2013 Index of Reports
Report 1: February – March
Report 2: April – June
Report 3: June – August
Report 4: August – November
Field Report #1
Clay Plager-Unger
Ecuador Program Director
February-March 2013























































Pásalo bien,
Clay
Field Report #2
Clay Plager-Unger
Ecuador Program Director
April-June 2013
During the beginning of April, planting the 2013 Bellavista revegetation site with children from the community was completed. While delivering trees to the site, fruit trees were also given directly to community members for planting at their houses.This is the last Planet Drum (PD) revegetation site to be planted this year since the rainy season has wrapped up and the dry season is setting in.










Cooler, more overcast days with minimal to non-existent precipitation are expected until December. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting El Niño Southern-Oscillation (ENSO) neutral conditions for the upcoming months (http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.html) so it should be a usual dry season. This cooler and more overcast weather has been excellent for field work. Additionally, it brings a much welcomed drop in the number of mosquitoes, so much so that using a net for sleeping has become optional.
The Global Student Embassy (GSE) visited the greenhouse with two more groups for revegetation workshops. The students learned about the PD Revegetation Project and assisted in transplanting hundreds of baby trees into reutilized plastic soda bottles.












For the second half of April and the beginning of May, I took a vacation with my family to the United States, specifically San Francisco, CA. While there I had the opportunity to check in with the PD headquarters and participated in a staff lunch with other members of the PD team. It was great to see everyone in person. The house and office in Bahia were closed for that time, but Orlando kept the greenhouse running and made sure the trees stayed healthy during my absence.
Shortly after my return, a new group of volunteers began showing up. Currently there are two community engagement interns who will each be spending 3 months developing increased community interaction as part of their PD projects. Eric, from Ohio, is a grad student studying International Development, and Becky, from New York, is working towards a Masters in Natural Resources and Sustainable Development and International Affairs. We’re excited to have them onboard and look forward to strengthening communities ties through their work. Additionally, Joffrey from France, a professional in GIS work, is helping to GPS map all of the revegetation sites that PD has planted since 2007 (and some from before then as well). Plus we have the revegetation volunteer crew, headed up by Itxaso from Germany. It includes a group of students from Sage Educators (who often volunteer in summer) for a two week visit and more volunteers are expected soon and in July. This solid work force is completing the regular workload, along with some interesting additional projects.














Currently, seeds are germinating at the greenhouse. Seedbeds of Tamarindo, Guayaba, Caoba, Laurel, Tierramonte, Chirimoya, Guachepeli, Grosella, and Pechiche were prepared and are in the process of germinating, and more will be planted soon. Shortly after germinating, the trees need to be transplanted to individual plastic bottles. This is a labor intensive project since bottles need to be cut, soil mixed and filled in the bottles, plus the actual transplanting of the trees.
In a series of fortuitous events that benefits both PD and Bahía, one of the local schools, whose students previously attended PD bioregional education classes and who have been helping collect plastic bottles recently, expressed interest in having students participate in educational workshops at the greenhouse. With an abundance of trees needing transplanting at the greenhouse and a desire to educate Bahía youth about their environment, PD jumped at the opportunity to collaborate with the Montúfar school. The result has been a series of revegetation workshops where we educate the students about the Dry Tropical Forest, the threats facing this delicate ecosystem and PD’s efforts to reverse damaging human impacts. After giving an interactive lecture and a tour of the greenhouse including composting methods, the students are instructed how to transplant the trees and they participate in the process. Large groups of students are able to transplant hundreds (200-300) trees in an hour or so.








After taking the first group to the greenhouse, other students at the school were begging to be taken on a similar tour. Once PD had enough bottles collected at the greenhouse, we took a second group of students to the greenhouse for a morning. For the moment, we are well caught up with transplanting, and will wait a couple of weeks until more trees grow enough to be transplanted and then PD will host more groups for revegetation workshops.










Additionally, more and more local groups (individuals, communities, government officials) are expressing interest in receiving trees for planting, particularly fruit trees. The beauty of this method of revegetating is that locals are helping produce the trees in the greenhouse to be delivered to other locals who assist in planting and caring for the trees. Demand for fruit trees currently appears to be insatiable since people are especially interested in trees that will directly benefit them in the future by producing fruit. Planet Drum’s role in this revegetation becomes more about facilitating the process by providing the infrastructure and expertise to grow the trees and less about doing all of the labor ourselves. This is an extremely important distinction because people are far more likely to care for a tree that they take the time to plant compared with a tree planted by a stranger. And of course it is always exciting to see locals approach us with interest in being involved in the project.
Pásalo bien,
Clay
Field Report #3
Clay Plager-Unger
Ecuador Program Director
June 21- August 19, 2013

Summer (verano) has set in and the days tend to be cooler and overcast with a nice breeze blowing through. When the sun comes out it’s still hot, but not like during winter (el invierno). This will likely be the typical weather pattern until late December. It’s been a busy summer so far with lots of volunteers and several visiting groups, which has been great and we’ve been accomplishing a lot on multiple fronts.


