Forgive me for asking, but I have heard that there are fewer and fewer of you. How many of you are there?
No one knows. I don't know. The scientists do not know. They say there are between 5,000 and 10,000 of us in Colombia, but it is getting harder and harder to see each other and to communicate. You can't even have a New Year's Eve party because you want to invite your cousins from the ‘paisas’, for example, those who live in the coffee region and in the south of Antioquia, and nothing, they tell you that they can't come, that the road they used to cross has become a holiday farm or a group of houses.
¿And what can we do to help?
The first thing I ask of you is to help raise awareness. To protect us. We always want the best for nature. In fact, I don't know if you know this, but we are catalogued as an umbrella species, because where there is an Andean bear, it means there is a healthy ecosystem. But there are fewer and fewer of them. It seems that only the parks are looking after them; they told me that they are cutting down all the jungle in the Amazon.
Why do you think it is not enough to look after the parks alone?
I like the national parks very much, I hike in 23 of them. I am very happy in Chingaza, Sumapaz, Tatamá, Farallones de Cali and Munchique. But I want to explore more, I've always been very exploratory and now it seems I'm in seclusion, as if I were in a zoo. I go out and see farms on one side, crops and cattle on the other. There are no more forests for me.
Do you feel that no one cares about you and your species?
No, there are people who help us. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the initiatives that help us. One of them is called ‘Conservamos la Vida’, which protects the forests so that we can continue to move peacefully. It involves the National Natural Parks of Colombia (PNN), the Regional Autonomous Corporation of Valle del Cauca (CVC), the Argos Group Foundation, the Smurfit Kappa Foundation, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the rural communities of several municipalities in the Andes. They are an example of how farming can be done without destroying my home. This project has a very delicious coffee that I have tasted, grown on farms where there is protected forest that I can walk around in peace.
This year, the Biodiversity Conference (COP16) will be held in Colombia. Hundreds of world leaders will meet there to define the actions to be taken to protect nature, and our country is not only the host, but also the president of the meeting. What would you say to those who will be there?
The first thing I want to tell you is that things are changing in the forest, and not for the better. The rain has stopped and the trees are getting drier and drier. In the last few weeks I have come across many forest fires that have prevented me from continuing my walk. And although it may not seem like it matters, it does. Not just for me, because it's clear that I want to have a house to live in, to find trees to climb and fruit to eat, but I don't know if the people know that without forests there is no rain, no plants, no birds, nothing. Not only am I running out of a home, they are running out of food, water and a pleasant climate. The other day I saw that it was very hot in the mountains and I asked myself: if it is like this here, I want to get rid of all this hair, what will it be like in the cities? Sometimes I look down from the mountains and I see that in many communities there are not even trees in the streets, everything is cement. So it is impossible for them not to have heat. So my call is to protect more forests, but also to restore those that have been damaged. Even the bad things can be corrected. The studies say that in this decade we have to restore as much forest as possible. I would be very grateful. In the end, if we have more forests, you will benefit as much as we do.
(*) Fictional interview based on data about the Andean bear and its threats.
EDWIN CAICEDO
Environment and Health Journalist
@@CaicedoUcros / @ElTiempoVerde
