Poder Floreciente Californiano

California Flower Power

The summer in Alta California is moving right along, and before we know it we will be in full autumn mode. Work continues unabated, including an interesting restoration job I did in helping clean up loads of scrap metal off a parcel that will become part of the Humboldt Redwoods State Park. I have been making my living again as a garbage man for the earth.

In this day and age it is an extreme challenge to maintain the quiet rural rhythms that are so grounding for those of us living on the Lost Coast. Chop wood, carry water, these are the breathing tasks of living in the woods.

The drive for culture is incessant in this internet age. Keeping up on music for the occasional radio show becomes more than a hobby, it becomes a monumental production project. But who cares? Music is freedom. I have been to a few fantastic shows lately, seeing Radiohead play in Golden Gate Park down in The City, and recently catching Ozomatli again. Looking ahead I will catch Fishbone at the Mateel Community Center's Pipejam next weekend. Then there will of course be Earthdance, which will be the perfect party to bring the summer to a complete close.

Oh, and don't forget that I will be seeing Willie Nelson tomorrow!

Those are the spikes in social activity and artistic stimulation. The majority of my time is definitely dedicated to those down to earth chores that make country living so transcendental. Perhaps the big city is in my future again, but for now I relish the tranquility of the hills, and the power of the flowers.




Patagonia Rivers Update

The companies have turned in the Environmental Impact Study for the construction of the 5 dams on the Pascua and Baker Rivers. A friend from Puerto Montt wrote an email about the two shipping containers worth of material that made up the copies of the EIS that were turned in officially. It is a bulky and unyeildy document, the kind designed to obfuscate and distract.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the 2000+ kilometers of transmissions lines are not included in the study, revealing the entire environmental review process in Chile (free trade partner with the USA!) to be asburd and scientifically untenable. Any ecologist knows that it is all about cumulative impacts, but once you consider those issues the proposal loses all charateristics of environmental responsibility. So such an analysis is avoided. Such is the nature of the politics of natural resource conservation--keep the legitimate science to a minimum, and the greed for profits at a maximum.

Nonetheless, even poor hidroAysén has conceded that getting approval for the project could take more than a year, and in the meantime the pressure heats up to get Home Depot to stop providing commercial cover in the USA for the dinosaurs in the Matte and Angelini groups that keep stumbling forward drunkenly with this irresponsible project. There is still quite a bit of work ahead of us, but protecting the wild rivers of Patagonia from massive hydro development is still an attainable vision.

Black Dahlia

Summer is here, in all it's over heated intensity. Not much has been happening on the Patagonia River Campaign front, and here at home I am holding down the rural living front, appreciating the living things all around me, such as the early blooming black dahlia in my yard.

I continue to volunteer at KMUD radio, and will do my Black Dahlia Manyhues Radio special tonight at midnight. Either listen live or check out the KMUD archives.

Material for tonights show includes pieces from the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival which, despite some rare and weird moments, was quite a cool weekend gig. Regardless, the best music of that weekend was the Seun Kuti gig I saw at the Mateel Community Center. A great show by a very interesting and articulate artist.

More than two months have passed since I posted anything at this blog. Just goes to show how exciting travel down to South America can be. Here at home I just try to work hard, be smart about water, and make sure everything is fire safe.

The occasional radio shift is a cool outlet. Otherwise, I am keeping a keen eye on the craziness of a world long off it's rocker.

In the meantime, Patagonia's rivers still run free. That is certainly a relief!

Redwood Community Radio--KMUD Spring FunDrive

It has been a year since I started doing volunteer shifts at KMUD as an engineer and programmer, amongst other chores. I enjoy being involved with this grassroots media effort. You can listen to KMUD (Redwood Community Radio) on the internet at www.kmud.org or if you are local you can tune in on your very own radio!

Radio is a special medium that continues to be effective and relevant even as technology for global communications advances rapidly. We are working at KMUD to raise money for the next half year of operating. Please consider joining the 'mud as a member! Go to the KMUD website and give a listen and make a secure donation.

Hopefully, as well, as the broadcasting season goes on I will have some new and unique radio to be posting here on the vozsilvestre blog. Stay tuned!

Ríos Patagónicos In the Stateside News

I am barely a week back into the stateside scene and the results of our global community labor to protect wild rivers in Patagonia are being published in major daily newspapers in the United States, this just one week after the New York Times published their opinion piece against the possibility of damming the Baker and Pascua Rivers. This is what I like to see!! Some real momentum to protect Patagonia from needless industrialization.

