Vol.1 Issue 1, January 2003

Dear Friends…

A Happy New Year to you all.

This is the first of what we hope will become a regular quarterly newsletter for all the friends and volunteers who have been involved with the Las Casas project over the last few years.

Since 2001, 53 Earthwatch volunteers have arrived at Las Casas de la Selva to partake in our sustainable forestry research program. The information obtained from this study will help to create a future planting program including thinning of some of the planted tree areas and the replanting of areas that have been severely damaged, usually due to hurricanes.

Every Earthwatch volunteer has left the rainforest of Las Casas thoroughly skilled in the art of tree measuring, and data collection, not to mention refining the art of scrambling up and down our exceedingly steep and muddy slopes.

This newsletter is an opportunity for us to keep in touch with you all and to offer our deep appreciation for all your hard work and inspiring energy, and for your ongoing and invaluable support.

Here is a quick summary of the work that has been completed to date by Earthwatch Volunteers.

Twenty-three one-acre study plots have been established on the site. Nineteen of these are Mahogany plots and four are Mahoe plots. Detailed information has been collected on over 1,000 trees. In addition 13 Biodiversity study plots have been established and the identification work on half of these has been completed. We expect to complete these in 2003.

Other work carried out by tireless Earthwatch volunteers
(in their spare time!)

Nursery work
Bamboo plantings/erosion control
New Pond in Iguana enclosure
Workshop cleanout
Road Maintenance

We all owe a big thank you to Geoffrey Frank, a volunteer who spent three months with us in 2001 and who built the trail to the road that all the volunteers now walk down daily – Geoff, we are so happy we don’t have to climb up that cliff at the end of a long hard day anymore! Geoff also worked with Joe to construct the canopy over the main house that so many of you have camped under over the last two years.

We would also like to extend a huge thank you to Tracy Wood, who initiated the design and construction of four desperately needed retaining walls behind the main house…her mother made a substantial financial contribution towards this particular project, and Tracy spent over a week at her own expense at Las Casas in December 2002, and along with 3t, Julio, Carmelo, Gilberto and Tingo, finished the walls in 7 days. A great effort.

Gregg Dugan stayed for three months at Las Casas in 2002 and is planning to spend more time at Las Casas over the next year.

Along with Joe Carrasquillo, and Augusto Ingellis, Dugan built a wonderful boardwalk down to the lodge from the main house, working with the Mahoe thinnings cut by Andre Sanfiorenzo, our great friend and qualified arborist. Andre’s son Manuel, volunteered time in the forest and proved to be our finest machete man, providing interesting botanical insights in the forest with a particular interest in insects.

Magali Sanfiorenzo provided invaluable assistance to Sally, in planning and organizing workshops to demonstrate the use of small diameter wood and waste wood from the forest. These workshops, attended by local people, were a huge success.

Big thanx to Nicole French and Gessie Whitfield for trailblazing, bamboo planting, and repairs and maintenance at the homestead in Dec 2001.

Mark Nelson, one of the principle investigators involved with the forestry research has been a regular visitor. He will assist Sally Silverstone in writing up the data collected for publication.

Cathy and Joe continue to improve the homestead, and this year, amongst everything else, they painted the workshop building and built a high roof over the kitchen and complemented it’s grandeur with new tables and high spacious wood cabinets, (backed and thus rat-proof!). Cathy has provided the delicious cuisine over all the Earthwatch visits and ensured a comfortable stay for every guest.

Anne Visscher, from Holland, has been assisting with Earthwatch teams and volunteering her time. She facilitated the visit of Elvis Luna, a prolific painter and healer from Peru who visited in Dec 2002, to assist with the vision of a Pharmacopoeia at Las Casas, and in his one week stay helped to identify several plants in our forest that have exceptional medicinal qualities. Anne documented this initial study and we hope to present some of these images in our new website.

Tricia Peterson from the Delphys Foundation, a perfume maker, stayed for a week in Dec 2002, at Las Casas to explore the potential of creating natural products from the forest that could possibly be sold to assist the project.

Molly Robertson, a returning Earthwatch volunteer has joined us for a six-month
volunteer program. She is managing the nursery and assisting Cathy with general
maintenance around the project. Thank you Molly!

John Dolphin Allen, Chairman of the Biosphere Foundation, and co-founder of the Las Casas project, visited in Dec 2002, for overall consultation on the ongoing sustainable forestry project and the planned Pharmacopoeia. John provided inspiring insights into forest management, stressing the importance of erosion control, drainage and road maintenance.