Revegetation project work has been divided between the greenhouse and watering at the three field sites that we planted earlier in the year (Universidad Católica, El Bosque en Medio de las Ruinas, and Bellavista). At the greenhouse, hundreds and hundreds of baby trees are growing until later in the year when they will be donated or planted in the field. Seedbeds of Caoba, Chirimoya, Pechiche, Guachepeli, Guayaba, Tierramonte, and Algarrobo are bursting with seedlings that need transplanting. This is where having large groups of visitors is crucial, since transplanting the trees is very labor intensive. Soil is mixed, bottles cut and filled with soil, and then each tree is carefully moved from the seedbed to its individual container.


In late June, William and a group of four students from Sage Educators in California visited for a couple of weeks. While they were here we paid a visit to the Rio Muchacho Organic Farm and Ecological School. We delivered a batch of trees and had a revegetation workshop with the students and teachers at this alternative school. We planted trees at the school and on nearby properties. The students even took trees home to their houses to plant with their families as homework.




In early July, the Children of Ecuador Foundation from Spruce Grove in Alberta, Canada came to volunteer at a variety of projects in and around Bahia. Children of Ecuador has been a partner organization with Planet Drum since 2007 and this year they came with a group of twenty-plus volunteers. They spent several days over the course of two weeks working with Planet Drum. In addition to helping us water all three revegetation sites from 2013, they assisted in greenhouse tasks. In a single morning they transplanted 825 baby Caoba trees!




Their group brought passion and motivation to the work and we even took on a couple of social side-projects. The projects consisted of replacing and expanding the roof over the communal cob oven in Bellavista. Also, with guidance from Orlando, we decided to help one of the most disadvantaged families in Bellavista by completely rebuilding part of their house that was collapsing. An elderly couple lives in the house with their daughter and the mother is blind. The entire kitchen, one whole side of the house, was rotten and very dangerous. In an incredibly generous act, the Children of Ecuador Foundation provided the materials and much of the labor in order to replace a this huge portion of their house. Planet Drum, Bahía, and the residents of Bellavista extend their gratitude to the continued support from this pro-active foundation and we look forward to continuing to collaborate in the future!


In other news, the Coorporación Nacional de Electricidad (CNEL) has partnered with Planet Drum to deliver one tree per $500 invested in electrical infrastructure by the Ecuadorian Government. This is an excellent opportunity for Planet Drum to impact the larger Dry Tropical Forest region since CNEL has been assisting with transporting and delivering our trees to communities outside of Bahía. Each community representative gets a batch of trees that they distribute to individual households, so each household receives one or two trees. We are working closely with CNEL and the communities to deliver trees that are the most sought after and will have the highest likelihood of being properly planted and cared for. Note: normally, trees are distributed closer to the rainy season, but we need to work with CNEL’s schedule in this case and since trees are being distributed to individual households, presumably, each house has enough water to be able to properly plant and water the trees they receive.

CNEL invited us to accompany them one day while delivering trees. We traveled with them to the Crucita area (45 minutes south of Bahía) to hand out trees to community leaders. While distributing trees we had an opportunity to talk directly with the recipients of the trees and discuss various ecological topics. We also gave them copies of the Revegetation Manual and offered pointers to planting and tending to the trees. All of the residents were very eager to receive trees and were pleased with the species, mostly native fruit producers, that we were distributing. The community president expressed interest in collaborating on a larger scale project in the future and we will remain in contact with her about this.


We held another Revegetation Workshop with students from the Montufar school at the greenhouse. A large group of students and two teachers came to the greenhouse to learn about the Planet Drum Revegetation Project and assist in transplanting seedlings. It was a fun and high intensity morning and the students were full of energy! At the end, many of them were asking when they could come back to help out more. Almost all of the students requested trees to take home and plant. We are planning to do more collaboration with the students, including tree donations, in the coming months.



For the past three months, three interns have been working on a variety of side-projects to complement the Revegetation Project. Eric, a community engagement intern from the George Washington University graduate International Development program, has focused his work on investigating composting toilets and composed a guide to building and properly using and maintaining composting toilets in this climate. Orlando has a brand new composting toilet at his house and there are talks of a Peace Corps project that would build more in of them in the Bellavista community. Eric jumped on this opportunity to educate residents about the benefits of composting toilets. The 10-page guide has been completed and will soon be published on the Planet Drum website in addition to distributing hard copies to residents who have limited computer access.
Becky, a Masters candidate at American University School of International Affairs, has also been involved in a community engagement internship and is producing educational materials of her own. She has compiled a comprehensive introduction to Bioregionalism and has inspired us to do some research on alternatives to chemical pest controls. Sadly, conventional agriculture is the norm around Bahía and the province of Manabí. In Crucita, residents complained of excessive chemical usage and simultaneous insect plagues, suggesting improper and ineffective chemical usage. There is a huge potential for promoting organic pest controls and agricultural practices. Fortunately, there are many plants that grow wildly in the area that are effective at controlling insect pests, such as hot peppers and tobacco. Planet Drum is currently experimenting on the plants at the greenhouse with organic pesticide recipes and will be perfecting them to promote to the greater public.