On Sunday, Lonely Planet writer Carolyn McCarthy was published in the Boston Globe with her article Little Seen and Untamed River Stirs Patagonia. This is a very readable travel section article with an excellent and breathtaking finish. Carolyn does a great job of capturing the International Rivers campaign and the local perceptions of the dam proposals. She accompanied us on the International Rivers sponsored delegation--and we really wanted Carolyn to come on the hike but schedules did not permit it.

With all this great press and momentum for our campaign one might wonder how many more tricks we have up our sleeves--but we have only but started the campaign. This past Monday, to add punch to the campaign media strategy, our colleague Colin Barraclough had his article published in the San Francisco Chronicle. Chile Plans to Dam Patagonia Wilderness is the title, and the read is equally impactful. Of course, as the author of this blog and one of the organizers of the Pascua Expedition Project, I am not able to hide that Colin came with us on the hike. He was a key and important element to the good style, fun, and great safety that we maintained on our expedition. I am picturing Colin now, suffering in Buenos Aires (sufrimiento!!) and poetically reliving the journey as he word smithed his story together.

Ahhhh! Patagonia!

Tomanse un buen mate mis amigos!

By the way, the photos are by Colin, from our trip to explore the wild Pascua!!

New York Times Says NO to HidroAysén!

There are a few factual errors in the piece, but the New York Times has published an op-ed piece that says NO to the construction of mega-dams on the Pascua and Baker Rivers in the Chilean Patagonia.

Take a look at their opinion page to read their Patagonia Without Dams piece. This is worth a read, and worth distributing.

This is certainly quite an exciting development! My guess is that it is the movers and shakers at NRDC who were able to get the Times editorial board on to this issue. Great work!

Hopefully ENDESA and the Matte family can get the message now, before this campaign has to heat up much more! It is also time for Michelle Bachelet to show the world who is the president in Chile, and put an end to this monumental waste of time and energy that is the HidroAysén proposal to dam the Baker and Pascua rivers.

Patagonia-Wild Refuge Under Attack

The International Rivers Patagonia Campaign has launched a new internet action to protest the HidroAysén proposal to dam the Baker and Pascua Rivers in the Aisén Region of the Chilean Patagonia. Go to this 3 minute slide show to get a glimpse into the campaign (and to see a few of my photos from the Pascua Expedition Project!). From the slide show you can link easily to the internet action. This is meant to be spread far and wide, so please do distribute.

For more information browse past vozsilvestre blogs just below, or follow the International Rivers link to the right.

As a sidenote, our famously small and well connected organization Ancient Forest International has recently joined the Consejo de Defensa de la Patagonia. It is an honor to be among dozens of other international and Chilean organizations working to protect the wild rivers of Patagonia.

Defendamos La Patagonia Carajo!

¡Viva Los Cedros!

El futuro de Los Cedros no está seguro!



Pero Los Cedros sigue siendo precioso!






¡Viva Los Cedros!

The rain was coming down hard, and it was one of those bus rides where the windows were so fogged up on the inside that it was impossible to see what was happening on the outside. Nonetheless, with the rain and the darkness of the fast approaching night, it may have been difficult to see anyhow. What is more, no hubo luz, there was no electricity in the small and desperate looking buildings. Perhaps than it is understandable that I missed the stop in Chontal and ended up traveling to the next stop on the new road along the Guayabamba River.

Ay, la gran p**a, me equivoqué! I should have gotten off in El Chontal, but the immense friendliness of the people in the northwest corner of Ecuador became immediately obvious. Getting off in Magdalena Baja (which twelve years ago was not even an actual town!) was made easy by a young local who showed me how to get to the Hormiga Verde and arrange lodging for the night. As well, I was actually better positioned to make the hike up to Los Cedros the following morning, using the well established mule trail that I had hiked so many times before. The road and electricity and phone were all new since my last visit twelve years ago, but some things had not changed that much just yet.

Twelve years! Twelve years come and gone. For all the traveling that I have done, and the many trips I have made back to places that I have worked and adventured, it is still remarkable when I return to a place that I have known intimately before. The Bosque Protector Los Cedros (previously the Reserva Biológica Los Cedros) is easily one of the most beautiful and inspiring forest landscapes that I have ever known. Twelve years ago, following the guidance and motivation of friends and colleagues, I ended up in Los Cedros working as an all-purpose volunteer. On that first trip to South America I spent the better part of 6 months up in Los Cedros, a protected forest area that borders the famous Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve. Los Cedros is a classic private conservation initiative (that now enjoys a unique public-private partnership due to ongoing difficulties in securing land title) in the buffer zone of a globally important protected area. Birdlife International rates Los Cedros as one of the most important private conservation efforts in Ecuador. And finally, twelve years after my volunteer stint, I was returning to visit, pay tribute, and measure the changes to the reserve and the area.

