Changemaker Catalyst Award recipient Jacob Dixon spent his summer at Fundación para la Conservación de los Andes Tropicales (FCAT), an NGO in northwest Ecuador that focuses on tropical forest restoration and conservation in the Mache-Chindul ecological reserve. Jacob is a 3rd year PhD student in the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Department. While conducting research for his PhD, Jacob was also a part of FCAT’s outreach towards young students in the area – Club de FCAT – and participated in the Día del Sistema Nacional de Áreas Protegidas which is aimed toward raising awareness in young people of the importance of protecting natural areas around Ecuador.
Around 50 years ago, the Ecuadorian government acknowledged the importance of ecological preservation and set up the Mache-Chindul ecological reserve in northwest Ecuador, an area of about 294,480 acres in the Esmeraldas and Manabí provinces. This was good news for conservation but the ruling ignored the thousands of people already living in the area. Many people subsisting off the land mainly make a living by growing cacao, raising cattle, or selling timber – all of which require deforestation. Governance over a large rural area of land isn’t very feasible, and deforestation in the Mache-Chindul continues.
However, there are several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) pursuing conservation efforts inside of the reserve which help limit deforestation. The Fundación para la Conservación de los Andes Tropicales (FCAT), like other NGOs focused on reforestation in rural areas, have adapted a modern approach to reforestation efforts wherein they include community members. In the past, many organizations ignored the needs and values of people living in the area and had an, “I know best” policy around reforestation. In truth, if the people that live there do not understand why you are doing reforestation, then there is a high chance that they will not care about it which will lead to an antagonistic relationship with the people that ultimately decide what happens to the land. Current efforts, such as the ones at FCAT, integrate the lives of the people that live around the area and take into consideration their livelihoods and their families.
One of the ways that FCAT engages with the community is by hosting a biweekly workshop for local students. The workshops are usually on Saturday and last for about five hours. Often visiting researchers are encouraged to lead workshops specific to their expertise. FCAT sees this as an opportunity for visitors to share their knowledge about rainforest ecology and as an opportunity for young students to learn, appreciate, and care about the rainforest. Afterall, these young students may very well be the next generation that decides the fate of the forest. To inform them of the great biodiversity and ecological services that exist gives them the powerful tool that is knowledge to better make decisions in the future.
As a visiting scientist at FCAT, I was also encouraged to host a workshop about my interest. Naturally, as my interest is Entomology, I decided to put together a workshop on insect identification. With the time frame, it would be enough to get some hands-on experience learning about insects. Students came into the station and I gave a crash course presentation on insect ecology and taxonomy (here is an example of a few slides). After the presentation, we all went on the trails that surround the station and caught and identified insects from various orders and families. With the large amount of insect diversity present in the tropics, you can imagine that there was a lot to see and identify, but the students (and teachers) had a good time catching insects and trying to identify them. With the great diversity, it also means there is so much we were not able to cover and so much more that we simply didn’t see. I like to emphasize this point but sometimes it is easier to see it than to explain it in numbers. That is why I am creating an insect field guide for
FCAT that will be at the station for future workshop and for other students to see. For this group of students, the end of the workshop was an exercise in art and literature. I encouraged them to draw or write something about an insect they had seen or any experience they may have had with an insect in the past (here is an example of one drawing and the insect it was based on). I gave them the option, if they wanted, to volunteer to have their work be a part of the FCAT insect field guide. To my joy, everyone was just fine having their work be in the guide (here is a small example of the guide and the incorporated art). The purpose of this guide is not just to get people to think about insect diversity and tropical ecology but to get people to remember that a community lives here, and they see and interact with these insects and they are a part of this forest and they decide how to interact with it.
Outreach to young students in this fashion is one way to interact with the community and can be built upon with other workshops with other objectives around raising awareness of biodiversity and ecological roles. As part of a network of other organizations looking to raise awareness of the importance of forests, FCAT occasionally participates in larger regional events. This July, Ecuador commemorated the día del Sistema Nacional de Áreas Protegidas,
celebrating the protected areas which make up about 20% of the country. I was privileged enough to join FCAT’s Director of Reforestation, Carlos Aulestia, and one of the founding members, Jorge Olivo, as well as two senior Club de FCAT students, on the trip into Quininde to participate in the commemoration. Many students from schools around the Quininde area were present
and at the end of the commemoration, students were allowed to mingle with various booths set up from several organizations, including FCAT, that work with conservation and reforestation in Ecuador. Using photos from camera traps and some
that I had taken in the field, I showed students a diversity of different animals that live in the forests around FCAT and we talked about their different ecological roles. This was another great outreach opportunity and was exciting interacting with so many students. I have outreach experience, particularly with insects, but this was my first experience working at an outreach event where the focus was about conservation. Participating in conservation firsthand like that, through outreach, it made me feel good. It made me think about my career goals – I could see myself participating in more outreach events like these, working with more organizations like FCAT. As a changemaker, we all want to make a difference – and I want to make a difference here, in the forest.