Farming without harming

Published in 2002

More than 90 per cent of Ecuador’s native forest has been cut down, and Maria Eliza Manteca Oñate is fiercely determined to protect what remains. “At times I feel like a lioness protecting her territory,” admits Manteca, a 2000 Rolex Laureate who in 1991 founded a nature reserve high in the Andes of northern Ecuador.

Last September 45-year-old Manteca inaugurated a new ecotourism and educational centre more than an hour’s walk into the Cerro Golondrinas Reserve. The new centre will help rural farmers better appreciate what the forest offers them.

Manteca grew up in an Andean valley near today’s reserve, but as a girl migrated to the city to work as a maid. Not liking what she found, she returned to the mountains determined to help her neighbours remain on their small farms. She formed the Golondrinas Foundation to administer the nature reserve as well as to educate peasants who live on the steep hillsides nearby to farm more productively by co-operating with nature.

In 1998, financing much of her foundation’s activities from the proceeds of a small hotel she opened in Quito, Ecuador’s capital, Manteca set up a research and educational centre at Peña Negra, training farmers at the edge of the reserve in soil conservation and other environmentally sustainable techniques, while at the same time welcoming visits by researchers and tourists.

The foundation’s new centre at Santa Rosa is perched 1,600 metres above sea level, twice as high as the Peña Negra centre. A new miniature hydroelectric dam will soon provide power for the facility, which can sleep up to 40 people – local residents gathered for workshops, ecotourists and researchers.

Farmers learn organic agricultural practices at the centre, discovering how to farm without harming the forest. And the centre is helping residents see the forest as a source of income rather than an obstruction to farming. “Instead of cutting down the trees, we’re showing people how the forest gives them raw materials they can turn into marketable products,” Manteca explains. Nature’s bounty includes a wide range of plants that can help community members stay healthy. “Much of the knowledge of those plants has been lost. We’re helping recover traditions that will mean a better life for the people and more respect for the forest.”

The reserve occupies 1,500 hectares, and Manteca would like to expand it to 25,000 hectares, but to do so her foundation needs to purchase some land from the government and also get local, private land-owners involved. “The government isn’t really interested in preserving the forest. It has its own protected areas, but doesn’t protect them. The lumber companies come in and do what they want,” says the Rolex Laureate. “But if we can buy the land from the government we’ll be able to protect it from the government. The people who live near the forest will take over the task of protecting the reserve, because we've helped them learn its value.”

The Golondrinas Foundation runs workshops for local children, women and farmers, helping each group understand its unique role in preserving the forest.

The Rolex Award has supported the Golondrinas Foundation’s mission to preserve and expand the forests of Ecuador. Not only did the prize money help fund construction of the new centre, but Manteca reports that the Award has brought international recognition. “Before people closed the door on us when we wanted to talk about the reserve.” But now, she says, “they recognise its importance and they call us.”

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