If there is one thing that is certain, regardless of the slow pace at which change in the area around Los Cedros is occurring, it is that change is happening. The pressure is on all around Los Cedros, the pressure of illegal logging, the pressure of forest clearing for grazing and agricultural activity, and the looming pressure of large scale copper mining (see some of the coverage in Upside Down World for detailed accounts of the Ascendent Copper mine issue). Yet Los Cedros retains its wild essence, and continues to be a remote and spectacular ecotourism and rainforest conservation science destination.

Los Cedros will not always be as remote as it has been. The hike up to the reserve is famously grueling, with about a thousand meters of elevation to be gained on an often times extremely muddy and hammered livestock trail. Yet the road is being punched in to Magdalena Alta (the miracle in my mind is that twelve years later the road has not yet actually arrived to Magdalena Alta!) and there are more and more people living in the area, including potential squatters up some of the more difficult to reach drainages that pour out of the western extremes of the 6000 plus hectare protected forest. What is more, the threat of large-scale copper mining in the region is real, with untold potential negative impacts on forest and wildlife conservation in the area (without exploring potential social impacts).

I am fortunate to have had experience in Los Cedros. My time there previously was special, before the age of widespread Internet and cellular phones, and allowed me to develop an intimate relationship with the cloud forest and the submontane tropical rainforest that cloaks the steep and mountainous terrain of the Chocó region, the wettest and most diverse rainforest region in the Americas. I was once two months up in Los Cedros without coming down, one of my more extended periods in wild country, period. Such experiences are unique, and unrepeatable. Perhaps my brief visit now is tame in comparison, but I am thankful for having motivated to get back up to Los Cedros and reigniting my passion to support this project.

Speaking of supporting this project, there are three people that I want to thank here, for their dedication to Los Cedros and for their wonderful ability to instill in me a commitment to working for the long term care of this place and important conservation effort.

I want to thank Tim Metz for his long-term willingness to literally put his money where his mouth is. Tim is perhaps the single most important benefactor to the Los Cedros project, and I admire and appreciate his willingness to make Los Cedros a success.

Murray Cooper deserves appreciation for giving such an aesthetic touch in the development of the facilities at Los Cedros. Murray is probably the one person who put Los Cedros on the global tropical rainforest conservation map, and is the person who showed me the way to get there.

And last, but certainly not least, I want to give props to José DeCoux, the live-in guardian of Los Cedros, the man who got the whole project up and going. José is a madman, an expatriate rainforest dweller who has committed himself in profound terms to Los Cedros. His staying power and presence is what most has kept Los Cedros in the largely pristine state that the reserve still celebrates. It was great to make contact with José again during my visit, and I truly do aspire to contribute positively to the ongoing stewardship of this tremendous forest protection project.

¡Viva Los Cedros! It is our favorite forest protection project in the world! No one with an eye for wild country who makes the trip to Los Cedros can avoid falling in love with the place. My love for Los Cedros has been rekindled, and my amateur photos will only shine a weak light on why it is that we love Los Cedros so much. The birds, the flowers, the grandeur of the forest, the ability to drink of the freshest water in the Andes directly from the river, these are the qualities that we celebrate and that we continue to strive to preserve.

Feel free to join us in our efforts to make Los Cedros a continued success, contact me through this blog to support the legal defense fund and the infrastructure work that will allow Los Cedros is to achieve its goals in the next twelve years, just as the project has had so much success in the last twelve years. At the very least, if you are going to Ecuador make Los Cedros an essential stop on your visit. You will be glad you did.

Todos Van al Oriente Para Trabajar

The infrastructure in Ecuador is chaotic. The roads, the water systems, the electrical systems, even phones and the internet, they all seem to be in terrible disrepair. Thus far I have not really had the time I would like to have to be online putting together full posts about my latest research and travel experiences. Soon I will present some thoughts on comparing Patagonia with Amazonía. The development issues are distinct, yet the similarities and the lessons abound. The Amazon is under serious stress, and it only demonstrates that Patagonia is still a remarkably intact region.

