Tuesday April 2nd marked the inaugural Koerner Speaker series in Neotropical Conservation with world-reknowned jazz pianist and Costa Rican Minister of Youth and Culture Manuel Obregón. In Tribute Communities Recital Hall, the afternoon began with an introduction from Noël Sturgeon, Dean of the Faculty of Environmental Studies, and Felipe Montoya, Director of the Las Nubes Project and Chair in Neo-Tropical Conservation.

An engaging lecture from Manuel Obregón followed, emphasizing the need for collaboration in biological conservation in which the arts and youth groups play an important role. Obregón shared his process and inspiration for composing Simbiosis. A beautiful recital ensued, accompanied by the sounds of birds, frogs, howler monkeys, wind, and rainfall. Stunning videos of Costa Rican coastal and dry forest ecosystems were the backdrop of this wonderful concert.

Afterwards, spectators had the opportunity to discuss with the Minister during the Q&A session followed by the wine and cheese reception. It was a great occasion for students to mingle with faculty, the Minister, and the Las Nubes Student Association.

This very successful Koerner lecture in Neotropical Conservation was sponsored by the Koerner Foundation, the Faculty of Environmental Studies, the Faculty of Fine Arts and York International.

Join us for this free musical and ecological jazz performance and lecture by Manuel Obregón, Costa Rica’s Minister of Culture and Youth.

Manuel Obregón’s piano is immersed in images of Costa Rican ecosystems creating a sonic repartee with the birds and other creatures of the rainforest. It’s not to miss!

Tuesday April 2, 3:30pm at York University – a wine and cheese reception with the Minister follows.

Check out the event page for more information and to RSVP!

UPDATE: Take a look at this great article on YFile 

Colourful framed photographs taken by students on previous field courses will be exhibited in the Zig Zag Gallery two weeks prior to the event. We encourage you to come take a look! Other items up for bid include handcrafted hats made by a local artist, wooden rings, and greeting cards. Arriving straight from our friends in Costa Rica will be woven bags and Boruca masks! And of course, Las Nubes coffee will be available.

Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to meet students and faculty involved in the Las Nubes Project! You will be rewarded with food, great entertainment (we heard that some talented flamenco dancers will be performing), raffle prizes, and new friends.

Save the date for November 7! The Las Nubes Student association is hosting a Silent Auction in HNES, Keele Campus.

Las Nubes: Conservation in the Cloud Forests of Costa Rica, a new book by two York graduate students, tells the story of the Las Nubes Biological Reserve through stunning photos and accompanying text, from its York beginnings until today.

“Las Nubes is Spanish for ‘the clouds’, and Las Nubes Biological Reserve is a place where the opportunity for discovery is as limitless as the sky,” write its authors, York environmental studies PhD candidate Chris Saker (MES ’09) and Ana Maria Martinez (MES ’10), a PhD candidate in York’s Faculty of Education.

Las Nubes: Conservation in the Cloud Forests of Costa Rica (Rainforest Editions), available through the York University Bookstore, is dedicated to the memory of the late York environmental studies Professor Howard Daugherty.

“The book is intended to raise awareness of the natural beauty of this ecosystem and the research, teaching and outreach programs conducted at Las Nubes,” says Barbara Rahder, former dean of the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES). “It is also a fundraising project for FES and the Fisher Fund.”

But it is also what Rahder calls “a tribute to the years Professor Howard Daugherty spent developing our educational and research programs at Las Nubes.” Daugherty first conceived of the book as a way of showcasing the program’s accomplishments, and the reserve itself, as well as promoting conservation. He spent some two years on the book, hand picking the photos from the thousands that had been taken, and helping to fashion the storyline. After his death, the work was continued by his colleagues, students and friends.

The book contains 200 photographs by nature photographer Brett Cole, of everything colourful, strange and wonderful that thrives and fights for life amid the towering rainforests – from birds, such as the Golden-hooded Tanager and flowers like the Apostle’s Iris, to the Morpho butterfly, a caterpillar dotted with parasites, and spiders and shiny-backed beetles.

Cole was commissioned by FES in 2007 “to capture the fragile, but diverse ecosystem at Las Nubes,” says Rahder. And capture it he did, showing a glimpse of the rich diversity of the 124 hectares of protected rainforest on the Pacific slopes of the Talamanca Mountains in southern Costa Rica. It was this piece of rainforest that was donated to York University by Dr. M.M. (Woody) Fisher in 1998.

It’s not only an essential refuge for tropical biodiversity, but a place where students and researchers from York’s FES, as well as other academic institutions, go to learn and conduct research in tropical conservation, sustainable development and biodiversity, while working with local communities.

