The Sydney Latin American Film Festival has contributed to the Tropical Rainforest Coalition’s “Save an Acre” land purchase project in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This project purchases pockets of the Llushlin River Rainforest in a buffer zone bordering the Sangay National Park. This project aims to serve the dual purpose of protecting this precious natural region whilst enabling indigenous Amazanga peoples to live out their traditional culture in an interdependent relationship with the ecology.
The Llushin River valley is 95% covered in primary rainforest home to a wide array of wildlife and endangered species. The area is full of salt licks where birds abound, including many kinds of parrots, military macaws, kinkajous, and olingos. Tapirs, Andean spectacled bears, puma and even jaguars call this their home. The forest is exquisite, at the base of the Andes, teeming with huge trees, epiphytes, orchids, and rich with a variety of rare palms.
During the agricultural reform the government gave this land to colonists and the indigenous people lost their ancestral home. Now it is being sold to corporations whose interests are in timber, oil and gold mining. The Tropical Rainforest Coalition aims to purchase this land and return it to the Amazon’s indigenous peoples. The land will be purchased for and in the name of the Kicshuar Community of Amazanga under a perpetual land trust, which declares the area intangible to exploitation of any kind. To date Grupo Osanimi have purchased 1,250 hectares of ‘saved’ rainforest and are looking for funding to purchase three more parcels of rainforest, thus formalizing an indigenous run biological reserve – a model conservation project for Ecuador.
The documentary “Amazanga Kausai: The Llushin River Valley ConservationProject” was at the 2007 SLAFF Micro-Cinema sessions at the Seymour Theatre.