What might happen in Patagonia with hidroAysén is hinted at by oil development and unregulated colonization in the Amazon.

Though I have many ideas to share, for now I can only post some photos from my recent trip to the Shiripuno region of the Gran Yasuni, specifically the Territorio Étnico Huaorani.

Suffice it to say that if pictures are worth a thousand words, these current images of the Amazon should speak a great deal of how yes, human kind is wrecking havok on wild South America, even as the beauty still expresses itself wonderfully day after day.

More soon, after I return from our favorite project, la Reserva Biológica Los Cedros. First though some last images from the wild Amazon!

HidroAysén—Un Tema de Dinosaurios y Dinamita

The following is a short piece that I composed upon leaving Chile after nearly two months of traveling and working in that country on efforts to protect wild rivers in Patagonia from massive hydroelectric development. In my compositions I seem to always run the risk of serious hyperbole, a tendency that my colleagues thankfully point out to me right when I need to hear it most. Nevertheless, I share this piece here as another short item that attempts to paint a picture of the old-school ignorance that drives the push to destroy the largest rivers in Patagonia for short term profit and monopoly dominance of a society and its landscape. Chile is at risk of committing an irreversible error that will benefit only a very select sector of society, an error built upon dinosaurs and dynamite. It does however seem that our efforts to celebrate free flowing wild rivers, as hyperbolic as they might be, are having a positive impact. Regardless of the lawless and brute force with which the proponents of hydroAysén push forward with the project, the reality is that the company is already postponing the submission of their project to Chile’s system of evaluation of environmental impact and that Chilean society is steadily awakening to the audacity and barbarity of the proposal. In that light I have to say that my visit to Patagonia was effective and that our campaign is bearing fruit—stay tuned here for more updates as the issue evolves over the next months. In the meantime, enjoy the hyperbole and wordplay that I have published below.

Existen lugares que nos hacen pensar en el largo del tiempo. No es el largo del tiempo de nuestras vidas, ni de nuestras sociedades, pero el largo del tiempo de los milenios, de las geologías, de los movimientos de las tierras, y de las adaptaciones de las evoluciones. De vez en cuando nos encontramos en lugares del largo del tiempo en los cuales podemos hasta imaginar que pasarán dinosaurios frente de nuestros ojos. Otras veces son lugares donde no nos perdimos en juegos o fantasías de las maquinas de tiempo, pero sí donde nos distraemos del presente en sentir la fuerza del pasado y hasta revivir las épocas de los dinosaurios. Son lugares que nos regalan una sensación de un pasado lejano, de un antecedente que tiene que ver con nuestra realidad pero que ahora no es nuestra realidad presente mucho menos de nuestro futuro. Sin embargo, sabemos que la trayectoria del tiempo que sentimos en éstos lugares tiene importancia, es relevante y nos ofrece perspectiva sobre nuestras vidas y la expresión de nuestra humanidad dentro del contexto de los cambios elementales y el tiempo.

Por mí, llegar al Río Pascua fue llegar a un lugar que me hacía sentir el correr de los tiempos, desde un pasado casi imposible imaginar, hasta un pasado tan reciente que ni importó cuanto intentaba olvidármelo, siempre me estaba presente. Metafóricamente, el corriente en común fueron los dinosaurios, los dinosaurios reales de los comienzos del tiempo y de los dinosaurios fantásticos perdido en el pasado. En el Río Pascua pensé en los dinosaurios en términos de los continentes originales, en términos de seres que ya no pertenecen a nuestra realidad, y en ciertos individuos cuyos formar de pensar es de antigüedades y encuadradas maneras de contemplar el presente. Pensé en los dinosaurios que existieron como parte de la evolución, que aunque se extinguieron también fueron parte del milagro de la creación. Y pensé en los dinosaurios de hoy en día, que son seres perdidos en un pasado y que por algo inflexible en su composición se nos llevan rápidamente hasta una nueva época de extinción.

La cuenca del Río Pascua es una de las cuencas hídricas menos conocida en todo las Américas, y es probablemente el río menos conocido y más silvestre de Chile. Nacido del gran Lago O’Higgins (conocido como San Martín en Argentina), el Río Pascua es de relevancia continental y global, y es esencialmente el gran corriente de agua que baja desde el borde norteño del Campo de Hielo Patagónico Sur hasta el Canal Baker y luego al mar abierto. Véalo en su escala física real y lo verás en su escala de tiempo también. Es majestuosa, es expansiva, es poderosa, el Río Pascua es uno de los pocos ejemplos que nos quedan intactos en Chile y en el planeta para completamente entender la escala de vida en nuestro planeta y del milagro que es la creación y el correr de los tiempos.

