Examination

Weighing wild chicks in La Mosquita - Photo by Hector Portillo Reyes

Being in La Mosquitia,
Honduras one cannot but help examine the state of one’s inner life and the
state of the world. As biologists, conservationists, and people of the land
(Los Misquitos) much of our time is spent examining the ecology around us which
centers on the Guara (Macaw) nests and chicks. 
We seek to know the health of this species by collecting all the data we
can and then looking at the relationships within the whole.

What we found, with
only a handful of nests active with chicks, is that the chicks are thin, many
of the nests still have eggs (which appears late in the season to those who
know the land), and much human activity around the nests showing how they chop
into the trees to extract the chicks.

 

Piscacio high in pine tree examining macaw nest with machete/hatchet cuts

We also spent time
learning about the health of the human communities.  What are the forces causing the violent
conflicts and death threats, land stolen, forests leveled, and people and
parrots displaced? The list of causes is long. 
Thinking of the powerful influences here, including international
petroleum extraction companies and narco drug lords, we cannot fathom what stratagies will
best work together to keep parrots and people in their homes, but we can
witness, testify, and stand in solidarity with those who have been  torn from their way of life.

Interviewing Tomas Manzanares under a macaw nest - photo by Hector Portillo Reyes

Last year´s confiscated birds now permanantely housed at zoo in Tegucigalpa

How exactly does one
stand or fly with other beings as one? 
For my part it comes from examining my own life in relationship to the
whole, in concrete situations such as here in Honduras.  I find my identity and way of life slipping
away into the flow of such beauty and tragedy, and then I listen to the call of
my wild heart, and listen to the call to union with others.   As we
hold one another, and lift one another up on wings of hopes, I hear the
whispered dream and cry to freedom - we are Seres Unidos – Beings United.  Is it such a wild dream to think that we can welcome all beings home to this planet?

 

This year´s surviving confiscated birds, babies who will never know a wild home

Sunday Morning Coming Down (from Rus Rus, La Mosqutia, Honduras)

(Scarlet Macaw Flying By A Carribean Pine in La Mosquitia)

 

On Sunday, April 18, we
came down the long road out of Rus Rus into Puerto Lempira. We had been staying
overnight in the abandoned home of Tomas Manzanares and Alicia Lacuth  for the last several days  as we journeyed out each day to study wild
Scarlet Macaws. 

(Road out of Rus Rus - my feet showing my comfortable position riding in the pick up truck with the soldier)

 Rus Rus is a small
pueblo in the area known as La Mosquitia and has indigenous people, los Misquitos, who have their own language and their own culture.  Their lands and way of life is severely
threatened, as are their very lives. 
Tomas, as the leader of his community, tried to stop some “invaders” from
taking over their land.  These men waited
in ambush for him one day in December, 2009 and he was shot 4 times.  

(Tomas showing me the scars of his 4 bullet wounds) 

Today he has mostly recovered and his biggest
regret seems to be that his camera was broken during the shooting.  Against advice, Tomas journeyed with us back
to his town of Rus Rus, where most of the people had to flee for fear of their
lives after the incident with Tomas.  He
told me, as did several of the Misquitos, that they are willing to risk their
lives to keep their wondrous pine savannah and forests from further
destruction, and to protect their Guara Rojas (Scarlet Macaws). But already the
rivers are beginning to dry up and most macaw nests that we saw have evidence
of chicks being poached.

Half way back to Puerto
Lempira we stopped at the army base to return the soldiers we had hired to
protect us while we researched macaws. 
There the commander of the base gathered his men and then I was invited
to give a talk to the soliders.  Before I
began, a prayer was said, asking God to help the men listen to me so that we
could all work together for the people and the parrots.  With such honor and respect, offered to me, I
thought that I could only return the same to them.   I told them  of how I had been moved by their people, the
Misquitos, who had courage, strength, passion, and heart to love their land and
to protect it.  I told them of the power
they had in their relationship with the land and with each other.  I told them that it would take everything
they’ve got to keep their land and Guaras from being “ desaparecidos” (disappeared).
I then asked them how I could stand in solidarity with them and what they might
say to the world. One solider stood up and told you, my one wild and precious world,
to help them do what they must do to keep their land safe, and to keep it
beautiful.

