Visit to Rio Muchacho Organic Farm / The Nursery Planet Drum Foundation

June 2011

A group made up of the Director, nursery workers, rangers, and technical staff of the Foundation visited the Rio Muchacho Organic Farm located in the province of Manabi. The objective of this visit was to learn the experience and technical methods of the application of permacultura as well as other practices such as recycling and the optimization and generation of alternative energy. The Farm is an excellent example of the relation between nature and resources, and we thank Nicola Mears and Dario Proaño for making this visit possible.  In addition we visited the tree nursery of the Planet Drum Foundation in Bahia de Caraquez.

Tree nursery of the Planet Drum Foundation

World Environmental Day

June 2011

To celebrate World Environmental Day, a group of students from a high school in Guayaquil came to the Cerro Blanco Protected Forest to plant trees.  As part of a program organized by the Environmental Unit of the Ecuadorian National Police.

The Guayas Provincial Government, through its Direction of the Environment, organized an Environmental Fair. The Pro-Forest Foundation participated with an exposition of our projects in a stand on the Malecon of the city of Guayaquil. Our stand was very popular and in addition to learning about our work to conserve and restore Ecuadorian Dry Tropical Forest. We promoted visits to the Cerro Blanco Protected Forest.

Birth of a Blue and Yellow Macaw

May 2011

A Blue and Yellow macaws chick Ara ararauna was born in the Wildlife Rescue Centre of the Pro-Forest Foundation.   Once found in the lowland forests of western Ecuador, the species is now restricted to Varzea forest and swampy areas within mainland forest in the Amazon region of Ecuador.  This is the first macaw born in our wildlife reserve center and represents an important milestone in our efforts to bolster the population of them.  

Search for Great Green macaw nest

March 2011
As part of the project 0925159 “Conservation of the Great Green Macaw” funded by The Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, field visits were made to find active nests of the Great Green Macaw in the Cordillera Chongón Colonche.

Various visits were made. In July, a trip was made to the farm of Mr. Felipe Quimi, who had indicated the constant activity of a pair of great macaw close to his property although without any sightings. Then in August it was reported that there was an active nest in the Hacienda Piguabe, a site which had a nest in 2009. Unfortunately, no nest was found during 2011 of this critically endangered species in Ecuador.

Search for Great Green macaw nest

World Parrot Trust Project: Rehabilitation and release of Red-masked parakeets

In April 2011 the construction of two flight cages began for the Red-masked Parakeets (Aratinga erythrogenys) in the upper part of the Cerro Blanco Protected Forest adjacent to the Jaguar guard station. The project has the economic support of the World Parrot Trust. The cages were constructed for the rehabilitation of the mentioned species before their release back into the wild so that they can pass through a process of adaptation and training.   The red-masked parakeet is one is the most trafficked of all species in Ecuador and is listed globally as a threatened species.

Flight cages for the Red-masked Parakeets



Red-masked parakeets



Jos Nolle Visits Cerro Blanco

On May 9th, we were visited by Jos Nolle, Chair, International Development of Niagara College, Canada. Jos is a long time friend of the Pro-Forest Foundation and Cerro Blanco. For more than 10 years, Jos has been a enthusiastic link between students from Niagara College and our foundation.
Through their internships, several innovative projects have been carried out at CerroBlanco, including the design and construction of our hummingbird and wildlife garden, the design and construction of artificial nest boxes for endangered Great Green Macaw's and the design and construction of our "Avenue of the Birds" self-guided nature trail.

In his capacity as a Rotary Club member, Jos Nolle led a successful fundraising  campaign among more than 10 Rotary Clubs in Canada and the US, which led to the construction of our Foliage Gleaner Ecolodge. With the support of Jos and Niagara College, two Canadian university students, Daniella Mastracci and Shazia Khan recently completed internships with the Pro-Forest Foundation and supported our work in key areas, especially community outreach through the environmental education programs at our community environmental education center at Puerto Hondo, work the implementation of organic home gardens with our community park guards, among other projects.

We look forward to continuing to work with Jos and Niagara College and say "muchas gracias" for all your support.

Creating Awareness Abroad

Christine Parrow, Instructor





As the saying goes, the flutter of a butterfly's wings in Ecuador (or in this case, the flap of a macaw's wings) is felt all the way in upstate New York! Our dear friend, Jane Johnson has helped make the connection with Christine Parrow. Christine lives in the beautiful Catskill Mountains of New York State in the middle of a forest reserve (that sounds familiar!). She teaches art at the State University of New York at Sullivan County, and in her own words, "I always encourage my students to learn about the environment and environmental issues through projects and classwork. When I heard about Cerro Blanco in Ecuador and the amazing work you all do there to provide protection for the animals, birds and plants, I wanted to share it with my class".

Classroom 1






Classroom 2



Classroom 3 copy
Cerro Blanco sign







DRAWINGS





By Mike Daigle


By Jeralyn Walters


By Jillian Alexander 
By Nina Stewart
By Kaylan Cemelli
By Martin White




By Latoya George
By Carlee Maree
By Kaylan Cemelli
Christine showed her class our DVD on Cerro Blanco and she said the students "were all amazed". She said they especially related to the Great Green Macaw, "which is so magnificent but endangered". "We did not know about the dry tropical forest. Here we have rain and/or snow throughout the year. The reforestation project is inspiring, and the commitment of the staff and local people to keep the forest undeveloped, got a thumbs up from all of us".

We thank Christine and her students for their much appreciated support and for sharing their beautiful drawings with us. We hope you can someday come and visit us and meet our resident artist of sorts, Eduardo Jaime, who just produced some beautiful new mammal ID guides and who is also featured in a current exhibition of painted horses by well known artists in the city of Guayaquil. Eduardo manages to include natural elements in his rendition of "derzu" named after the famous hunter/tracker Dersu Uzala, of the famous Kurosawa film by the same name.



Mammals in Cerro Blanco (Front)



Mammals in Cerro Blanco (Back)

By Eduardo Jaime Arias
















From the website http://arteurbano.com.ec/detalle-artista.php?aid=1001,"The work of Eduardo Jaime is constructed with patience and talent, in a series of thematic units that comprehends his particular vision of our natural surroundings. In the period of vegetation, his painting is transfigured, the same occurs with the animals and birds, reminiscences of those things that from an early age caused him amazement. Many of the themes intermix the visual splendor with a rich chromatics charged with meaning. This fecund dialogue conducts the painter to a organized esthetic exposition in which the deep root of equilibrium and order stands out. Eduardo Jaime not only is dedicated to capturing appearances, but also aspires to embody in them the total presence of image and spirit".






Coral Snake on the horse










Urban Art Guayaquil 2011 "Horses of Color" is an initiative that is inspired in the well known "Cow Parade" that was born in 1998 in Switzerland and which has toured some of the most important cities of the world, Zurich, Chicago, New York, Sydney, Houston, London, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires and Quito, Ecuador. 

Urban Art in Guayaquil 2011 "Horses of Color" is a cultural window that is integrated by 31 life sized figures of four emblematic horse races. They have converted in canvasses for famed artists from Guayaquil, "The Pearl of the Pacific" to show their creativity.






Details on the horse