Glorieta: A Campaign Well-Fought

In the end the Glorieta did not get enough votes. We did come in a close second though. For a while we lingered around the bottom, and the last week or so we put the pressure on, blogging, emailing, tweeting, posting on forums, going to the streets. In the last week our number went from bottom to near the top!

I want to thank all those that participated and helped out, voting and spreading the word.

Even though the Glorieta didn’t get the funding from EOCA, the project for Glorieta will still go ahead. There are still things to do!

You can still help out by donating one euro a month: www.teaming.net/cen

Glorieta Update

The Glorieta Stream has risen through the ranks and is now in second place, and still rising fast. Thanks to all those who have voted and spread the word. But it’s still not finished yet!

With less than a day to go it’s vital to continue voting and pass the message along. We’re so close, and it’s so possible! Please, copy and paste this message and share it with your contacts, whether by email or a social networking site. Just vote and past it on!

“Along the Glorieta stream, there are amazing landscapes and many endangered species, but it is threatened by incivility and invasive exotic species.

We need your vote to make this conservation project work.

 quick, free and anonymous

from computer, mobile and tablet

Vote and more info:

http://www.assoc-cen.org/Glorieta_eng.php

until 31st March at 12:00 midday (GMT).

Please, disseminate this message

 THANKS!

Translating from Catalan

(wow, I’ve just noticed a boost of traffic to this blog. Thanks for the views.)

So, what have I been doing lately? A lot, aikido, walks, gardening, hunting exotic crayfish,  but I’ll leave them for other blogs.

One thing I’ve been busy on is translating the CEN Association website from Catalan to English. CEN is an association that “works for the improvement and conservation of habitats and biodiversity”.  I’ve been involved in several volunteer actions (including “hunting cranks“) as well as being a board member. We  (Biodiversidad2030) signed an agreement with CEN under the Custódia del Territorio (Land Stewardship Scheme in English) to protect the land and its ecosystems and develop projects in a sustainable way for us and the environment.

So, I’m translating the website so it’s accessible to the anglosphere. Moreover, it helps in an application to EOCA to do work for the Glorieta river, such as litter picking, control and eradication of invasive exotic species, regulation of canyoning, restriction of access to vulnerable areas and raising awareness of environmental issues, both local and in general. It’s tough work (I am not a professional translator) but I enjoy it.

I can read Spanish fairly well, and because of that other Romance languages are more accesible, like Portuguese, Italian and Catalan. I can read them a bit and make “educated guesses” at what they’re saying. But to hear them… no entenc res! (I don’t understand a thing!).  I understand enough Catalan to translate it, and there’s plenty of resources online to help me,  but the mental gymnastics I have to do translate from one grammar to the other is mindbending. A long list of de… de… de… de… might sound okay in Catalan, French or Spanish, but in English of… of… of… of… doesn’t flow. Then there are the technical terms that I have to accurately translate to make them meaningful. But I think this sort of saturation is good for learning a new language.

Well, I think I should get on with the translation now. Time’s a wasting!

Hunting Cranks

 Or rather red swamp crayfish (Procambarus clarkii – known in Catalan in cranc vermell americà, hence in title). It is an introduced species that has displaced the native white-clawed crayfish (Austropotamobius pallipes), outcompeting it and carrying a disease to which they are resistent, but the native crayfish are not, so you won’t find them in the same stretch of river.

As volunteers of CEN we’ve spent a few nights (crayfish usually come out at night) removing this invasive species, and we did that on Friday night too, with Jesús Ortiz, the president of CEN, and a few other volunteers. It was very cold and wet, but luckily we wore waders and long rubber loves to avoid getting wet (I did reach a bit too deep on one occasion, and got a glove filled with water!), but we had a very good time. Made even better with good company.

New Year, New Direction

I started this blog for a couple of reasons. I felt I needed something where I could share my thoughts, but not with so much depth as The Grove of Quotes. Also it was made to accompany me through my work through OBOD‘s Druid grade (third and final grade that I started a little over two years ago). Now I’m coming to the end of the course I can reflect a little on where this blog has been and where it will go.

This blog has helped me express some thoughts I encountered in the course, sharing ideas on learning and creating languages, sharing other creative endeavours such as art and stories, and so on. And I shall carry on, but my focus will be changing. The course is ending, but the process of becoming a Druid is just starting. I have aquired the tools, now it’s the time to apply them in my life. For that reason “druid in training” is still apt.

In the new year I’ll be starting a course in Ecopsychology (Mika has just finished it) and we’ll be do more activities combining art with ecopsychological insight (Ecoart workshops). We’ll also be working with CEN (as mentioned in a previous post) and continuing our development of a sustainable ecological project, and so taking my druidry into action.

Happy New Year!

A Message from CEN

CEN (Associació per a la Conservació dels Ecosistemes Naturals – or Association for the Conservation of Natural Ecosystems) wishes to share this message with you.

A bit of background: Biosfera2030 has signed a ten-year land stewardship contract with CEN for the protection of the land and sustainable use of resources. In the coming years we’ll be collaborating on various projects. I’ll keep you informed. 🙂

 

Custodia del Territorio…

… or Land Stewardship Scheme.

This past Monday we signed a contract between ourselves at the Earth Sanctuary and CEN (Asociación para la Conservación de los Ecosistemas Naturales). This has been a while in the making and my girlfriend, Mika, has been blogging about this for a while on her blog (it’s all in Spanish).

This opens up a lot of potential for them as well as us. There’s a lot of land that we have, a lot of it wild forest, but some which we are using or will use for projects in agriculture, ecology and other possible projects, and for CEN and associated groups there’s the possibility for scientific studies too for scientists and students. Much of the land won’t be used, just protected as a “wild space”, so not only humans will benefit from this!