Paul Butler revisits a Peruvian Pride campaign that is trying to save the endangered spectacled bear.

While my friend and colleague Nigel Sizer (Rare’s vice president for the Asia region) was battling the poor roads in Indonesia’s Aceh Province to monitor a Pride campaign taking place there in collaboration with the Mapayah Foundation, I was half-a-world away accompanying Rare’s new director for our Spanish-speaking programs on a Pride monitoring visit to Peru. The trials and tribulations of actually visiting some of the places in which Rare works is not limited to Southeast Asia. As Jurgen Hoth and I were to find out, the roads in Peru were a match for any in Indonesia.

The muddy roads of Peru. 

Like Nigel, Jurgen Hoth comes to Rare from a background at the U.S.-based Nature Conservancy, a great group which works closely with Rare at a number of sites, including in Peru.

Jurgen is a Mexican-born biologist (UNAM, 1985) with a M.S. (Guelph, 1993) in rural planning and international development. Before joining Rare in January 2007, Jurgen worked for the Conservancy in promoting grassland conservation throughout Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert, where Rare also has a campaign. Prior to that, he served as the councillor for environmental affairs at the Mexican Embassy in Canada. This experience in developing and nurturing collaborative arrangements among countries was further enhanced by a stint at the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) as program manager for the Biodiversity Conservation Program. His background in program management, partnership building, and over twenty years of experience working with wildlife conservation in tropical, temperate, boreal, arctic and desert regions should stand him in good stead as Rare’s point person in Mexico and its Spanish-speaking neighbors.

Jurgen Hoth 

Our visit to Peru was a return to the site of one of my earlier blogs, written in October 2006, and to meet up again with Cesar Raul Laura Contreras, who is working with ProNaturaleza in the 122,000-hectare Yanachaga-Chemillen National Park on a campaign to raise awareness about the plight of the site and the endangered spectacled bear.

Other trip objectives were to lay the foundation for what we envision will be a suite of Peruvian campaigns that bring together an alliance of groups that we hope will include not only our current partner at the Nature Conservancy, but also Conservation International, World Wildlife Fund, and the local park service INRENA.

Fernando Garcia, Rare manager, ecotourism promoter, explores the connection between the super grand slam in sport fishing and the ecotourism enterprise Community Tours Sian Ka’an.

For the saltwater sport fishing hobbyists, the super grand slam means that a person catches four species of fish in a single day: for instance, a tarpon, snook, permit, and bonefish. It is very difficult to have a super grand slam because each one of the species demands a lot of knowledge, skills, and luck, so it is rare and unique. That is why it is easier to be good with one or two species, but it is more difficult to achieve three or four at the same day. However, the hobbyist pursues a grand slam, no matter how much effort is needed. At each shot trying for a super grand slam, the sport fisher can be nervous, bouncy, bored, frustrated, anxious, or happy. Finally, a super grand slam provides a lot of fun and pride to those that achieve one in his or her life.

Fly-fishing in Sian Ka’an 

Rare enterprise Community Tours Sian Ka’an (CTSK), a locally owned ecotourism operation in the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve on the Yucatán Peninsula, is trying for its own super grand slam. But it’s pursuing not fishes, but other trophies: market, quality, capability, and conservation. These are some characteristics of those “prizes.”

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Fisheries fellow Salvador Rodriguez Van Dyck describes his work in the small village of Agua Verde in Baja California Sur.

Seven months have passed since the beginning of the Fisheries Fellows program, and we’ve already spent three months in our communities, working on our site assessment and project plans. I’m working in Agua Verde in Baja California Sur, an isolated community in the peninsula, with no electricity and no water pipeline system. The people over here, instead, use solar cells and a spring for water. Around 250 people are living here (plus me), and their incomes depend mostly from the fish but also from the livestock.

Salvador Rodriguez Van Dyck, left, with fishermen. 

This combination of people who work in the sea and in the field with farm animals, just a few meters from the coastline, makes this place unique. It is so tuned with the combination of the desert and ocean of the peninsula that I just love these landscapes.