(Talking with the Soldiers at the Base) 

Though I was not back
in my home congregation on this Sunday morning, I got to preach and in turn, am
being saved by the gathered. My deepest thanks to these Hondurans who are
helping me savor and save the world.

 

(Field Research Group Showing Their "Fly Free" Macaw Wrist Bands) 

Compassionate Conservation in Central America

 

 (Yellow-naped Parrot)

Studies confirm that caregivers play host to
a high level of compassion fatigue. Day in, day out, workers struggle to
function in care giving environments that constantly present heart wrenching,
emotional challenges. Affecting positive change in society, a mission so vital
to those passionate about caring for others, is perceived as elusive, if not
impossible. This painful reality, coupled with first-hand knowledge of
society's flagrant disregard for the safety and well being of the feeble and frail,
takes its toll on everyone from full time employees to part time volunteers.
Eventually, negative attitudes prevail.

Compassion Fatigue symptoms are normal
displays of chronic stress resulting from the care giving work we choose to do.
Leading traumatologist Eric Gentry suggests that people who are attracted to
care giving often enter the field already compassion fatigued. A strong
identification with helpless, suffering, or traumatized people or animals is
possibly the motive. It is common for such people to hail from a tradition of
what Gentry labels: other-directed care giving. Simply put, these are people
who were taught at an early age to care for the needs of others before caring
for their own needs. Authentic, ongoing self-care practices are absent from
their lives. (more on Compassion Fatigue)

 

Easily
recognizable in others and perhaps ourselves, Compassion Fatigue surfaces
repeatedly in conservation.   By experiencing compassion, that is, deep awareness of the
suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it, conservation team
members may find themselves unable to contribute and communicate as efficiently
and with as much satisfaction as they would like. By combining compassion and
communication as an intentional practice tool in conservation medicine, and
drawing heavy on social and emotional intelligence, our medical
kit becomes like Mary Poppin's magical bag, a seemingly endless reservoir of
methods to attend to the multiple beings in our circles of care, including
ourselves.

 

I will be leaving
soon for Honduras and Guatemala on a Compassionate Conservation trip.  My back bedroom is strewn with gear of all
kinds to comprise my field kit for studying and supporting conservation
projects in Central America.  The projects
in which I will be partaking are:

 

Lecturing at
University in Tegucigalpa

Lecturing and
consulting at Tegucigalpa Metropolitan Zoo

Consulting, pilot study
and  survey of wild psittacine chicks in
La Moskitia, Honduras

Consulting wild
psittacine conservation, El Petén Guatemala

Lecturing at
University of San Carlos, Guatemala

Ethno-ornithological/Integral
Ecology Study

Writer/reporter/witness
regarding the lives of people and parrots in Central America

 

I go as an independent
consultant, Director of Lafeber Conservation (thank you very much for the
grants Lafeber Company!), and as myself. 
Having experienced the burn out and overwhelming challenges of front
line conservation in Guatemala, I know how important it is to have
support.  I have worked hard over the
last decade acquiring the social and emotional intelligence skills necessary
for conservation, lightening my load by letting go of some unnecessary baggage.
So though my current toolkit is packed full of medicines, cameras, and outdoor equipment,
probably the most important tools I can bring are those that deal with the
human dimensions of conservation and wildlife management.  These I carry in my heart and mind (thank
goodness as the airlines won't charge me for extra baggage!).

 

I will do my best
to text/twitter from the field, so come here for updates (either as an update
or as a twitter entry on the sidebar).

 

In compassionate
hope,

 

LoraKim

Possibilities Through Partnerships

 

 Carolina Parakeets (JJ Audubon)

On Saturday I attended the Florida Audubon Academy in
Gainesville Florida and was delighted to deliver a keynote address in the
morning.  There were about 100 Auduboners
from around the state present.  I wasn't
sure what to expect as I was speaking with heart, emotion, and a deep faith in nature
interconnection.  My underlying hope in
this presentation was to share with these people my hope for conservation work
in the midst of heartache and overwhelming challenges, and environmental and species
loss.  My hope, or at least my opening to
possibility, comes from the tremendous untapped potential of relationships in
multispecies communities.  I believe that
humans evolved to both save and savor one another and our world, as well as to
compete and to collaborate.  In facing
who we are, we can then use social intelligence to navigate difficult
relationships and grow our intrapersonal and interpersonal skills.  Just because it is hard, does not mean that there
won't come a time when  birds will fly
free as we too  sense the liberating joy
of loving one another.  I ended the
presentation with my answer to the question, "what are we for?" I
said that for me it is an urgent sense that we must love another or die.

