{"id":357,"date":"2011-06-08T09:57:01","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T09:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/?p=357"},"modified":"2012-03-02T14:19:20","modified_gmt":"2012-03-02T19:19:20","slug":"from-%e2%80%98extractive-capitalism%e2%80%99-to-ecotourism-in-ecuador","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/2011\/06\/08\/from-%e2%80%98extractive-capitalism%e2%80%99-to-ecotourism-in-ecuador\/","title":{"rendered":"From \u2018Extractive Capitalism\u2019 To Ecotourism in Ecuador"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Philip (Phil) M. Yoder \u201987 <\/strong>owns 220 acres of rainforest in Ecuador, the home country of his biologist-wife, Anita Montufar. After a previous owner logged the land for lumber and to farm, the Yoders have allowed the rainforest to regenerate. Their goal, wrote Phil in an e-mail to Crossroads, is to nurture and preserve their land.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_358\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-358\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-358\" src=\"\/\/emu.edu\/now\/is\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2011\/06\/phil-yoder-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Phil Yoder\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-358\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Phil M. Yoder in Ecuador, where he plans to build an &quot;ecolodge&quot;<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cI have a goal to build an ecotourism lodge, but I need the community to support and favor this or it will not happen,\u201d Phil wrote. \u201cI am attentively listening to my community to discern my future.\u201d Since allowing the land to return to forest, pasture has been replaced by trees with 40-foot canopies above thick undergrowth, and a colony of Graell\u2019s Tamarins (a species of monkey) has moved in.<\/p>\n<p>Phil said he and Anita are part of a nationwide movement to wean Ecuador from \u201cextractive capitalism,\u201d in which the country\u2019s natural resources are extracted \u2013 usually by methods that cause widespread pollution \u2013 by large companies such as Chevron, regardless of the impact on the local people and their environment. In recent years, Phil has begun to realize that simply setting aside land will not be enough to preserve the rainforest. Instead, it must sustainably generate some income for the people who live on or around it \u2013 hence his interest in ecotourism or in talk about CO2 compensation \u201cat $74 per acre per year\u201d for lands designated as biodiverse forest preserves.<\/p>\n<p>Phil forwarded a Feb. 15, 2011, e-mail in which Nelly Dur\u00e0n, the minister of tourism of Pastaza province in Ecuador, commended Phil for understanding \u201cthe connection between humanity and environment\u201d and for contributing to a management plan aiming at \u201cthe protection of the attractive views, spelunking and biodiversity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Phil, who also owns an eco-friendly carpentry business called Rainforest Carpentry, has a master of business administration in environmental management from Florida Atlantic University. He and Anita live in Playas, Ecuador, with their two sons, 14-year-old Fred and 11-year-old Sol. For more information about Phil\u2019s ecololodge and ecotourism hopes, e-mail him at rioanzu@gmail.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Philip (Phil) M. Yoder \u201987 owns 220 acres of rainforest in Ecuador, the home country of his biologist-wife, Anita Montufar. After a previous owner logged the land for lumber and to farm, the Yoders have allowed the rainforest to regenerate. Their goal, wrote Phil in an e-mail to Crossroads, is to nurture and preserve their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[162,183],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine","category-spring-2011","tag-philip-m-yoder","tag-sustainability","issues-spring-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":950,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions\/950"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}