Mark ‘Laser’ Van Thillo, VP of Technical Systems for Biosphere Technologies and Gessie Houghton, Director of The Institute of Ecotechnics have, over the last few years, made essential improvements to the grading and drainage on the road that runs down to the first river, and also improved the repairs on the bridge.

Other On-going Work for the Future

Mark and Sally are applying to the Department of Natural Resources for a grant to construct a demonstration wastewater garden at the site. For more information on wastewater gardens go to www.biospherefoundation.org

3t, Sally and Anne will be collaborating on a new and exciting website for the project that will include images in and of the forest project, some that have been taken by Earthwatch volunteers and we will credit all images. Thank you everyone for the time you have taken to send us your images. Never too late to send in your favorite pix, you may see them on the website soon.

Sally has just received authorization to obtain 1000 new tree seedlings from the
Dept of Natural Resources. These will be mostly native hardwoods. Anyone interested in tree planting, let us know!!

Please come and visit/re-visit us at Las Casas de la Selva…

Stay in touch and have a wonderful new year!

Love from all at Las Casas

big hugs….
Sally and 3t
January 2003

Please let us know if we have left anyone off the mailing list that should be on it.

Dear Friends

Las Casas continues to flourish at many different levels and in March 2003, eight more intrepid Earthwatch Volunteers came for ten days to get involved with our on-going tree-study program.

Site Managers, Cathy and Joe Carasquillo hosted the volunteers and several guests in comfortable, rustic rainforest style.

EarthWatch

In this session the focus was on the surveying and measuring of Maho trees in plots closest to the homestead as these will be thinned and harvested first as the wood project commences later this year.
Plants in the biodiversity plots were identified, with the help of Pedro Anglada Cordero, a botanist from the Institute for Tropical Ecosystems Studies, University of Puerto Rico.

Erosion control was underway with all the volunteers helping, in their spare time, to plant trees and bamboo in particularly steep, fragile areas that have suffered landslide damage. Thank you to all the volunteers who spent time helping in various areas of the general maintenance of the project.

Successful Small Diameter Wood Workshops

Over the last year, under the auspices of a USFS Sustainable Forestry Initiative Challenge Grant, Magali Sanfiorenzo provided invaluable assistance to Sally, in planning and organizing workshops to demonstrate the use of small diameter wood and waste wood from the forest. These workshops, attended by local people, were a huge success. Andre Sanfiorenzo, and Joe Carasquillo, who initiated the project, along with Cathy & Johnny Carasquillo, Gregg Dugan, Molly Robertson and Augusto Ingellis, have built various functional and beautiful rustic furnitures and boardwalks around the homestead from small diameter maho wood, thinned from the forest. In March 2003 we had the final two workshops that were well attended by local people.

Robyn Tredwell visited for a month. She is the Executive Director of Birdwood Downs, a tropical savannah regeneration project, which over the last 23 years has developed a total systems approach to savannah land management. This includes ecoscapes, The Kimberley School of Horsemanship, sustainable land management, ecological waste water management systems, environmental consulting and an Institute of Ecotechnics (IE) program for people wishing to learn horsemanship, and about the people, animal, pasture, soil relationship in a tropical savannah biome.
www.birdwooddowns.com

Robyn collected over 30 tropical rainforest specimens at Las Casas to supplement the Amazonian, Central American and Pacific collection IE herbarium soon to be situated at Synergia Ranch, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Directly after her stay at Las Casas, Robyn was hosted in St. Louis by Earthwatcher, John ‘Sport’ Clendenin and visited the Missouri Botanical Gardens where there are over 350 IE herbarium voucher specimens collected in 1980 by herself and Robert Hahn. The Las Casas specimens herald a new line of study on the total species diversity and on the pharmacopoeia project at Las Casas.

Expeditions and Camping

Dugan is back at Las Casas on another extended stay and is living out in the forest as much as possible.

Puerto Rican guidebooks rave about Las Casas’s Hero Valley hike as:

“One of the best, most serious hikes on the island for those wanting the full rainforest experience. This all-day trek traverses steep mountain valleys, dense jungle, sparkling rivers, cliffs, and spiraling waterfalls. A magnificent hike. Not for the faint of heart.”

Dugan has offered to take serious hikers into places like Hero Valley and deeper, behind the steep slopes and knife edge ridges where prawns and crabs live in the river, where you can only climb up the river over huge rocks, because the land is too steep. Other hikes include Icaco Valley (all day) as well as shorter hikes on the trails closer to the Las Casas homestead.