In many ways I was "preaching to the choir." Yes I
knew these folks loved birds and probably faced sadness and despair in their
work.  What I didn't know was how close
they were to the passion of their work that comes from their intense love of
this world, and how close they were to their feelings of both joy and loss.  They expressed to me after the presentation how
much they wished to reenage with renewed vigor, despite the challenges.  In hearing of their work, and their
willingness to risk failure and frustration, I came away strengthened and
reaffirmed that we need to think alike to love alike. The force of this love
may help us partner with one another in unknown, creative ways that may yet be
the saving of this beloved planet.  Thank
you Florida Audubon for the depth of your commitment, and to Jacqui Sulek and Joyce King for inviting me and hosting the conference along with Alachua Audubon,  Marion Audubon, Four Rivers Audubon, and Santa Fe Audubon.

Regrets and Egrets

 Snowy Egret, Paine's Prairie March 22, 2010

 

If only

                pondered
the solitary hunter

If only I had struck quicker

                If only
the fish had not turned

                                If
only the humans had not destroyed this prairie

My children might be here in the thousands

                Feeding
and food for an abundance I have only heard about

If only the many humans who watch me hunt

                walking
this path into the rising waters

                                would
 move quicker, turn from desire, and
rebuild this water world

                                                loving
and loved in a abundance 

you have not just heard about

but
fathom when you look at me

If only you would see me

If only

For Birds, For People, For Life, Forever

 

 

The world has moved on. 
From my rehabilitation days over 20 years ago, I see a greater shift
towards the interconnecting health of human and nonhuman.  We need to take care of ourselves so we can
take care of animals.  Here are some examples
of what is going on regarding this topic at the National Wildlife
Rehabilitiation Association Annual Symposium.

 

One person was toting a bag from the Royal Society
of Bird Preservation that said, "For birds, for people, forever."
when I asked her about this saying she said that you cannot separate the well
being of bird from a person. "Without birds, human souls would die."

 

Jennifer Convoy of PAWS (Progressive Animal Welfare
Society) said in the opening remarks, "No one is right, but we may be all
right together."  She went on to say
that though we like animals, we need to work well with people because this
increases our ability to give good quality care to animals.

 

Wendy Fox, the President of NWRA had a seminar
during the symposium about conflict between people working in
rehabilitation.  She said that human
relationships are the biggest problem rehabbers have. If we could get along
better, than we could take better care of the animals.

 

We are one world and we share one health.  Amen.

Rehabilitating Beauty

Today I travel to the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association Annual Symposium in Bellevue, Washington.  It has been a long time since I have worked in avian rehabilitation.  As an avian veterinarian I have always taken in wild birds, or referred them to others.  Somewhere along the line I lost hope in this work as it seemed a band-aid type of approach when the world was suffering such degradation and extinction.  Charitable acts to return injured, young, or ill birds to the wild seemed like a drop in the bucket compared to what outdoor cats, pesticides, habitat destruction, hunting, and poaching did to bird populations the world over.  I strove for changes and the healing of the human heart that could impact social systems so that we could would not just consider the needs of all beings, but act from a biocentric, and not a human centric ethic.  I also wasn’t sure that taking care of individual birds was always n their best interest, given the stress and pain of captive management with many species. 

Indeed it is a complex world. The web of suffering cannot be eliminated, nor can the interweaving of beauty that happens in multispecies encounters.  I no longer feel that I have the answers to how we might live in beauty and have it eternally fly over us.  I journey then to this symposium, knowing that I share with others of my own species a respect, wonder, and care of the beauty around me, though we each make take different paths.  On all these paths, however, there is beauty before us.  We walk in beauty.  We work in beauty. We rehabilitate in beauty.