EDUCATION - THE COMMUNITY
Very importantly, the Flor de la Amazonía Animal Rescue Group focuses strongly on assisting strategic projects orientated to decrease the destruction of the natural habitats of these animals, working towards cooperation with the communities that live in these areas. Still today many indigenous communities in Ecuador subsist on precarious activities such as logging (deforestation), hunting (animal trafficking), agriculture and grazing (which on a large scale produce nutrient deficiency of the soil and loss of habitat). Providing other work options and alternative food resources, along with education, is the only path to work towards reducing the destruction of the natural environment that is prevalent in the general population. At the same time it gives them the opportunity to preserve and share their unique indigenous culture, by promoting their traditional art and crafts, their forms of music and dance, and spreading their knowledge about the huge variety of medicinal plants and foods found in the jungle – knowledge which they have passed on from generation to generation.
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMES
It is very important to encourage the local communities to become more environmentally aware of the limits of their natural resources. During work within rescue centres, we strive to organise several educational talks each year with students of all ages, from both urban and rural areas. Using the power of education, we support educational projects such as the Arajuno Road Project (see www.youvolunteer.org for more information), which offers volunteers the opportunity to teach essential subjects to local schoolchildren. These actions help to create a stable learning environment and give a helping hand in all the community activities the project organises. The Arajuno Road Project is based on helping the Amazonian schools of the area improve their level of education so that when these children are adults they are conscious of the urgency to act upon the continuing environmental losses and degradation of the rainforests.
WORK ALTERNATIVES
An example of a work alternative for the community that we have put into practice is the growing and selling of fruit and vegetables for the rescue centre from their plantations. The rescue centre benefits by having 100% organic produce for the animals. A wide variety of fruits and vegetables are obtained according to the season. This means that the centre is able to provide the most appropriate foods for the animals – the foods that they would consume if they were free. Local families benefit by quite easily starting a small business, which therefore provides for their families without the need to have to travel into the competitive markets of the nearest cities.
Exactly the same pattern can be implemented with their local arts. It is very important to encourage members of the local communities to keep on weaving, moulding, painting, to perpetuate all of their traditional tribal designs in necklaces, pottery, and drawings, which most certainly make invaluable gifts for volunteers to take back home. However it is important to encourage the local artisans to stop using materials taken from any form of living creature, such as feathers, bones, skins, etc.
FOOD RESOURCE ALTERNATIVES
Alternatives that we have supported concerning food resources, instead of wild animal hunting, include assisting to develop projects of breeding various species that are fit to keep in captivity (for example providing fish ponds for fish breeding) – by doing this we decrease the hunting, still existent in most of the inhabited rainforest. In the still dense and pristine areas around the colonised areas of Pastaza, hunting is becoming a more and more difficult activity, (as in many parts of the colonized rainforest), because the wild animals are driven away by the disturbance of human activity (we often hear this same story told by experienced hunters). Unless we keep working to offer other options in the less interfered areas where it is still easy enough to hunt wild animals, the animals will keep being killed, or be driven out of these areas, and chainsaws will continue tearing down the canopy of the forest. And this unique place of natural wonder and beauty will not be able to survive in this dramatically changing environment.