Dugan stewards the Icaco Valley watershed, nearly 500 acres of pristine rainforest that borders the Carite State Forest, and is establishing a field station in the lower part of the valley.
For more information about guided expeditions or camping in one of the lower valleys, contact Gregorio Dugan at twobirds@hubwest.com

Pharmacopoeia

Sally and Robyn have started work on the Pharmacopoeia, planting some of the forest plants for the medicinal collection.

Theatre

With Gregorio Dugan as director, the The Green Planet Players, invited friends to partake in a theatrical evening at Las Casas. The terrace usually covered by tents was the setting within the rainforest, and “Suenos de la Selva” was an appropriate title for the evening, as stories, sonnets and songs, memes, scenes, themes and dreams breezed though the air, with coqui frogs providing the audio backdrop.

Sally, 3t, Molly, Robyn and Rio provided ambient settings, sounds, movement and dance, while Johnny Dolphin read Lorca, Dugan performed several sonnets from Shakespeare, Richard Druitt recited his poetry and sang his songs, Andre told a story, and Omar, a fine artist and sculptor, along with his wife, Julie Collazo, whose Puerto Rican theater company is called, ‘ Deikelestai’, performed a shadow-play of a Taino legend entitled: “The Myth of the Birth of the Sea.” A final skit jested at the history of Las Casas, which in phoenix-style has risen from the ashes many times.

Molly Robertson, long-term volunteer at Las Casas, has done wonders with the nursery area. Over the last several months under the guidance of Sally she propagated various plants and started experimenting with maho cuttings. Robyn spent time on the bananas with Molly transmitting the ins-and-outs of banana keeping; massacre and liberate. After culling water suckers and digging out excess banana fruiting spears, care and nourishment can begin. They cleaned out and divided banana fruiting spears from the Mars Garden (by the Jungle Lodge), and extended the banana plantation. Molly spent time with Sally and Robyn on landscaping, pruning and planting.

Janny Baltazar was a star, volunteering his time to cut all the overgrown grass around the homestead and up at the top of the road. Janny, from Guavate, studies video graphics at college, and spent many hours walking over the land; more a sculptor of the grass, than just a grass cutter!

Coqui Study

In between all the organization of projects, training, meetings, gardening, forest expeditions, roadwork and maintenance, Sally had a meeting with the University of
Puerto Rico and initiated a Coqui Study Program, which will commence at Las Casas later this year. The study will involve long term monitoring of our coqui species under the guidance of Rafael Joglar. The Golden Coqui was last seen in the Patillas area about twenty years ago, and is considered to be possibly extinct. We will find out!

Rayeanne King, a reflexologist from Martha’s Vineyard, stayed for a week at Las Casas having visited many years previous, and made sure that we all got a great foot-job!

Rio Hahn, visited Las Casas for a week having been closely involved in the early days of the project. Rio explored the forest, partook in the theater show, and followed his passion in photography, also helping us to document the project. Rio has been elected a Fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and The Explorers Club. His many expeditions include a three-year circumnavigation expedition of the tropic world and two Explorers Club Flag expeditions to Nepal researching the ancient ritual practices of a Hindu Swami.

John Allen, FLS
John, Chairman of the Biosphere Foundation, Inventor of the Biosphere 2 Project and co-founder of the Las Casas project, on a whirlwind global tour visited for a week, and provided more invaluable consultation on all aspects of the ongoing projects. John was also a great inspiration with the theater show, which he also took part in. Las Casas has had a great history in theater productions and John encouraged the continuation of this line of work.

Sustainable Forestry Project

Augusto Ingellis and Sally have been working on a business proposal to set this project into motion, and Augusto will head up the initial harvesting and wood production. We hope to acquire green certification that will help us to market the wood.

Augusto is a talented arborist and fine wood artifacts and furniture maker. He experimented turning the maho and produced several exquisite goblets that wowed everyone who saw them.

Put your order in now!

Hybrid Adobe
Philip Mirkin gave a two-hour seminar at Las Casas on Hybrid Adobe construction. We hope to be able to hold more workshops with hands-on building of hybrid adobe in the future.
More info at www.hybridadobe.com

HOT OFF THE PRESS
Website!

The new website gives further information on all the ongoing projects at Las Casas and links to all the other associated projects.

Thank you in advance for all images that will be used in the website and credited there.

Green Gallery…what does that mean exactly? Well, it’s a blank canvas…the only criteria is that it relates to Las Casas somehow…send images/text/ stories/poems…please only digital format to: 3t@synergeticpress.com

Keep in Touch…
Love & Hugs… Sally and 3t
May 2003