“Hundreds of our undergraduate and graduate students have been able to do fieldwork at Las Nubes. York is committed to social justice and that is embodied in our fair trade Las Nubes coffee, which is grown by local farmers in shaded coffee farms,” says Rahder.

All proceeds from the sale of this book go to the Fisher Fund in Neo-Tropical Conservation, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, to support student and faculty research at Las Nubes.

Order single copies through the York University Bookstore or by contacting Steve Glassman, bookstore director, at glassman@yorku.ca or ext. 33018.

For more photos, visit the YFile Flickr gallery at the bottom of the YFile home page.

My move to FES to direct the Las Nubes Project is in keeping with my past work and with my nomadic life as I will be travelling between Canada and Costa Rica bringing together stakeholders, scholars and researchers to promote the Las Nubes biological corridor as a model and component of a wider aim of facilitating sustained coexistence between humans and their surrounding ecosystems in the Neotropics.

There is much to be done in Las Nubes.  I will begin by establishing an Educational Research Station that will accommodate Canadian, Costa Rican and international researchers to carry out studies that will contribute to greater knowledge and improved relations between humans and the rest of the biosphere.  The ERS will also serve the interests and needs of local stakeholders, as a space for environmental education and training.  My hope is that the ERS can become an international hub for research and extension in Neotropical conservation and community wellbeing, where researchers can find accommodation, where seminars and workshops can be held, and students and other stakeholders will be inspired to visit and learn about their local ecosystems, the application of appropriate technologies and the possibilities of sustainable systems of production.

I hope to facilitate a greater and richer North-South exchange of students, researchers and experts in the many fields that might contribute to improved human wellbeing and coexistence with the biosphere.  These include the fields of engineering, the exact and natural sciences, the social sciences and the arts, among others.  The FES at YORKU is a rich source of experts in a wide gamma of areas whose collaboration with the Las Nubes Project is of the utmost importance.

One of the major challenges facing the Las Nubes Project is achieving connectivity in the biological corridor between Las Nubes and Los Cusingos.  This is a long-term process and we will need to monitor its progress.  For this, I plan to establish at FES-YORKU a cartographic data base that will serve as a virtual representation of the biological corridor that will constantly be uploading the data and information gathered in the field.  In this way we will better be able to visualize and monitor progress in aspects such as forest cover, sustainable and organic production, stakeholder participation, appropriate technology adoption, stream-water quality, species diversity, and carbon fixation, among many others.

The Peñas Blancas River watershed forms the core of the Las Nubes-Los Cusingos Biological Corridor.  The neighboring watersheds that are also born in the Talamanca mountain range and are tributaries to the Rio General, later becoming the Rio Grande de Térraba, also have biological corridor initiatives in progress.  An important goal of the Las Nubes Project is to link these initiatives to form a consolidated block of conservation that will connect the highland ecosystems of the Talamanca mountain range to the lowland and coastal regions of the Térraba River delta, contributing to a larger scale of Neotropical conservation, and serve as a model for other regions.

Ultimately, I envision Las Nubes to serve as a source of inspiration that will move a wide array of agents to explore ways of improving our relationship with the biosphere and increase the wellbeing of all.

Felipe Montoya

Chair in Neo-Tropical Conservation

Faculty of Environmental Studies

York University

What does a 1981 Château Lafite Rothschild have to do with a bird monitoring project in the Costa Rican rainforest? The bottle of wine was one of the many vintages generously donated to the Fisher Fund Wine Tasting & Auction, an annual event that raises important funds for the Fisher Fund for Neotropical Conservation and York University’s Las Nubes rainforest in Costa Rica.

Now in its ninth year, the event raised more than $143,000 to support conservation research and other activities in the region.

Faculty of Environmental Studies Dean Barbara Rahder served as event emcee and thanked the full room of approximately 100 supporters and wine connoisseurs who turned out for the event  April 6. “Your support allows York to send anywhere from 25 to 50 students a year to participate in field courses and research on neotropical conservation in Costa Rica every year,” said Rahder.

The Las Nubes Rainforest is York’s 133-hectare rainforest in Costa Rica, donated to the University by Toronto physician Dr. Woody Fisher in 1998. York faculty and students, along with international partners, conduct valuable research at the site and work toward protecting the biodiversity of Las Nubes, aiding the sustainable development of local communities and understanding and conserving our global biosphere. Las Nubes, which means “the clouds” in Spanish, is home to countless plants and animals, many yet to be discovered.

York President  & Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri praised Fisher, along with his wife, Valerie Grant, for their generous donation and tireless volunteer efforts that have made the auction such a success over the years. “The commitment by Woody, Valerie and others will not only assist our students and faculty with their education and research, but it will continue to support York’s mission to raise awareness about the importance of sustainability.”

