Last week we wrote about how conservation is an art and an extremely creative process that involves so many variable involving humans, other species, cultures, and biomes. Even though conservation is continually uniquely created nearly in every moment, like any artistic endeavor, there are certain techniques that result in beauty. One Earth Conservation has that goal in mind - beauty and worth expressed in our process that we replicate wherever we can. Our Replicable Conservation Process has this goal in mind: To improve the lives of parrots and people in the Americas. This mission is achieved by standing in solidarity and witness to threatened parrot populations and the marginalized human communities that protect them. Through consultation and capacity building, One Earth conservation aims to stabilize and recover parrots while contributing to the overall health of human individuals, organizations, and communities in Latin America.
Specifically we seek these Objectives:
To stop the negative impact of poaching on individual parrots and species in Latin America.
To grow capacity in avian conservation medicine and parrot conservation in Latin America.
To improve the lives of homed parrots in Latin America.
To instigate and then initially support parrot conservation projects in the most needed areas.
Needed areas are defined as:
Where there is very little to no parrot conservation efforts or capacity.
Where communities are marginalized due to socioeconomic factors.
Where there are endangered birds.
Where we can have the most impact for our size.
Where there is little funding.
The first step in the process, then, is to identify needed areas. Next steps include to:
1. Conduct an inexpensive exploratory trip to a region to seek possible partners, conduct interviews, and survey parrots.
2. Depending on the needs of the people and parrots, ask partners and communities what they need and see if there is a fit between those needs and what One Earth Conservation can offer.
3. Support partners from afar and then return to a country to offer services, while also growing relationships, knowledge, and the scope of a project. This includes beginning to offer stipends to local people to continue the work and to coordinate with One Earth.
4. Readapt conservation strategies with ever-growing number of partners, and then increase financial support from One Earth Conservation while seeking more funders and donors to increase funding even more, hire more people and positively impact more communities and parrots.
5. Expand the budget and scope of a project, so One Earth is just one of the many funders, continuing to engage and support all entities.
6. Seek ways that the project is sustainable without One Earth’s direct involvement, such as training local project managers and identifying alternative sources of income.
7. Remain in contact, solidarity and celebration as local communities and organizations become capable of directing and funding a project on their own, and parrot populations recover and stabilize.
8. The above steps can happen rather quickly, in one case in less than six months, and in others, over a period of five to eight years. We have yet to have a project that has reached the seventh step, as we suspect that it may take 20-50 years to get there.
One example of our Replicable Process is our project in La Moskitia, Honduras. What began as a $1000 project a year in 2010 now is funded in 2019 for over $100,000. Also the acreage patrolled has exploded in recent years from approximately 37,000 hectares to 500,000 hectares (500 square kilometers or 1,235,527 acres). Such growth occurs because of the maturation of the process and the funding that supports a maturing project (approximately 40% of this area is only patrolled 1 time a week, 60% is patrolled 7 days a week).
This kind of success is only possible because of the commitment of the indigenous people, the local communities and organizations, the funders, and our supporting organizations.
To read more about our Replicable Process and the great people that make it so, please read our annual report.
