Bolivia has a great diversity of wilderness landscapes: deserts, high mountains with glaciers and ice-covered peaks, vast grasslands, cloud forests, dry forests and rainforests.

This website is a celebration of these places with writing, photographs and soon, sound recordings. There will also be practical information for those inclined to explore Bolivia's wilderness for themselves. Feel free to e-mail me with any specific questions in the mean time.

But I need your help please. I am seeking sponsorship to pay local people so as to involve them in protecting their natural environment.

Like everywhere else in the world, the natural environment in Bolivia is under constant pressure. The problem is very simple: people need it to survive. The natural environment is everything; it is the source of all we eat and drink as well as all the raw materials for everything we make. It is therefore at the same time both immensely important to us and also under constant threat from our activities.

Bolivia is by most measures a poor country and it is probably for this very reason that it still has such a rich natural environment. The constant challenge is to understand how the changing fortunes of the people affect the environment and vice versa.

I am focusing on two issues: logging in the areas adjacent to the Madidi National Park and gold mining within the boundaries of the park.

Logging

Observers in Rurrenabaque report large quantities of lumber on trucks crossing the Rio Beni at San Buenaventura. Satellite photos I have obtained show that there is a network of thin roads that has expanded through the forest north of Ixiamas in the past five years. It seems likely that these are logging roads, built to extract lumber. The questions are: how much lumber is being extracted, by whom, and what is the effect on the forest?

Gold Mining

Bolivia has always had gold mines. Some of the gold of the Incas was undoubtedly from Bolivia. Many of these deposits were not viable, but increases in the gold price have made some mines worth working which were once marginal. Mining in Bolivia seems to be only minimally regulated. Many small mining operations are carried out by loosely affiliated individuals working together to secure a small profit in areas where there is little or no other economic activity. On a recent trip through the Madidi National Park I was amazed to discover that one of the major tributaries of the Rio Tuichi was so poisoned with mercury that one could easily taste it in the water. Local people know that it is poisonous and undrinkable. The questions are: how much mining is being carried out in the park, where, by whom, and what chemicals are being used.

Action

I have tried to draw the attention of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to these issues, but without more information there is little they can do. Globally there are a large number of environmental issues viying for their attention and they cannot spend effort following up every report they get from members of the public.

What I want to do is just the groundwork. If it transpires that the issues are real, and are important enough, then this will become a campaign which will hopefully have the support of some internationally recognised environmental group.

Ideally local environmental groups would do this groundwork but I do not know of any active environmental campaign groups in the area. This action of mine may be the start of one.

Funding

To answer these questions will take some fieldwork. Someone must go to these places to try to find answers and understand the issues. This will require the assistance of local people, who must be paid. Hence I am trying to raise funds. Money donated will be used solely for the purposes of paying local people to assist in ecological fieldwork, the results of which will be publicly reported here. Please consider making a donation, however small or large. Donors will be credited in the reports, unless they request otherwise by e-mailing me Ian.Grant@wilderness-bolivia.info.