Bosque Protector Pañacocha

I recently was blessed con la suerte de poder realizar una visita íntima a un lugar precioso con alta relevancia en nuestra comunidad extendida de amantes de la naturaleza. Believe it or not I finally made it to Pañacocha, en el oriente ecuatoriano, down into the Amazon Ecuatoriano we went. I was nobody and then I finally made it to Pañacocha, and now I am somebody. Ahora entiendo bien lo que ya entendí bien:

El Bosque Protector Pañacocha es una joya de la naturaleza!

The Río Napo is a world all it's own, very possibly the largest river that I have ever really been on.

The Amazon is under assault from the global petro-chemical industry, all I need to say in this space is that they are laying pipe as fast as they can. This foto is a half-useless image of an effort to snap a shot of the seemingly endless number of trucks heading out into the Amazon carrying every imaginable diameter of this most likely Chinese fabricated pipe material.

As an example of how established protected areas in the Amazon are violated by industry while the true indigenous stewards of the rainforest are marginalized from decision making processes regarding these very same protected areas, totally undermining the legitimacy and effectiveness of traditional Western nature protection practices, el Bosque Protector Pañacocha is increasingly isolated, an island of intact forest on the petrolero penetrated landscape, threatened by road building and held hostage by the fossil fuel industry. Still it remains a truly wild and natural expanse of the Amazon rainforest, hogar de los pueblos originarios, lungs of the planet and conservation imperative of humanity. While up Pañayaku exploring we could occasionally hear the hummmm of motors on the distant Napo, and even saw the apocalyptic pulsating flame light of pipeline and oil industry gas flaring in the distance against the clouds and fogs of the jungle night sky. It is all too clear that the extractivist pressure is unrelenting in the Amazon. This is simply not sustainable, it is suicide to exploit these remaining forests, and the clarion call that we must dramatically change the course of this industrial exploitation has never been louder. It is also clear that the efforts to protect Pañacocha will remain standing. I am so appreciative of having made the journey! Thanks and appreciations to those who have invested so much sweat and tears into the long term protection of the human and natural communities of Pañacocha, el Bosque Protector es tarea de tod@s! La vida es una fucking hermosura, DE LEY, no lo vamos a malgastar. Viva Pañacocha, viva Pañayaku, viva la Amazonas!

Reporter

A belated book review is a book review all the same, and this belated review is one of a very high recommendation for the biography of Seymour Hersh titled Reporter. This makes for a most amazing read that reveals too many facts and dynamics about revered figures who are actually abhorrent and nothing less than repellent. Like Henry Kissinger. The following images are from the photo plates in the book and allude briefly to a number of the most important stories that Hersh has broken over the length of his career. I may be late to post this book review and recommendation, but this book is still new and timely. Reading it is an excellent step in preparing one to better understand current events in the context of the sordid history of the USA.

Immaculate Beauty: Río Pascua Libre y Viva, Una Belleza Inmaculada

It was exactly ten years ago this month that International Rivers kicked off the USA focus of the Patagonia Sin Represas campaign with the Proyecto Expedición Pascua/Pascua Expedition Project (PEP). I publish this video today in commemoration of the ten year anniversary since achieving this incredible wildlands protection effort, and in profound honor of Aaron Sanger recently passed yet always with us. It does not seem out of place to publish this on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of 2018 and recognize the significance of Aaron's trajectory of organizing for ecological sanity and environmental justice. The beauty and sheer wildness of the Río Pascua protected now from the threat of mega-hydroelectric development will always be an important part of the legacy that Aaron leaves for the future generations. This was by no means the only campaign I worked on with Aaron, but this was certainly an iconic and globally relevant effort to stand in solidarity with the communities of Patagonia and to resist the ill conceived industrialization of one of our globes last most wild places. Enjoy these images to celebrate la Patagonia Chilena and as a means of meditating on the adventures Aaron had through his life journey. This was an incredible wilderness trip for Aaron, he came alive in a wild way. Thank you Aaron, gracias a tod@s, que corran los ríos libres por siempre!