At this point, considered just the beginning, each fellow has been through different situations. The first months were dedicated to earning the confidence of the local people and trying to understand the dynamic of the community. Some of us are still working on the trust—something we need to be careful with because all we can gain in one month can disappear in one day. Anyway, we’re doing okay.

In my case, I’m working with fishermen in their legal processes, so they can be legally recognized as a cooperative by the government. And when I say “with fishermen” I mean it. I’ve gone with some of them to La Paz and Loreto for some administrative proceedings, which has been an excellent time for them to learn about this kind of procedure and a chance to let me know them better. 

Before finishing, I’ll use some of Paul Butler’s words, hoping he’s okay with that. He inspired most of us, and I really want to share some of what he told us.

“The people hardly remember the second or the third one, but they will always remember the first one,” Paul said at the beginning of the program and, after five months, he’s still saying it. I’m so grateful for his words. He’s right! We (the fisheries fellows) are pioneers in this kind of job, and we’re hoping and doing our best, so the program can obtain good results. As beginners we also have great responsibilities and maybe harder work.

“Edmund Hillary didn’t know the way to the top of Everest, but he climbed it. And do you know what the best thing he did was? He left his metal gears all the way up, so the next one could climb more easily,” Paul said. And I feel that a path has already been started.

There’s a Spanish singer, Joan Manuel Serrat, who says: “Caminante no hay camino se hace camino al andar” (“Traveler, there’s no path, you make it when you walk”). Now the question is: will someone follow us?

Nigel Sizer reflects on the slow recovery of Aceh Province in the wake of the tsunami.

Years of civil war has had the ironic side effect of leaving large swaths of Aceh’s forests relatively intact. Rebels used the forests as a hideout, and villagers were not able to go into the forests for fear of being seen by the Indonesian military as rebel sympathizers. This all changed with the peace accord signed soon after the tsunami. Now locals are once again able to think about long-term development, including expanding their farms and seeking means to benefit directly from the forests.

Local community members can now return to the forest. 

Fortunately, Aceh is also unusual in Indonesia in having a relatively well preserved tradition of village-based regulation (adat) of forest, land, and water use. Rare’s local partners in Aceh—Mapayah, YEL, and PeNA—will all focus their Pride campaigns on strengthening the traditional community-based management systems. Where the tsunami hit hardest, almost all the elders were killed and the village institutions have to rebuild from scratch.

As I readied to leave Aceh after a week and head home to Bali, I was delighted to see our partners and campaign leaders confidently present their Pride plans to the local office of USAID’s Environmental Services Program, which is funding the efforts.

I’ll be back again in April to plan a suite of new campaigns with other partners. I can’t wait to see this first round of partnerships hit the ground running. Over the coming weeks, there will be puppet shows, local musical and cooking competitions, radio shows, and a host of other social-marketing activities that will bring prestige to adat traditions and highlight the links between forests, water, and health. Serious stuff, but also great fun, and so desperately needed, as the province embraces peace and sustained growth after years of civil war, the tsunami, and earthquakes.

Nigel Sizer’s tour of Pride campaign sites in Aceh Province reveals that much devastation remains after two years.

This morning we drove south from Banda Aceh along the coastal road that skirts the beach hit by the full force of the Asian tsunami. Entire villages were almost completely wiped out. Not a single house or tree was left standing. Women and children in particular were killed in huge numbers as they tried to shelter inside homes.

The remains of coconut palms two years after the tsunami. 

The road is still a potholed mess. Disputes over payment for the land the new road is built on have led to long delays in getting it surfaced. But bright new homes are speckled through the fields and along the beach. Signs advertise that the homes have been built by many different organizations – the Turkish Red Crescent, various Islamic foundations, Oxfam, and so on. But the settlements felt eerie and empty. Some houses had families sitting on their verandahs, but most were empty. So many people were killed here during that cataclysmic ten minutes that much of the land and new homes have no one claiming ownership.

It’s a really beautiful stretch of coastline, with a fabulous white powder sand beach, and hills covered in tropical forest coming down to the edges of the rice fields behind where the villages had once stood. Communities are slowly rebuilding. But the wrecked foundations of the older homes, ripped up trees, and crushed cars are still as apparent as the memories of that awful scene two years ago.

Nigel Sizer finds that it’s sometimes the authorities who are doing illegal logging in Aceh in Indonesia. 

