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NATURE
CONSERVANCY
WINTER 2007
HiddenWilderness
PROTECTING A DIVIDED LANDSCAPE
ON THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER
// INSIDE //
A HAVEN FOR TURTLES IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC
S.O.S.! MARINE EXPERTS ON HOW TO SAVE OUR SEAS
CULTIVATING PRIDE OF PLACE IN PANAMA
THE
PR IDE
N AT U R E CO N S E R VA N C Y // W I N T E R 2 0 07
OF
C ER RO
P U N TA
An unlikely champion
awakens his neighbors to the
nature around them.
By Tristram Korten
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
Hal Brindley
AGENT OF CHANGE:
Luis Sánchez Samudio
takes a break from his
outreach campaign to mimic
the call of its mascot, the
quetzal. Panama’s forests
are benefiting from
Sánchez ‘s marketing savvy.
TK
TK
58
LUIS SÁNCHEZ SAMUDIO’S 31 YEARS, THE MOUNTAINS
the farming town of Cerro Punta have been his saw-toothed
horizon. Mist-shrouded cloud forests have been his backyard, a dormant volcano the defining landmark, and vividly
colored birds—glow-throated hummingbirds, flame-colored
tanagers and resplendent quetzals—his neighbors.
Sánchez did live for six months in the sweltering sea-level
metropolis of Panama City a few years ago. “For the people
in the city, there is a lot of stress,” Sánchez says quietly one
morning over a tea at the Yadira restaurant, which sits by a
lonely cross street in the Cerro Punta neighborhood of Guadalupe. “I missed nature.”
Behind him, farm workers stomp in wearing
frayed baseball caps and shin-high black rubber
boots caked with mud. All of the men in the
restaurant wear baseball caps and boots, and all
have mustaches—all, that is, except Sánchez, who
sports clean khakis and a checked shirt. In a town
of stocky farmers with shoulders squared from
labor, Sánchez is tall and lean. “Hola, como estan?” he
says quietly, with a formal bow of his head to the
restaurant’s matron, the words seemingly absorbed
into the background noise before they fully escape
his mouth. In a land of hearty and garrulous talkers, he speaks with a soft, melodic consistency.
“OK,” he says, sipping the last of his tea and
shouldering a backpack. “Let’s go.”
WHEN
SÁNCHEZ
FINALLY
mentions
the big bird’s
name, the kids
erupt. “Quelly!
Quelly!”
PANAMA
It’s early on a cold March morning when
60
Sánchez corrals a few of the local teenagers, loads
a pickup truck with boxes and drives to the edge
of town. There, in an elementary school laid out
like a military barracks—a long, low-slung cementblock building with glassless windows—40 firstgraders pile into a room, bundled in coats and
sweaters against the morning chill.
Sánchez and his team—David, 16; Demetrio,
23; Indira, 19; and Willy, 19—have set up a
wooden stage for a hand-puppet show. Indira and
Demetrio kneel behind the stage and don the
puppets while a tape recording plays. On stage, a
quetzal appears and comes upon a farmer in a
straw hat coughing furiously.
“My land, my water, everything is contaminated
[cough, cough],” laments the farmer. “It’s from the
chemicals we used to produce our crops.”
The quetzal turns to the audience of rapt kids.
“This land is our pride,” it squawks.
Next, Sánchez softly pitches questions to the
audience: “Where does the quetzal live?” Little
“Luis is patient and humble,” says David
Samudio, a colleague at the local environmental group Fundación para el Desarrollo Integral del Corregimiento de Cerro
Punta (FUNDICCEP), where Sánchez has
worked for the past three years.
FUNDICCEP, The Nature Conservancy and the conservation group Rare
together selected Sánchez to run what is
known as a Rare Pride campaign—an 18-
HEARTS AND MINDS:
The Rare Pride campaign uses songs,
puppets, buttons,
posters and a humansized costume of a
resplendent quetzal
to convey its conservation message :
that Cerro Punta,
whose rich volcanic
soils produce 80 percent of Panama’s
vegetables, also
stewards one of Central America’s most
intact and important
tropical forests.
