Land Thieves and Debates

I am on my second week here at Rainsong and all of my days are running together. It seems that there was so much going on when I look back at this week and yet when I am in the moment of this week I find that the other volunteers and I have our work done right away and so we simply putz around until more work comes along. We're definitely in the rainy season now as it hasn't stopped pouring for four days! With so much rain there isn't much we can do, work-wise.

Last week, neighbors of Mary's pulled out her fencing up at the lodgehouse near the farm and clear-cut all of her trees. They put wooden numbered stakes into the ground in hopes of moving their fence to those stakes and thus stealing a good portion of her land, simply for the ocean view. A few volunteers and I were up there pulling out their stakes and taking pictures for evidence while Mary called the police and an investigator. She's apparently been dealing with this for years now!

Once everything was handled with that situation and things quieted down on the sanctuary, Mary was invited to attend an important meeting about the prevention of animal electrocutions. She nvited me along and we brought Evey, one of her baby howler monkeys who is a victim of arboreal animal electrocutions. Her mother was in the nearby national park and was zapped on a telephone wire. A local had found Evey still clinging to her dead mothers back and brought her to Rainsong. When we arrived at the meeting we talked about Evey's background and what needs to be done to prevent these animal electrocutions. There was a big debate held where people discussed the pros and cons of building monkey bridges and insulating telephone wires. Things got pretty heated and it didn't seem like much progress came of the meeting. It was a long and challenging day and I was glad to be back in Cabuya by night, relaxing to a game of UNO with the volunteers.

Here! Enjoy a picture of Evey!