The Pride campaign with Mapayah Foundation, a local NGO with three staff, is focused on abating illegal logging in two spectacular forest reserves in the Aceh Besar District. I drove up into the woods accompanied by our campaign manager, Cut Meurah Intan, and a village leader. He explained that he’s extremely concerned about illegal logging that is getting ever closer to the village’s only source of fresh water, a small mountain stream. If the stream dries up they’ll have to move, he said.

Campaign manager Cut Meurah Intan examines illegally cut wood. 

We drove round the hillside on a rough logging road to find the culprits – the Indonesian military. They’ve even put up a large sign proclaiming that they are logging in the area and have a license to do so. But it’s the military chief, not the Department of Forestry, who has authorized the logging.

Further down the hillside, still in forest that is legally protected, the local police have also gotten in on the act, this time building a huge new headquarters sprawling over 75 acres. Law breaking in Indonesia, even by the police, is here even more brazen than I have seen elsewhere. Perhaps even worse. The new police facilities were financed through the Indonesian government agency that manages funds donated for reconstruction after the tsunami.

Pride will build local support for forest conservation. The village leader then plans to use that support to mobilize the community against the illegal loggers.

Nigel Sizer makes his way to the airport in Medan, capital of North Sumatra, but just barely….

Fransisca is all set, and sadly we have to leave beautiful Singkil and make our way up to Banda Aceh, capital of the province and epicenter of the Asian tsunami disaster two years ago.

There are signs of tsunami and earthquake damage in Singkil too, but they didn’t suffer loss of human life. A wave washed through the coastal villages causing extensive flooding and damage to homes and gardens. A large area of coastal forest was also damaged by the excess of saltwater. But this is nothing compared to what we’ll see in the days ahead.

A landslide adds to the driving drama. 

The one drawback with Singkil is the drive back to the nearest airport, in Medan, bustling capital of North Sumatra. The trip features spectacular views of Lake Toba, as well as seven hours of switchbacks on mountain roads, with large, overloaded trucks coming fast, and sometimes in the wrong lane, around the corners in the opposite direction. 

Indonesian drivers generally don’t seem to be worried about whether they are crushed in a head-on collision many hours from the nearest hospital. This is a cultural gap that I have never been able to bridge, except by resorting to screaming something like, “I have told you ten times to slow down, but now I am serious. If you don’t drive more carefully, I will [insert appropriate threat].” This usually results in nervous giggles and clearly the guy thinking, “The white man has gone mad, better drive carefully….” 

We made it back alive, but only just. A landslide, thick fog, and heavy rain all added to the excitement.

Nigel Sizer, Rare VP, Asia and Pacific, describes his trek to southern Aceh Province. He was accompanied by Ni Putu Sarilani Wirawan, Rare assistant course manager in Indonesia.

Two plane rides, seven hours by car, and a couple of hours in canoes, and we’re heading deep into the Rawa Singkil Wildlife Reserve in southern Aceh Province, located in the northwest Sumatra. It’s spectacular scenery—with high tropical forest in the distance and a vast network of rivers, swamps, and tidal floodplains all around us. This 250,000-acre reserve and the surrounding communities are the site for Fransisca Araintiningsih’s Rare Pride campaign. 

Into the reserve. 

Sari and I are here to help finalize the campaign plan. A few days ago a local lady was consumed by a huge saltwater crocodile as she tried to gather mussels. It’s hard to stay focused on the work plan with such verdant, wild nature assailing all our senses. Sumatran tigers, gibbons, orangutan, and elephants are all regularly seen here. And we’re also looking out for the leeches. 

Village leaders from Kuala Baru, a community right on the edge of the reserve, are guiding us, with their proud panglima heuten, the traditional “forest guardian,” at the fore. In his sixties, his is an honorary and entirely voluntary role. He tells me he has simply loved being in the forest since he was a boy. Trouble is no boys (or girls) nowadays seem keen to continue the tradition. But Fransisca is determined to change that. Her campaign will feature the orangutan as its mascot, and include social marketing activities, such as puppet shows, posters, competitions, songs and music that will enhance the prestige of the panglima and promote community-led conservation efforts.