Bioregional Resources
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador From a video music blaring shore side restaurant on the Rio Chone, the ancient vision of a dugout canoe with two men standing and throwing circular nets in the distance. It’s an accomplished skill for only one person to sit still in these narrow, shallow draft boats without upsetting their knife-edge balance. A large diesel engine ferry powers across the river […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador The main stage of the ambitious project to revegetate six kilometers of eroded hillsides directly facing Rio Chone on the road into Bahia de Caraquez with native plants of the tropical dry forest has begun. The list of bioregional criteria met by doing this is impressive. These hills are continuous with the metropolitan area and thus part of the ecological city […]
(Summary of talk at Universidad Espiritu Santi, Campus Sambopondon, 7PM February 21, 2003.) Introduction Along with all of the technological advances of our time like computer and space technology, the most significant cultural change for our species in the last 15,000 years is taking place in this decade. Homo sapiens is becoming an urban species. In less than 5 years 50% of all the people on our […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador When contacts are hard to make quickly they often get even harder. That’s the way Brian found getting in touch with Pedro Otero, an ecologically-minded biologist who teaches, does water testing as “Peter’s Lab”, and is an owner with four brothers of a significant parcel of badly eroded land. Located in the El Toro Creek watershed behind Leonidas Plaza, it is […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador This is the last of five straight years worth of work pledged beginning in February 1999 when Planet Drum Foundation was invited to assist in realizing Bahia de Caraquez’s Ecological City Declaration. An earthquake and El Nino mudslide ruined municipality in 1998 with fallen buildings, impassable streets and highways, and 5,000 outright homeless families living on the sidewalks, the city is […]
We started out the new year with one volunteer, Simon Winch, working on the Eco Ecuador Project. In early January Peter arrived, and about a week later Brian Teinert, who has been hired as chief of operations for Planet Drum’s projects, arrived to carry on the work. Peter has been busy organizing the projects in Bahia and introducing Brian to everyone. On the side, he composed […]
Peter Berg’s tribute to Raymond F. Dasmann who died in Santa Cruz, California on November 5, 2002. Written in Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador. Besides his prodigious accomplishments in the fields of conservation and ecology, Ray Dasmann was an inspiring guide for learning how and what to observe. During the gifted times when I walked in the woods with him, Ray didn’t utter more than a […]
Bioregionalism is an update of Peter’s 1983 essay Bioregions. Why bioregions are important, clear and concise definitions, as well as manifestations of bioregionalism—groups, history, relationships to other concepts, and attacks by global monoculture. At the end of this article is a paragraph of Berg’s from 2009 about the importance of a bioregional point of view. * * * The catastrophic effects on Earth’s biosphere due to human […]
Bahia de Caraquez All of Ecuador is in the near-frantic clutch of election fever. There are over ten political parties (listas) who have been running candidates for offices from president and first deputy down to city council members in a time frame of just two months before mid-October voting. In Bahia the pitch has risen daily since the first week in September when emphatic speeches […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador Planet Drum’s new office/volunteer center is a promising three bedroom, two bathroom, large living-dining room apartment on the second floor in the city center that is notably inexpensive due to the ravages of 1998’s earthquake. Only $30 in cash and $30 worth of repairs per month. Field Projects Manager Jeff Goddin and volunteer Laura McKaughan had to tear down the ruined […]