Shoukri highlighted the work of York’s Sustainability Council – an advisory body of faculty and students reporting to the Office of the President – as a key component of this mission. Most recently, the council developed a policy for sustainable practices, initiatives and operations at York that was approved by the Board of Governors on April 25. See YFile, May 10.

York alumni Monica Pescador (BES ’09), founder and former president of the Las Nubes Student Association, also announced plans to form a Las Nubes Alumni chapter, fulfilling the wishes of the late Howard Daugherty creator of the Las Nubes Project and professor with York’s Faculty of Environmental Studies.

More than 80 lots were included in the auction. In addition to wine, guests had  an opportunity to bid on an Aeron chair donated by the environment-friendly company Herman Miller; a lunch and private barrel tasting for eight people at the Norman Hardie Winery in Prince Edward County; and a dinner experience at downtown restaurant Pangea.

The event was also supported by Timothy’s Coffees of the World Inc.

York already has Las Nubes fair trade coffee available on campus. Now the York University Bookstore, in partnership with the Business & Society Program (BUSO), will offer fair trade T-shirts.

It’s a first for a university bookstore in Canada, thanks to the work of three York professors.

Provided by Wearfair, the T-shirts are made of 100 per cent fair trade organic cotton certified by TransFair Canada, a member of the Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International. In time, the bookstore plans on expanding beyond T-shirts into other clothes.

“It is particularly satisfying that we are able to price these Wearfair, organic cotton shirts without the usual premium price that makes people think twice about doing the right thing,” says Steve Glassman, director of the bookstore. He notes that the initiative will ultimately depend upon the response of the York community. “While the shirts are quite reasonably priced, it’s up to our students to vote with their wallet for a fair trade alternative.”

The Wearfair T-shirts are an initiative that came about through the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded Internationalizing The Social Economy Through Fair Trade, a sub-project of the Community-University Research Alliance for Southern Ontario’s Social Economy, involving Professors Darryl Reed and J.J. McMurtry of BUSO in the Department of Social Science and Ananya Mukherjee-Reed of York’s Department of Political Science, both in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

“The aim of the project was to establish connections between social economy enterprises in Ontario and India,” says Mukherjee-Reed. The researchers were investigating the potential for connections between social economy enterprises in India and Ontario, how they could form these connections, what problems might arise and who would benefit from them. Wearfair is a division of their community partner in the project, the Guelph-based Sumac Community Worker Co-operative.

The promotion of Wearfair products and sustainable purchasing on York’s campus is something Reed and his colleagues have been involved in for several years, having worked closely with the late York Professor Howard Daugherty and student organizations. Inspired by Daugherty’s Las Nubes coffee initiative, the York researchers investigated what it would take to develop a new Wearfair product line in cotton goods, one which would even go beyond fair trade standards.

Working with Sumac, which also operates the fair trade coffee company Planet Bean, the researchers and their partners agreed that the new importing company Wearfair should be set up to import fair trade cotton products from India, chosen as a site of production because of the desperate situation of cotton farmers and garment workers there.

The researchers and Wearfair then teamed up with an Indian social enterprise garment manufacturer, which was established to provide employment for disabled and marginalized women. It uses any surplus it generates to fund other social projects, including schools, hospitals and orphanages.

Mukherjee-Reed says they were delighted that one of the results of their research project was this connection between Sumac and a social enterprise garment manufacturer in India.

Cotton growers in India are exposed to any of 118 different pesticides, commonly without protection. Depressed prices and pressures to adopt unsustainable practices has resulted in economic and environmental calamity, which in turn have lead to a variety of social problems including high suicide rates among small cotton farmers. Wearfair production helps to ensure small producers protection from the vagaries of the cotton market by providing long term contracts and minimum prices, as well as other forms of support. The additional price premium that Wearfair pays for organic cotton encourages sustainable production.

“This first purchase by the York Bookstore has enabled us to take the Wearfair initiative from a conceptual pilot project to a business start up. The York support shows vision as well as a commitment to purchasing that embraces social justice and ecological sustainability,” said Bill Barrett, manager of Wearfair. The York order was placed months in advance of the harvest, and was personally coordinated through production and delivery to the Keele campus in December.

Wearfair is a York licensee, with royalties from the sale of goods slotted for student and campus related projects. Wearfair also is a member of the Fair Labor Association.

There will be a launch event for the fair trade clothing line at the York University Bookstore in York Lanes, Keele campus, on Tuesday, March 29 at 3pm. President & Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri will deliver the opening remarks at 3:15pm. A reception and T-shirt promotion will follow the launch.