MAP © DAN MARSIGLIO
N AT U R E CO N S E R VA N C Y // W I N T E R 2 0 07
OF PANAMA’S TALAMANCA RANGE THAT SURROUND
hands shoot in the air. “The forest!” the kids shriek. But this
is just the preamble, and everyone knows it. When Sánchez
finally mentions the big bird’s name, the children erupt.
“Quelly! Quelly!”
In a utility closet nearby, Willy has donned the costume
of Quelly the Quetzal. He struts into the room wearing red
tights with yellow foam feet, aqua chest and a blue head.
It’s as if Mickey Mouse has helicoptered in amid fireworks. Children rush out of their chairs, forcing Sánchez
and Indira to spread their arms and hold them back. Quelly
lifts oversize feet and dances to folk music. Moments later,
when Sánchez turns his attention to the boom box, he inadvertently leaves Quelly unguarded. The
children rush in and knock a stunned
Willy back into the puppet stage.
Sánchez frantically starts thrusting
handfuls of hard candies at the children
and backing the big bird toward the door.
“It’s the emergency plan,” he explains later.
“Throw candy and run.”
N AT U R E CO N S E R VA N C Y // W I N T E R 2 0 07
FOR ALL BUT A FEW MONTHS OF
month-long outreach and social marketing crusade intended
to kindle his hometown’s appreciation for the natural wonders around it (see sidebar, page 64).
Cerro Punta, population 7,000, lies at the gateway to a
forest corridor between Barú Volcano National Park and La
Amistad, an international park shared with Costa Rica that
encompasses one of the largest tracts of undisturbed forest
in one of the hemisphere’s most biologically diverse regions.
The corridor between the two parks enables ocelot, tapir
and other animals to forage and travel back and forth. “A lot
of animal species would be in big trouble if something happened to that land,” says George Hanily, who directs the
Conservancy’s work in Panama.
But something is happening to that land. Although Cerro
Punta’s 875 farms cover only about 12,300 acres, the town
produces 80 percent of all the vegetables and tubers grown
in Panama (population 3.2 million). Every patch of dirt—
whether next to the market in town or on the steepest slope
of the most remote hill—sprouts green lettuce heads, onion
bulbs, potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, radishes, zucchini. The
key is the mild climate and rich volcanic soil—10 to 13 meters deep—that creates fields so fertile there are at least four
growing seasons a year.
Traditionally the crops are cultivated right on the steep
mountainsides, sometimes at perilous angles, without the aid
of terraces or other leveling techniques. This, of course,
means heavy erosion during the rainy season. Cerro Punta,
elevation 6,000 feet, sits at the headwaters of the Río
Chiriquí Viejo, and what washes off the hillsides may end
up in the drinking glasses of people in Bambito, El Volcán,
and numerous other villages and towns downstream. The
region’s farmers rely heavily on synthetic chemical pesticides
and fertilizers, and, according to local doctor César Vega
Miranda, hundreds of residents have been poisoned over the
years (though not fatally) by pesticides such as paraquat.
Meanwhile, the erosion slowly forces farmers to clear
more land for new fields, closer and closer to the parks and
the corridor between them.
And so Sánchez has undertaken a formidable task: To
reach out to radio stations, schools, fairs and the farmers
themselves in a relentless effort to change decades-old
customs and attitudes in order to save his hometown—
from itself. It is a job that requires Sánchez to interact
with hundreds, if not thousands, of people. One look at
this reserved and studious Sunday school teacher, who still
lives with his parents and helps run the family farm, and
61
N AT U R E CO N S E R VA N C Y // W I N T E R 2 0 07
It takes a farmer to
change decades-old
farming traditions.
Sánchez has enlisted
growers such as José
Abdiel (opposite) and
Hehofilio Gonzalez
(center left) in experiments with sustainable techniques .
These include planting grasses as live
barriers to reduce
erosion and using
organic fertilizers
(below left), which
are inexpensive and
produced locally.
“IN THE
PAST
we used a
mountain of
products on
our crops,”
Abdiel says.
“Many farmers
are trying to
use less now.”
you could be forgiven for wondering if
there was some mistake.