Joffrey, a professional in GIS and GPS mapping from France, visited Bahia with his family for over three months and has been assisting in a revegetation site mapping project. With his help we revisited all of the past planting sites from the past 10 years of Planet Drum work. We mapped 50 of them covering over 30 hectares of land! Joffrey also acquired GPS maps from the local Bahía city government offices and the Military Geographical Institute in Quito to provide satellite overlays to the maps. The map is a crucial stepping stone for researching future aspects of the Revegetation Project and studying the work that we have already done. It is also the first time that there has been a comprehensive visual representation of the years of work that we have done on revegetation and erosion control. An image of the map with be generated and published soon.

A solid group of volunteers, including a volunteer coordinator intern, are already signed up for the coming months, but there is always more work to do. We are accepting interns and volunteers on a rolling basis. If you are interested in helping with Planet Drum’s ecological work in Bahía de Caráquez, please contact me at planetdrumecuador@yahoo.com.
Pásalo bien,
Clay
Field Report #4
Clay Plager-Unger
Ecuador Program Director
August 20, 2013 – November 5, 2013



In late August, a GPS site map of the revegetation sites from 2005-2013 was completed with the initiative taken by field research intern Joffrey Iboud. After several months of plotting GPS coordinates at all of the sites, the data was entered into a computer with maps that were acquired from the city government. The result is a comprehensive view of the past eight years of Planet Drum’s revegetation work in and around Bahia de Caraquez. Although in some cases survival rates of certain sites were low, each site that we visited has some signs of significant vegetation growth from trees that were planted. Quite a few of the sites had trees that were from a few to several meters tall, as well as certain sites that had excellent survival rates (over 75%). The map makes visible years of hard work dedicated to native plant revegetation. Many thanks to Joffrey for providing the motivation and expertise to make this happen!



There have been multiple opportunities for seed collection during the past couple months and seeds of Algarrobo, Aguacate, Ceibo, Bototillo, Guachapeli, Guarango, Mandarina, Naranja, and Pomarosa were collected. During our daily activities we are constantly on the look out for seed sources, whether they may be friends who help us collect them or trees that are ready to be harvested. In most cases, the seeds are dried and stored away, though some are tossed into seedbeds for germination. Multiple seedbeds at the greenhouse are bursting with seedlings in various stages of readyness to be transplanted. Production at the greenhouse continues to be excellent and we are on course to surpass 8,000 trees for 2013.


Since this is the dry season, precipitation has been non-existent and we’ve been watering at the three revegetation sites that were planted this year: Bellavista, Bosque en Medio de las Ruinas, and Universidad Catolica. In order to ensure a high survival rate, the sites are watered at least once a month. Since we selected only the most drought resistant trees to plant at these erosion control sites, the survival rates have been very good (>80%).

The most significant development recently has been the progression of the revegetation workshops that are held at the greenhouse. In addition to the Montufar School, which has been sending groups of students since early June, students from the Sathya Sai School have been collaborating with the project as well. The model that is being developed for combining education and field practice is turning into a reincarnation of the Bioregional Education Program (BEP), which operated from 2005-2011. Due to a variety of factors (including funding and logistics), that program was suspended after 2011, and we’ve been looking for new opportunities to do ecological education work with local children ever since. The current revegetation workshops are exactly that. In many ways, the workshops combine the successes of the old BEP, while avoiding many of the hurdles that the BEP faced.


During the workshops, students participate in an interactive lecture and tour of the greenhouse where they learn about native flora and fauna, bioregional principles and ecological restoration techniques. Afterwards they directly assist the Revegetation Project by transplanting baby trees from the seedbeds to bottles, which they help cut and fill with soil.



In a single session, the students have the opportunity to learn outside of the classroom setting and participate in hands-on activities. The transplanting work that the students do is obviously hugely beneficial to the revegetation project since a large quantity of trees are transplanted at once. By collaborating with a handful of education institutions, it could be possible to further increase production at the greenhouse, while simultaneously increasing the exposure of the project to local students.



The greatest success of this model of ecosystem restoration and environmental education is that the local population becomes fully integrated into the process. The locals are the ones who help produce the trees that will then be donated back to the people. Along the way, they learn about revegetation techniques and the importance of the Dry Tropical Forest ecosystem.

Working with the students is exciting and it is fun to hear their input and perspectives of their environments. Many of the students have a surprisingly extensive knowledge of native plants and animals. They speak with enthusiasm about gardening or working with plants. Others are already somewhat familiar with producing compost. Part of the tour includes a short walk into the forest behind the greenhouse through a revegetation site. Many of the students have never set foot into the woods before, and some of them even believe that goblins or spirits inhabit the forest. It is special to be able to expose them to new experiences. Nearly all of the students at some point during the morning ask when they will be able to return to continue collaboration.



I look forward to developing this aspect of the project in the coming months and for 2014. Response from the students and teachers thus far has been very positive, which bodes well for expansion.
Pásalo bien,
Clay