We want to publicly thank at least some of the persons and
institutions that, in some and any form, gave us encouragement,
insight, inspiration and collaborative support before, during and
after the creation of Sangay Foundation and PanNature:
When we were working on the translation of his SAVAGES, Joe Kane
has been always there, on the other side of the screen of its PC,
during the last five years or so, with words of understanding. Always
patient, always ready. Like a Huaorani warrior.
We owe to David Suzuki, man of limitless compassion, and his
Foundation in Vancouver, Canada, much of the inspiration underlying
our work. Thanks David, for personally pointing out that the real
problem is ``to talk to the heart of people''. We devised PanNature as
a way to the heart.
An initiative like Sangay Foundation and PanNature cannot be the
result of the efforts of any single person. Rather, it is the
culmination of research, conversations and even distress due to the
lucidity, watchfulness and judgement of many experienced men and
women. Above, we have already mentioned two of them, but the list can
go on and be long - it includes, amongst others: Vandana Shiva, who
fought the Copyright-System to allow us to translate excerpts from her
Stolen Harvest; Fiona Worthington and Chris Johnstone, who
worked to spread as much as possible the idea of PanNature, which
reached even Australia; John Seed, who was the very first to host in
his web page the first semi-official informative leaflet about
PanNature: it still can be found there; the wise Jerry Mander, who
shared with PanNature his anti-globalization position; Laura Rival,
who send us from Oxford her marvellous study about the Huaorani
people; the enourmosly busy George Monbiot, who found the time to
share with Pannature his terrific investigation in Brazil's reserves
and parks; Nigel Pitman, lost in the Madre de Dios rainforests of
Peru, stubbornly kept in touch while working on his articles; Joanna
Macy, spiritual lider and one of All Beings, who gave us words of
encouragement and motivation, so needed along the path, always long,
always hard. Special thanks are also due to Tom Wakeford, Lynna
Landstreet and Fernando García Dory.
Reinhold Messner came to Alao in the company of Bernd Loppow, Hamburg DIE ZEIT's Projektreisen and his incredible group of collaborators and friends. They gave us sympathy, motivation and hope for the future. As if not enough, upon their return in Germany and Italy, they funded the first essential tools and hardware now at Sangay Foundation: no one knows what would have happened without such a donation, but if we survived tough times was also thanks to Bernd, Reinhold, and the whole DIE ZEIT group - especially Peter Niedermeier. Respect, friendship and love to all of you.
Professor Marco Atzori, friend and scientist now at the University of Texas in Dallas, donated the first nucleus of what can be considered now the Sangay Foundation Library: it is scaring how vast is the relevant literature, but living things start from an embryo. Thanks, Marco, from the deepest of our heart.
Our warmest acknowledgements to Scott Lesniewski (and the whole staff) at Shambhala Publications, Boston, Massachusetts, for their prompt and positive reaction to our request of reproducing and translating in PanNature some of the precious contributions we found in the sources they publish. We really do bet their willingness and our effort will not be useless.
Thanks to Siobhan O'Donnell (and the whole staff) at Stoddart Publishing, Toronto, Ontario, for allowing PanNature to reproduce excerpts from David Suzuki and Holly Dressell extraordinary investigation about the dangers threathening humanity in its transition from the second millennium to the third.
Thanks to Jerry Harrison, Javier Beltran, Mary Cordiner and the staff of the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge, UK, for allowing us to recast and reproduce their data about Sangay National Park and their willingness to keep getting in touch in the future.
Maricruz González Cárdenas devoted all her enthusiasm and creativity to beautify the PanNature's translations - the final versions are actually hers.
The extraordinary Manolo Morales and all ECOLEX in Quito have been crucial in assessing Sangay Foundation about legal matters.
Special thanks, lot of special thanks, are due to Alberto Arellano, for guaranteeing us during our first silent years the possibility of an e-contact with the outer world, for allowing us to use his university computer room (ONLY AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL!), for assembling the first Sangay's computer. After that, Alberto was tough enough to devote a huge hard disk memory to the Sangay Foundation Web Page: for free. That's the way big battles can be won.
Last but not least: All the people in Balgach, Altstätten, Heerbrugg - children, women, men, elders - deserve special words for the purity of their grass-roots movement, for proposing projects, for funding them, for being always supportive, thoughtful, for loving Ecuador, for loving our work: it is only through the devotion of persons like them that our beloved ancient planet gets a chance to survive.