El Río Pascua es nuevo y antiguo, todo a la misma vez. La cordillera va creciendo del mar y ha cambiado mucho en los últimos milenios, pero también el antiguo continente del Gondwana está presente. Quizá hace poco que el hielo dejó de cubrir esta roca dura que es el fundamento de la topografía difícil de la cuenca, pero hace mucho que la evolución ha tenido su dominio sobre esta tierra. La cuenca del Río Pascua es prístina, tiene intacta las relaciones ecológicas del ecosistema prehistórico y mantiene un alto valor biológico por la presencia del complejo de las especies nativas y la ausencia de impactos de las actividades humanas. No existe una manera de intervenir en el paisaje de la cuenca del Río Pascua en una manera industrial sin acabar con su característica silvestre y auténtica. Se habla de una utilidad de unos 50 años cuando se habla de las represas de hidroAysén, pero la cuenca del Río Pascua es una cuenca en la cual 50 años es una gotita de tiempo que casi no se medir por ser tan pequeño frente de su grandeza y trayectoria elemental. Que son 50 años frente del milenio que lleva el agua de correr desde el campo de hielo hasta el mar? La posibilidad de realizar una serie de mega proyectos hidroeléctricos en la cuenca del Río Pascua sin destruir su valor ambiental es un mito fantástico nacido en los escritorios de los profesionistas de las empresas de relaciones públicas, gente que tiene ningún vocabulario ecológico, dando luz a una fantasía igual a las películas de dinosaurios como el Jurassic Park. Hablar de mitigar impactos al represar el Río Pascua es confundir la explosión de dinamita con el trueno del ventisquero—y viene de una mente que sufre de un analfabetismo ambiental.

La realidad de la propuesta de hidroAysén es una realidad explosiva. Si hay una cosa que se tendría que utilizar para represar el Río Pascua es la dinamita. Mucha dinamita. Toneladas y toneladas de dinamita. No es posible mitigar la destrucción necesaria para construir caminos, túneles, y represas en una cuenca prístina. La dinamita no es un proceso natural como el ir y venir de un glaciar. Es una destrucción total, la conversión de un lugar que trasciende el correr del tiempo hasta ser una zona de sacrificio industrial. En términos ambientales no hay como mitigar los impactos de la propuesta. El concepto de mitigar los impactos ambientales de intervenir en el Río Pascua es una mentira y una propaganda de pura fantasía.

Son dinosaurios fantásticos ellos que proponen la destrucción del Río Pascua. Son dinosaurios los Mateo, los Perez Yoma, los Pizarro (que increíble pensar que los criollos Chilenos ya quieren regalar su independencia a los españoles conquistadores, no?), los Angelini, y los Matte que proponen a Chile y al mundo que la solución a los desafíos energéticos y económicos de Chile queda en la intervención masiva en los Ríos Baker y Pascua. Son mentes fundamentalistas que solo piensan en sus cuentas bancarias del corto plazo, y que necesitan de las grandes firmas de relaciones públicas para disfrazar su propuesta destructiva y analfabeta ecológica de utilidad pública y factibilidad ambiental, por que sin inversiones gigantescas en publicidad sus ideas no podrían ni ser considerados razonables debido a la ausencia completa de justificación social y ambiental.

El tema de la propuesta de hidroAysén es un tema de dinosaurios y dinamita. Los dinosaurios pueden ser reales y pueden ser fantásticos, pero la dinamita que quieren usar para destruir los ríos patagónicos es de verdad, y es muy explosiva. Solo los que tienen una mente vacía y obsesionada por su poder y su dinero pueden seguir ciegos a la destrucción y irresponsabilidad que sería intervenir en los paisajes únicos de la Patagonia y meter un cuchillo en la cultura libre de la región de Aisén. Chile queda al borde de cometer un error que es irreversible y que va a revelar al mundo la poca sofisticación que tiene la alta sociedad chilena en permitir esto tipo de barbaridad en el siglo 21. Dinosaurios y dinamita son los dos ingredientes primarias de la propuesta de hidroAysén—nos queda ver si Chile los traga entera o si se despierta en buena hora para defenderse de una propuesta explosiva y destructiva.