De Avila Warns of Environmental Neglect

“Conservation, worryingly, is more about guaranteeing the viability of the human species than keeping what you like,” says Alejandro de Avila, founder and director of the Ethno Botanical Garden of Oaxaca. “Accessibility to water and breathable air are just some of the present challenges of the global community and the safeguarding of natural conditions that can assure this cannot be postponed.”

The need for conservation cannot be fully comprehended without understanding the impact that the depredation of natural areas has had on the Earth. Many factors threaten the environment and to prevent extinction many of our everyday habits need to be changed. An intermediate point between the full satisfaction of our needs and the preservation of the planet must be found.

For de Avila, education is vital in reaching this objective and with the financial backing of the local and federal government, Fomento Social Banamex and Francisco Toledo via PRO-OAX, the garden project was initiated in 1994 with this as its primary objective. “We are especially making a great effort to attract school groups. We try to make children understand that this can actually be fun; it is about contact with nature, with plants and animals and it doesn’t need to be boring.”

“To understand our relation with plants is essential to understanding ourselves,” de Avila considers as he explains the many activities that make the Ethno Botanical Garden, as its name already explains, very unique in its kind. Rarely is a botanical garden conceived as a space where plants and people are seen as closely interrelated. Consequently, the Jardin Etnobotanico intensely collaborates with institutions such as the IAGO, the Francisco de Burgoa Library and soon, when it opens, the art school in San Agustin Etla. One such project is documenting the indigenous etymology of plant names in Oaxaca.

“Oaxaca is the state with the largest diversity of flora and fauna in Mexico,” de Avila informs. “Accurate figures are difficult to assert but no less than 10,000 different species of flora live in the state; more ambitious estimations speak of 12,000 to 15,000. The garden displays around 900 different plants and aims to reach 1,500 in the near future in order to have around 10 to 15 percent of the state’s species. Of these, more than 20% will be endemic.

The garden also has a library where all the information related to nature, conservation, legislation to protect biodiversity and other subjects can be found. Year round conference cycles, expositions and educational activities take place. The garden also offers its knowledge to communities interested in engaging with conservational activities and gives advice to communities who have created protected natural areas and wish to have official recognition and need to go through the seemingly endless labyrinth of bureaucratic paperwork. About sustainable crop growth de Avila says, “we are not specialized in agriculture but we have had experience in irrigation and making compost. Currently we are collaborating with a Research Centre that produces beneficial insects for plague control purposes.”

De Avila points out how commercial exploitation jeopardises the subsistence of certain plants. In the particular case of Oaxaca, the uncontrolled sale of orchids has made them nearly extinct in areas where they were abundant not so long ago, particularly in San Felipe. “During Christmas, two of the most widely available orchids for sale in the streets are the ones with large magenta flowers called laelia furfuracea, an endemic species of Oaxaca, and a smaller one known as artorima erubescens. Both are very attractive species, the latter can only be found in Oaxaca and Guerrero and is a plant of a single species of its gender, a very peculiar case of evolution… the very special conditions in which these orchids grow makes it hard to for them to survive.”

“Cattle husbandry is another hazardous activity that has destroyed more than 90% of Mexico’s tropical forests in the last 50 years.” This activity has been encouraged by local governments as it has proved to be a short term economic solution for impoverished regions. However, in short periods of time, cattle husbandry has made the land infertile and useless even for these animals to feed. “The loss of the natural balance has had dramatic consequences, perhaps the most notorious would be drought.”

Despite all this De Avila points at the specific case of the gardens and gives us reasons to have hope, “At first, the local government, specifically the Ministry of Tourism, intended to build a convention centre, a luxurious hotel and even a parking lot in the outer areas,” he recalls. But the people of Oaxaca know what’s right; “Oaxaca takes the first place in Mexico in the percentage of land destined to conservation. More than 50,000 areas have been certified as Sustainable Management Areas, and the most important thing is that they are community projects.” This reflects the level of awareness of the people about the fact that preservation is crucial for survival; when this awareness is generalised, we can hope to live in a better world.