<
https://www.positive.news/society/planting-english-trees-to-protect-peruvian-rainforest/>
"On the surface, the ancestral rainforest territory of the Wampis people of
north-eastern Peru bears little resemblance to the English county of
Herefordshire. Yet the areas are inextricably linked, thanks to the grit of a
small group of Herefordshire residents who raised £110,000 to protect a patch
of the Amazon that is at least the size of their county.
Positive News subscribers Sue and Jeremy Bugler set up The Size of
Herefordshire in 2015 out of a desire to protect one of the most biodiverse
areas on the planet, while raising awareness of deforestation and the climate
crisis close to home. They were inspired by The Size of Wales, an environmental
charity founded as an antidote to repeated media use of “‘the size of Wales” ’
as a unit to measure the destruction of natural habitats.
“We thought that was a good idea,” says Jeremy, a former environment journalist
turned farmer. “Herefordshire is only 220,000 hectares, around a 10th of the
size of Wales, so we thought that was a target we could manage.”
The couple approached the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), an NGO that works
with Indigenous groups around the world. Those at the FPP told them that
£110,000 would enable the charity to help protect a substantial area of
Amazonian rainforest belonging to the Wampis, a 13,000-strong Indigenous group
living in north-eastern Peru, near the border with Ecuador.
The Buglers divided a map of Herefordshire into squares of 10 hectares each and
set about approaching locals with the offer to, in Sue’s words, “buy their
squares” for £5 a pop. They also launched a tree-planting project, where people
could sponsor one of 900 new trees in a three-acre patch of woodland on the
Bugler’s own land. “The idea,” explains Sue, a teacher turned farmer, “was
‘plant here, protect there’. That was very successful because people really
appreciated the fact that they could plant trees for their community here and
know that they were protecting rainforest at the same time.”
The money raised helped the Wampis people secure legal recognition of the
boundaries of their lands – which total around 1.4m hectares of pristine
rainforest – from the Peruvian government. This has enabled the group to take
legal action against gold miners and oil prospectors exploiting their land.
When the Wampis took the state oil company PetroPeru to court for drilling in
their territory, judges found in the group’s favour in 2019, forcing the
company to remove its rigs, clean up and pay compensation."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
