Local nonprofit fights to save vanishing rainforest.
With only seven percent of the Andean mountain tropical forests left, saving the rainforest is a critical and seemingly futile mission.
“It’s not too late,” said Ivan Gayler, a Del Mar resident. “Ours is the last generation that has a chance to save the variety of life on our planet.”
Logging and burning have annihilated one of the most biologically diverse and rich regions of the world, the different types of rainforests in Ecuador and Peru.
This is bad news not only for local biodiversity, but also for global warming. About 20 percent of the carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is released from burning rainforests.
After seeing the billowing clouds of smoke for himself, Gayler, the former chair of the San Diego Museum of Man, founded Nature and Culture International (NCI) in 1996. The nonprofit organization is proving it’s entirely possible to preserve existing rain forests and reforest destroyed areas left to rot.
Case in point: the United Nations Environmental, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced the creation of a 2.8 million acre biosphere reserve in southern Ecuador on March 28.
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Photo Credit: Laura Petersen