About Us
The Flor de la Amazonia Group is a registered charity (SC040950) founded in 2009 by a group of like-minded people, many of whom have worked at Endangered Animal Rescue Centres in Ecuador and so have first-hand experience of the work of the Centres there, and the dangers affecting animals and plants and the environment in this country, South America and other parts of the world. Our wish was to set up an organisation in the UK to assist in the conservation of the precious flora and fauna of Ecuador. Some of us had been volunteers for just two weeks, others had dedicated years to working with Ecuador’s wildlife. But all of us came away with the desire to do more – to somehow to continue the good work back home. We came together to set up a charity in order to raise awareness of the endangered animals, plants and environment of Ecuador, the volunteer opportunities available there, and to raise funds for the work being undertaken. The result of our drive and commitment is the Flor de la Amazonia Group (FDLAG).
FDLAG works primarily with its sister organisation in Ecuador, Fundacion Fauna de la Amazonia. Fundacion Fauna de la Amazonia (FFDLA) is a recognised ‘charity’ (Fundacíon) in Ecuador (Acuerdo No 159 with the Department of Environment in Quito Ecuador). Currently, they are developing a new animal and plant rescue and rehabilitation centre on newly purchased land and based in the Pastaza region in the Oriente of Ecuador. Previously, FFDLA worked with a rescue and rehabilitation centre in another area of Pastaza – this is where some of the founding members of FDLAG met. Volunteers from all around the globe worked for many years in the assistance of the centre, and now Fundacion Fauna de la Amazonia has been able to move on to develop their very own rescue centre, the development and maintenance of which is their sole responsibility. More detailed information about the new project is available through FFDLA’s website http://www.amazoniarescue.org/en/index.php
We founded FDLAG not only to help directly fund the development of the exciting new project by Fundacion Fauna de la Amazonia, but also to spread the word in the UK and beyond, about the threats faced by Ecuador’s flora and fauna, and what you can do to help.
We hope that in setting up this organisation, we can maintain UK support for various commendable groups working tirelessly in Ecuador to preserve and nurture the many and varied species that exist there. But more than this, we hope to help maintain some balance in this crazy world through restoring endangered plants and animals to their natural habitats following rehabilitation.
We hope some of what we are about can be told through this little tale…
The Starfish Story – Cat Rescuers’ Version
(There are innumerable versions of L Eiseley’s “The Star Thrower”on the web set on beaches all over the world. This cat lovers’ version was found in a cat shelter newsletter 1993 and on Usenet and is about “making a bigger difference”.)
A traveller was walking along a beach when he saw a woman scooping up starfish off the sand and tossing them into the waves. Curious, he asked her what she was doing. The woman replied “When the tide goes out it leaves these starfish stranded on the beach. They will dry up and die before the tide comes back in, so I am throwing them back into the sea where they can live.” The traveller then asked her “But this beach is miles long and there are hundreds of stranded starfish, many will die before you reach them – do you really think throwing back a few starfish is really going to make a difference?” The woman picked up a starfish and looked at it, then she threw it into the waves. “It makes a difference to this one” she said. Considering this, the traveller continued his walk along the beach. After a while he arrived at a place where a river ran into the sea and he turned back inland, walking alongside the river. He was still pondering the words of the starfish woman when he noticed a group of people wading about in the river trying to catch floating objects and throwing them safely onto the river bank. When he got closer he saw that the people were rescuing kittens which were struggling in the water and floating downstream towards the sea. Though many of the kittens were thrown to safety, many others were washed out to sea, never to be seen again. The traveller thought about this and thought about what starfish-woman had told him. He knew that it made a difference to every kitten saved. He also knew that he could not stop the sea from washing up starfish, but he knew that there was a way to make a bigger difference to all the kittens being washed away in the river so he called out to the people who were fishing out kittens. “Why don’t some of you go upstream and stop people tossing them into the river in the first place?”.
The traveller had learned an important lesson from starfish woman. When you face impossible odds you do the best you can and helping just one or two creatures. But he also had the wisdom to know that sometimes you can make a bigger difference. And this is the moral of the starfish woman story: sometimes you have to do whatever you can, however little it seems; but sometimes you have the chance to make a bigger difference. You just need a little wisdom to see when you have a chance to make that bigger difference.
And this is what rescuing animals is about. Sometimes you have to do the best you can and treasure every life saved. But sometimes you get a chance to make a bigger difference and instead of making a difference to just one, you can make a difference to many.