“As large as my fist,” Lovael (8) describes the Tarantula. And his brother Elouan (5) is keeping an eye on it. They found it under a boxing ball, the springy kind mounted on a stand. It is where the spider chose to feel at home here in the Northern part of the Yucatán. Life feels at home here. As the taxi driver drove up the pot-holed road from Merida, we urged him to stop before the largest flock of orange-yellow butterflies we had ever seen. I step out and use my hat to gently suggest they move from the road to let us pass safely. Very fairytale-like they fly up at once and a flapping butterfly-confetti envelopes us. We’ve never seen so many.
Resilient Ecosystem Institute A.C., a non-profit ecosystem restoration community founded by Canadian ecologist Paul Morris and Mexican agronomist Sophia Ortiz, is pioneering large-scale environmental conservation in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Established in 2015, the Institute capitalizes on a unique opportunity: as cattle farming becomes more difficult with extended droughts in the region, vast tracts of former tropical dry forests are becoming available for restoration. Paul, soft-spoken with curiously piercing blue eyes, awaits us at the blue gate in his red just-too-low-for-these-roads Honda. We exit our taxi just next to the boxing ball, taking in the off-the-grid miracles they built in the almost ten years since they started: a cistern with a wind-driven pump, compost toilets, and many wildlife and bird ponds.
Paul and Sophia agreed to host us and teach us about their work. We start by touring the 39 hectares. There is one path connecting the stretched area of tropical dry forest from the access road to the neighbour’s land just behind it. Just a few clearings allow us to leave the path. We came just after the rainy season, and the undergrowth is unexpectedly dense. Without Pauls machete, we have no chance of making it through. The neighbour is growing some corn and squash on a plot behind the Institute. And the tracks of his motorcycle on the path tell us he’s there. We chat a little in broken Spanish. If he could get some money for ecosystem services, would he want to stop farming and start restoring native tree species? Sure!
This is where our missions meet. We want to mobilize transition finance, to pay people like Paul and Sophia to restore degraded land, bringing back life and storing carbon. Paul wants to make ecosystems resilient, through education, research, community building, and land trusts. And first and foremost, they need funding. Funding for a team to coordinate their courses. Funding to create an open YouTube course, a channel to share his 30-plus years of experience as a restoration ecologist with the world. Funding to connect to many landowners in the region who are currently stopping livestock business, ironically because of climate change, and are looking for other land uses. The good news is, that many do not seem to be opposed to nature restoration, as long as they can make it work financially. Perhaps carbon finance and/or biodiversity credits can make a difference.
Or can it? We talk extensively about carbon reductionism; how strange actually to measure the many different functions of the forest and its inhabitants in carbon and money. What is the actual value of this thriving place? Thousands of years ago, people and nature co-existed around here. Perhaps it was considered a holy place, as it contains a stunning feature of the Yucatán landscape: a cenote, or sink-hole. May we see it? May we even swim? Of course, if we wash away the insect repellent, and are we sure five year old Elouan can climb the ten-meter rope ladder? It is steep indeed. We lower ourselves on the ladder, Lovael effortlessly, Elouan bravely with Nichon. The water is as blue as Paul’s eyes. Not hard to see why he fell for this place, and took the leap to leave everything he had in Canada behind. We find ourselves floating around in the home of bats, bees, endangered water snakes and other creatures that just live in these cenotes. Sometimes birds of prey use the limestone pockets to breed. I climb out last and linger a bit. The sun penetrates the water from behind my head until the bottom, rays of white-blue dancing as my silhouette.
For ages, people found water in this sometimes dry area. And this surprises us, as the land is so green. But just five months ago, they experienced the greatest drought in decades. Howler monkeys fell dead from the trees. Also, many trees did not survive. The food forest Paul and Sophia planted did not make it. And hence the severe undergrowth: Paul explains that pioneer species bounce back quickly, but species for the next phases of succession don’t grow back without a local seed source – succession meaning that ecosystems establish themselves in stages, with different species following after each other. The drought makes cattle farming less feasible, with only skinny animals, but it also necessitates active ecosystem restoration. On top of that, healthy ecosystems are much better at resisting drought and sponging up intense rainfall. As we found out only recently, diverse forest ecosystems can store 70% more carbon than monocultures. So that is what Paul and Sophia are planning for.
How can we help them? We start collaborating to find a fitting way of monetizing so-called ‘ecosystem services’, like carbon storage. First, with funding. We’ve done soil sampling and made calculations based on satellite data. And we urge you to donate, if you can. Or, consider volunteering as a fundraiser. Learn from their work, from their YouTube Channel, Substack, Patreon or the other resources they distribute. And perhaps most importantly, find out yourself how to connect to life, to nature. For Paul, the connection is pretty literal, as all kinds of life constantly invade the house that is the Institute, he recalls. Several scorpions invaded the bunkbed housing for visitors, we ourselves experienced. Life just is all around us. We try to listen to what it has to say. Mostly, it smiles.
The Resilient Ecosystem Institute is one of over eighty Ecosystem Restoration Communities (ERCs). Climate Cleanup collaborates with ERC, the organisation established by John D. Liu that oversees and supports this network. We thank ERC for their work and for establishing the connection with the Resilient Ecosystem Institute. Learn more at https://erc.earth.
P.S. Do you want to help? Paul and Sophia are looking for a volunteer fundraiser. Read more…