Eco-Ecuador
Collaboration for a Long-Term Sustainable City
November 2012 – January 2013 Field Report There have been a number of developments related to the Planet Drum projects here in Bahía in the past few months. In November, we received a visit from Judy, Planet Drum Director (since Peter Berg passed away in July 2012), her daughter Ocean, and grandchildren Florence and Stelli. While they were here, Bahía unveiled a plaque honoring Peter […]
August – October, 2012 Keibo Oiwa, long time friend of Planet Drum and fellow collaborator in the original Eco-city movement, returned to Bahia for a short visit. The first time he was here in 1999, Bahia had recently suffered from massive mudslides due to heavy El Niño phenonmenon rains. Keibo was delighted to see how green and full of vegetation the hillsides looked now. In […]
“Building Bioregional Communities” in Bahía de Caráquez In 2012 the first Study-Abroad class arrived for three weeks in September from the University of Oregon with their teacher, Gerardo Sandoval. Planet Drum’s (PD) field projects in Ecuador came to an apex this past summer when a group of fourteen University of Oregon (UO) students traveled to Bahía de Caráquez on a three week, study-abroad program titled […]
In the summer of 2012, I traveled with thirteen other students and one professor to Ecuador to learn about bioregionalism and sustainable city building. Our destination was Bahia de Caraquez, a coastal city that met with disaster in 1997 and 98, experiencing heavy El Nino rain that resulted in a massive landslide followed by an earthquake. In 1999, the city decided to rebuild with a […]
Clay Plager-UngerField Projects ManagerPlanet Drum FoundationJuly, 2012 The dry season weather has set in solidly during the past month. Temperatures have dipped a tad, it’s a little windier and there tends to be more overcast days. The weather is very comfortable for working outdoors – even though when the sun comes out around midday it still scorches. And one of the best parts: the drier, […]
May-June, 2012 The rainy season has all but wrapped up, aside from a stray drizzle or light shower here and there. Windier weather, more over-cast days and less humidity are setting in, which is great for reducing the number of mosquitoes and makes for nicer temperatures at work. Yet the sun still comes out in force on occasion mid-day and reminds us that we are […]
March-April, 2012 It’s been the rainiest wet season that I’ve seen in my five years in Bahia. This has been fine for Bahia and the immediately surrounding areas, but other wetter regions (inland and to the north) have suffered greatly in the past few months from extreme excesses of water. Bear in mind that Bahia is part of Dry Tropical Forest and the “rainy season” […]
January-February, 2012 Note: There are lots of photos in this report . This year three new revegetation sites have been created and are ready to plant with trees raised at the greenhouse. Trails were cleared with machetes and holes dug in anticipation of the rainy season which began, as it typically does, right around the beginning of January. Once the rains moistened up the soil, […]
October 31-December 19, 2011 The past month and a half has been dedicated to greenhouse maintenance and to watering the trees in bottles that will be transplanted once the rains begin. In the field two new sites have been started, one in El Toro on a piece of government land being used by a local friend who asked us for trees to plant on the […]
August 29-October 28, 2011 The past couple of months have been spent focusing on the greenhouse and getting trees ready for planting in the 2012 rainy season. We have surpassed 5,000 trees that will be ready. We have a ton of native fruit trees (Guayaba, Pechiche, and Chirimoya) and lots and lots of other species. Fruit trees tend to be good for donating to the […]