62
Sánchez commissioned his first quetzal costume from a local seamstress, but it came back
looking more like a parrot. Not satisfied, he contacted a company in Guadalajara that makes theater props and, $600 later, received “Quelly,”
complete with dainty foam beak and tufts of multihued synthetic fur meant to resemble feathers.
Sánchez scripted the puppet show. He printed
posters, buttons and flyers, all featuring the quetzal. He commissioned a song and visited radio
stations to make sure it was played. And he negotiated with the operators of the Feria de Altas
Tierras, the annual fair that is the year’s social
high point, to let him turn a portion of the fairgrounds into a botanical garden.
Sánchez puts in long hours, meeting people
during the day and working late into the night
at FUNDICCEP’s office. He says he has tapped
reserves of energy he didn’t know he had.
“This is a gift God has given us,” he says of the
mountains and forests, by way of explaining his
dedication. “If we degrade the environment, we
lose more than a beautiful area. We lose a great
quality of life.”
Something else happens to Sánchez during the
campaign: His reserved nature emerges as an asset.
Unfailingly polite and kind, he can approach anyone, and does. When Sánchez happens one day
upon a farm truck overturned in a ditch, he spends
an hour helping pick up scattered crates of lettuce
and consoling the driver. Around such a person,
tough, wary old farmers let down their guard.
Perhaps looking for complements to his own
personality, Sánchez enlisted the most charismatic
teenagers from his catechism class to help with
the campaign. In return, the teens learn computer
skills and receive training they could apply toward
careers as ecotour guides.
“It can be hard to lead a group of teens,”
Sánchez says. “They’re not very disciplined.”
Yet they follow him without question. One
overcast day, Sánchez leads his team to the campground where the festival will be held. The teens paint labels
for the trees, sharing cans of red and black paint, filling in
the block letters with both Spanish and Latin. Puño de Tigre—
Cyathea Arborea. There’s a muffled boom overhead, and rain
starts to come down, hard and fast. The teens follow
Sánchez’s lead and huddle under the eaves of a toolshed to
continue painting. No one complains. For the next two
hours, they work. Sánchez laughs softly at the teens’ jokes,
while the water splashes off the roof overhead, gradually
soaking them.
Sánchez is a familiar sight trekking village streets, toting his backpack and meeting with everyone from agronomists to
church workers. He hands out posters to
restaurants and shops and visits individual
farmers to spread the gospel of sustainable agriculture.
All of these activities are part of the
125-page plan that he crafted at Rare’s university-based training center in Guadalajara, Mexico. At the
center, Sánchez, who holds a degree in business from his
local university, took classes in ecology, conservation, social
marketing techniques and the metrics of survey taking.
Then he returned home.
“It’s true; he is quiet,” says Rare’s program director,
Megan Hill. “But Luis is from Cerro Punta. He is from a
farming family. So he knows how to talk to these people.”
And she is impressed by his work ethic and stamina: “He
always exceeds whatever we ask of him.”
N AT U R E CO N S E R VA N C Y // W I N T E R 2 0 07
GROWING OPTIONS:
63
N AT U R E CO N S E R VA N C Y // W I N T E R 2 0 07
64
“Químicos,” Sánchez says, scrunching his nose. It is a
sunny day, and he’s hiking up a pitted road flanked by farmland when a pocket of sulphurous air wafts by. Chemical fertilizers or pesticides—or both—were used on this land. Up
the hill, three men work coffee-colored earth with sharpened hoes. José Abdiel, 43, in a straw hat (the other two are
in the requisite baseball caps), waves down.
Abdiel practices the sustainable farming techniques that
FUNDICCEP, the Conservancy and Rare advocate. He uses
organic fertilizers that help restore nutrients to the soil and
natural pesticides, such as crushed chili peppers mixed with
water. He plants live barriers of vetiver, a grass with a thick
root system, in steppe fashion to keep soil from washing off.
When it comes to convincing the farmers of Cerro Punta
that there are safer, and effective, alternatives out there,
puppet shows won’t do.
Sánchez needs to show them
examples like Abdiel’s farm.
