OneWorld Magazine - The Mbaracayu Forest Reserve

Introduction - The Fundacion's Story
Of Bats and Ectoparasites
Learning to Preserve

THE FUNDACION'S STORY
by Juanita Thigpen

In October of 1987, Kim Hill, a North American anthropologist who had been studying the Ache indians, a small hunter-gather society from the interior Atlantic forests of northern Paraguay, discovered that the land that is today the Mbaracayu Forest Reserve was up for sale. Hill had increasingly become alarmed by the rapid pace the Ache's native lands were falling victim to the bulldozer and believed it was time to act.

Ten years earlier, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) had lent money to a Paraguayan plywood mill operator who had gone bankrupt. When the businessman defaulted on the loan, the IFC took the property as collateral. Hill approached Raul Gauto, the then director of Paraguay's Conservation Data Center (CDC), and Alan Randall, the Paraguay Country Director for The Nature Conservancy, to see if the land could be saved. (The Nature Conservancy is a leading international conservation organization based in the U.S.)

"The CDC, with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), had done an environmental profile of Paraguay in 1985 that had determined that this area was of utmost importance," said Gauto.

Scientists had discovered that the region's 19 natural communities were home to various threatened species, including jaguars, tapirs, white-winged night jars, bush dogs, giant armadillos, Hyacinth Macaws, caiman, and Paraguay's national bird - the bare throated bellbird. Furthermore, the land was rapidly becoming an island in a sea of deforestation as Paraguayan and Brazilian colonists were quickly moving into the region to harvest the lumber and convert the forest into pasture.

Randall and Gauto approached the International Finance Corporation to see if they would be willing to donate the 58,000-hectare property to the Paraguayan national parks system. "They practically laughed us out of the house," recalls Randall.

"That land is worth $7 million!," they told us."

At the same time, Paraguay was being governed by one of the longest- lasting and most-corrupt military dictatorships in world history. Environmental issues were consistently being ignored.

"Our friends in Paraguay were saying we shouldn't give the land to the government because they will probably parcel it out to campesinos (General Alfredo Stroessner's base of support) or give it to a General to harvest for timber," said Randall.

A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

As it became evident that neither the Paraguayan government nor the IFC would help the conservationists, Randall and Gauto decided to look into establishing a private non-profit foundation that would raise the funds and awareness needed to acquire the property.

"I was motivated by John F. Kennedy, who once said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,"" said Gauto.

They consulted Alvaro Ugalde, who had worked with The Nature Conservancy in the creation of the Foundation for National Parks in Costa Rica. Ugalde played an instrumental role in setting up the framework for the foundation's establishment and advised Gauto and Randall that they should recruit active members of the Paraguayan community to help.

Finding board members was challenging in a society that lacked a philanthropic tradition and interest in the environment. But Gauto, a persistent networker, targeted like-minded people who he suspected might be willing to participate.

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