In life, I think, we sometimes make a certain strategic trade-off. We choose to invest our time either in action that will have an immediate and measurable effect, or in action which might, over time and indirectly, have broader consequence. A friend of mine who used to do monkey behavioural research is now studying to be a vet. She has chosen the immediate and mindful impact of fixing up a hurting animal over the diffuse and uncertain good she might do by increasing understanding of them as a species. I seem to have generally opted for leverage over traction, choosing a fairly theoretical approach to ecosystem study which I hope will benefit ecosystems, but I can’t immediately say how.

For the past couple weeks I’ve been working part time on this website for Reserva Los Cedros in Ecuador. It’s been a case of “if I had known how hard it was going to be I would’t have tried it”. But I’m glad I didn’t know. Because now that it’s done (!trumpets!) I figure I’ve done something with more than my usual amount of traction. Non-profit biological reserves need websites. They need websites to reassure potential volunteers that they really should go there and help out and pay a little room and board money into the kitty. I imagine they need websites so they look more substantial when engaged in the interminable diplomacy of convincing government departments to afford them protections against land development threats. They need them to reassure potential donors that they’re a good place to donate to. They just need them so they can look like they should be taken at least a little seriously.

And this reserve should get volunteers and protections and donations. It’s 17 000 acres of neotropical cloud forest. I don’t know much about biology, but I know that we’ve really just gotta hang on to what’s left. And thats a little bit of it down there. That might have a better chance now. Because I made the damn website.

So yeah I should have spent more of my time recently doing lit review and working towards my ecological research. But somehow I can’t feel bad about spending that time slaving away over a text editor trying to learn php scripting.

It’s not actually done, more sort of done enough. I’ll no doubt be sinking more hours into actually getting it done over the course of months. In any case, here it is:

reservaloscedros.org