California Es Sumamente Un Estado Petrolero

 

 Benicia

I was telling friends that the dirty energy reality of oil tankers feeding the insatiable refinery sector built out on the shores of SF Bay reminds me of an old Sherlock Holmes bit about hiding things in plain sight. The tankers are ubiquitous and the threat of a spill is permanent -- but so few people even really seem to notice. Oil tankers coming oil tankers going no end in sight. Now drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is on the horizon. These are suicidal climate behaviors, feeding the Trans-Alaska pipeline to feed the tankers to feed the refineries in California, and then calling this way of doing business exemplary climate action. Our children are depending on us, we can't let it happen. Here are some fotos from a reconnaissance patrol checking the marine deliveries of crude oil by tanker arriving to refineries operating on San Francisco Bay.

Shell Martinez Refinery and Mt Diablo

California es un estado petrolero

 Phillips 66 SF Bay Rodeo Refinery and Marine Terminal

Arte de Rua Amazonica

A brief travel to the state of Acre in Brasil to do research into the contradictions of the California pollution trading schemes and the green capitalism of business as usual in the Amazon revealed a good people in a frontier town with an unexpectedly amazing diversity of street murals.

Rio Branco, Acre, Brazil 

Murais Pintados

Chico Re

Rubber Jungles

A documentary deep dive on the commercialization of the legacy of Chico Mendes. The legacy of Chico Mendes lives on -- not in the marketing campaigns of governments or pro-corporate pollution trading NGO's -- but in the struggle of the peoples of the Amazon forest.

Get Involved

#GetInvolved

Ticker Tape of Aliso Canyon Climate Chaos

UPDATE: Leak halted on February 11, 2016. ORIGINAL POST: How long will this counter keep counting? Posting this now just to really test how long this disaster will continue. Just to be clear, as of Jan 5 when this is posted the ticker for metric tons of CO2 equivalent is just over 6,500,000. Where will it end? Remember that California is supposed to be a "climate leader." The proof is in the pudding. Just look at the tale of the Aliso Canyon ticker tape. 

A Headwaters Hike

This is classic old school archives material, from December 1990, 25 years ago to the month. Here on the Voz Silvestre blog I share the scanned images of an old North Coast back-to-the-lander independent newspaper. It was fun to find and remember how I once scrabbled out a "natural history essay" that came from rooting around as an early-twenties "forest defender" that the hippy activists I admired so much at the time decided to publish on the cover of the very last edition ever printed of the Country Activist. Simple title: A Headwaters Hike. In a media that was truly independent. Technology was kicking in--I think I wrote the piece by hand but then edited and typed it in to a word processor that was in the old Ancient Forest International (AFI) office, that is now Persimmons, in Redway, California. But this was still distributed on paper, a very old school (and effective!) civics affairs organizing tool.

This is another example of how keeping a journal back in the day translated into relatively coherent and complete (in some few instances!) writing pieces. But I never was (nor will be) a true writer or wordsmith, I am simply not prolific enough. Still, this is a funky and authentic archive glance at my writing from back in the day. It is pretty fun to soak up the idealism and the fire of youth as captured in this piece that I put together and submitted literally in the very days before launching out as a mochilero south bound, to eventually arrive to a pre-determined destination with a commitment to work in Nicaragua as a volunteer for more than six months. It was different traveling back then. I was so fortunate to learn of the world on my own terms. From the old growth of the Pacific Northwest to the social movements of Central America, my explorations were always heavily diversified. I understood early on that biological diversity included and was completely interdependent with cultural diversity. Little by little I have been uncovering some curious old samples. Sooner than later though the memory lane silliness won't be sufficient to keep me entertained, the boxes will get put away in storage, and I am going to have to generate some new material. It is however very grounding to look back.

 

Tracking Oneself To The Source

Here is a sample of writing from my notebooks kept in that age before I relied on the Internet or anything too technical for communications. These are scanned photos of a write up from a journal that I must have transcribed some long time ago and then thrust into a scrap book stored with old photos. This piece is built from a journal kept on a November 1993 backpacking trip in the Trinity Alps, praying for snow, touching earth. It is worth the read, at least maybe just for kicks, but also to think a little about identity with place, and the long journey of this life of mine.

"It is possible to look upon humans and their civilization as a biological and geological force not qualitatively different from the volcanic eruptions, glaciations, and other catastrophes that have disturbed organic evolution. Nuclear wars and wholesale industrial pollution may do life on earth more damage than a billion years of exploding volcanoes, but anthropoid greed and convection currents in the earth's mantel seem about equally random and senseless. Molecules swimming in the skull of a primate or sixty miles underground - what's the difference? Both explode when pressures get critical." -- David Rains Wallace from The Klamath Knot

Pray for snow!