for land)--and in Ecuador, petroleum. Oil brings roads, roads bring settlers, settlers bring cattle and cocoa, and oil production brings pollution--4.3 million gallons of toxins into the Ecuadoraian Amazon every day. And the U.S. imports 40% of Ecuador´s oil.

What to do? No mystery here either--think petroleum, beef, paper, and poverty, and our connections to these things every day.

Make your own choices, then work on your friends. Get me invited to your school to show the pics and tell the tales. Raise money for our If a Tree Falls... fund.
( http://www.newcommunityproject .org/treefalls.shtml ) Go with us to the Alaska (still seats available on our August 10-19 trip! No jaguars--but promise grizzlies, mountain goats and whales!) or the Amazon next year (even though school´s not out yet, we had two high schooler´s on this trip--hey, they figured it out!)

There´s plenty to do, but not a lot of time. So let´s get on with it.

Love and peace--

David

BTW, let me know if you need to be bumped up to our
young adult list.