Abdiel is eager to talk
about his practices and
draws diagrams in the
ground with a stubby finger
the size and color of a blunt
cigar. In mid-drawing he
pushes an armored insect
NO PLACE LIKE HOME: “This is a gift
through the dirt, a chinche
from God,” says Sánchez.
ediondo, which eats the larvae
of pest insects that feed on the crops. Chemical pesticides
would have killed this small helper, he says.
“In the past we used a mountain of products on our
crops,” Abdiel says. “Many farmers are trying to use less now.
They know that the chemicals contaminate the land and
water. But the problem is they are very effective.”
Abdiel, who is preparing his fields for planting potatoes
in two weeks, admits that sustainable farming means more
work initially. When crop rows are cultivated in vertical lines
up and down the hillsides, it allows tractors to drive up one
row and down the next. But because he plants his rows
across the hillside to minimize erosion, tractors can’t be
used. They would tip over trying to drive across the steeply
angled terrain. “You need a lot more men to help with the
harvest,” Abdiel says. “And a lot more money.”
Reforming agriculture in Cerro Punta means Sánchez
must convince hardworking farmers that initial increases in
cost and labor will even out, even decline, over time. Among
the arguments he uses: At $2 per bag, the cost of organic fertilizer is about a fifth the cost of synthetic fertilizer; the soil
produces more quickly after a crop has been harvested; and
the product is healthier, which can be a good selling point.
(Part of FUNDICCEP’s work is to impress upon the big
grocery chains the desirability of organic produce.)
THE
SCIENCE
OF SOCIAL
MARKETING
Rare Pride campaigns, created by the U.S.-based conservation organization Rare,
are a hybrid of traditional
public-education projects
and private-sector marketing
techniques. Each campaign
uses a charismatic animal as
a symbol of local pride and a
messenger to build support
for habitat and wildlife protection. Marketing tools—
such as billboards, posters,
songs, music videos, comic
books, puppet shows and
even sermons—express positive conservation messages
with emotional appeal.
The campaigns follow a
strict schedule and a rigorous program: three months
of training, followed by 15
months of constant outreach
and education. Surveys taken
before and after assess the
campaign’s effect on community attitudes and behavior, as well as the impact on
conservation goals.
The Conservancy has
helped sponsor 22 Rare Pride
campaigns worldwide. Successful campaigns generate
a groundswell of public support and peer pressure that
helps change attitudes and
behavior. — T.K.
Abdiel says that many farmers are beginning to incorporate
sustainable practices into their
farming. One might use organic
fertilizer; another, live barriers.
“Change is slow,” he says. “But
the campaign is helping.”
The campaign is helping, at
least according to the numbers.
In late May, Sánchez starts collecting survey data to measure
the effectiveness of his Rare
Pride campaign. The initial figures show promise: Fifty-two
percent of the respondents say
they are aware of the benefits
of living near a protected area,
up from just 15 percent at the
beginning of the campaign; 85
percent say they are ready to
petition the government for
better controls of agricultural
chemicals, up from 61 percent
at the beginning. But other indicators, such as whether respondents know of alternatives
to agricultural chemicals, remain flat at around 30 percent.
In July, Sánchez returns to the
Rare center in Guadalajara to
process the numbers with staff.
Rare officials are pleased. “The
campaign was effective,” Megan
Hill pronounces.
On that March day at AbONLINE: Find more photos
diel’s
farm, however, the end of
of Quelly the Quetzal and
the campaign is still far enough
other Rare Pride mascots at
work and learn more about
away that the final result is anyRare at rareconservation.org
thing but certain. Sánchez
leaves Abdiel in the field and continues up the hill. Ostensibly he’s going to look at lettuce seedlings being grown in organic fertilizer, but he spends most of his time surveying the
view from the top of the hill. Below him stretch fields of
dark earth; above him stand thick patches of forest. Sánchez
says as soon as the campaign is over, he would like to get
back into the mountains to remind himself what all the fuss
is about. The sun shines brightly amid a few white clouds.
“Listen,” he says, suddenly alert. “Do you hear that? It’s
the song of a quetzal.” The sound is faint and comes from
a stand of trees far away. But for now, it is loud enough to
fuel his resolve. •