turning 40

A Rocha turns 40! What to look forward to this year:

In 1983, the migration of the ARPANET to TCP/IP was officially completed and the internet came into being. A man named Chuck Hull invented the 3D printer. Saint Kitts and Nevis became an independent state and brand new country. And a tiny organization was formed to care for creation in God’s name, beginning with a wetland in southern Portugal. The internet has come a long way in 40 years, and so has A Rocha!

This year, look out for:

  • A special edition of the Field Notes newsletter
  • A virtual birthday party in September
  • A creation aware meal resource including a liturgy and menu suggestions
  • Highlights from the archive

If you are new to the A Rocha family and would like to know more of our story, we recommend you read Under the Bright Wings and Kingfisher’s Fire by Peter Harris, or explore this page on our website.

Screenshot 2022-12-05 at 14.18.51

Have a Christmas with a difference

If you’re stuck for present ideas for your loved ones this Christmas, why not peruse the A Rocha gift catalogue and make it a Christmas with a difference? We have new products for 2022, plus a range of other Gifts with a Difference that will bring lasting benefits to nature and community members across Africa, Asia and South America. 

You can give a wormery to improve the hygiene of families in India as well as the health of the soil, or an elephant crossing to ensure the safety of elephants and people living around Bannerghatta National Park. A clean cookstove for a family in Peru will help save the threatened dry forest landscapes and improve the health of local communities, or you can help train young people to create an organic garden, improving their diet and bringing them closer to nature. 

Each order comes with a free gift card to remind your loved one of the difference made in their name. Or, if you are feeling particularly virtuous, you can go paperless and opt for an ecard. (Hint: they are also great if you run out of time!)  

Shop now at shop.arocha.org 

Semiahmoo Bay looking south towards Drayton Harbor in the US, where shellfish harvest is permitted (by Hannah Mae)

Towards bountiful life in Boundary Bay

Meandering through A Rocha Canada’s Brooksdale Environmental Center is the Little Campbell River / Tatalu. Walking around the watershed, you might spot a flowering Vancouver Island Beggarticks, a nesting Barn Swallow or even an elusive Salish Sucker, thought for a time to be locally extinct. This little river, once a place of bounty, is now the greatest source of faecal contamination into Boundary Bay (Pacific Ocean). Harvesting shellfish in the Bay was an integral part of Semiahmoo First Nation nutrition and culture, but due to contamination, the Bay has been closed to harvest since the 1970s.  

To address this issue, A Rocha Canada works in partnership with the Semiahmoo First Nation and other members of the Shared Waters Alliance to monitor water quality in 19 locations: 17 freshwater sites along the Tatalu and its tributaries and two marine sites in Semiahmoo Bay. Water quality is an excellent indicator of overall watershed health, and this data addresses a knowledge gap about the current state of faecal contamination and how and where conditions have changed since the 1970s.  

A Rocha Canada is also undertaking microbial source-tracking to determine the causes of this contamination. These can include septic system discharges, runoff from agricultural land containing livestock waste, pet waste and cross-connections between storm and sewage pipes. A Rocha also partners with landowners and local municipalities to discuss the extent of the issue and how to combat it. One solution is to restore habitat along the river – putting up fences to keep out cattle and horses, replacing invasive plants with native species, for example – to increase the forest buffer, which helps filter contaminants and supports biodiversity.  

Ultimately, improving the ecological health of the water is important for everyone: from plants, to fish, from birds to people. A Rocha hopes that together, our efforts will enable everyone to enjoy the bounty and biodiversity that this watershed has to offer.  

You can hear more from A Rocha Canada and Semiahmoo Chief Harley Chappell in this video.   

Sunkpa Shea Women in Ghana

Sunkpa Shea Women: from rural Ghana to New York

The Sunkpa Shea Women’s Cooperative (northern Ghana) uses shea nut butter production as a way to care for the beautiful and biodiverse Mole Ecological Landscape. Through shea nut collection and shea butter processing, the collective of around 1,000 women encourages landscape restoration and builds a green value chain in the shea butter industry.  

The Sunkpa Shea Women’s journey started in 2013, when their daily task was to walk several miles to collect shea nuts and either sell or process them into butter to sell at the local market. Collecting shea from the wild is a time-consuming effort; making hand-made shea butter is a tedious process. The women faced additional challenges: a lack of transport to bring the nuts to a processing centre, inconsistent local or export markets, the felling of shea trees by charcoal producers – and less than premium prices for their shea butter.  

Through the Community Resource Management Area (CREMA) and support from A Rocha Ghana and the Savannah Fruits Company, the women organized themselves into a cooperative to address their challenges. Collaboration allowed them to establish a green value chain for quality hand-made shea butter and to address challenges across the chain. For example, the women established – and now manage – a nursery where they grow shea and other indigenous seedlings to use for landscape restoration to ensure a consistent supply of shea nuts.  

They also now have an ultra-modern shea butter processing facility, tricycles to ease transportation challenges and a link with a cosmetic company, Evolution of Smooth, headquartered in New York – the first organic shea butter from the Mole Landscape went to New York for sale in June 2021! For nine years, the Sunkpa Shea Women have been steadfast in their efforts to have their everyday rural livelihood bring sustainability both to their landscape and their business.  

The contribution of these women was recognised nationally and internationally in July this year with the awarding of the prestigious Equator Prize, a biennial recognition of outstanding community efforts to reduce poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. This achievement highlights the importance of indigenous people as defenders of a country’s natural resources and the crucial role they play in conserving the environment. 

Mangrove-Horseshoe-Crab

To the rescue of the Mangrove Horseshoe Crab

On 17 September, Friends of A Rocha in Singapore joined in with the A Rocha family for International Coastal Cleanup Day and World Cleanup Day! 16 volunteers gathered at the beach of Sembawang Park – one of the few natural beaches remaining on the island – located in the north of Singapore, facing the Straits of Johor and overlooking Malaysia. The A Rocha team was encouraged to see several other groups already cleaning the beach, so they walked to a more secluded part of the beach at Eagles Point and piqued the interest of Long-tailed Macaques Macaca fascicularis! The team stood on the sandflats covered with sand balls of Sand Bubbler Crabs Dotillidae and began the day with the 2022 Season of Creation Prayer, adapted to include ocean ecology. 

As they started cleaning up, they found food wrappers, single-use food containers, plastic bags and films, clothes, glass, polystyrene, a fluorescent tube and diapers still intact – in less than an hour, the team collected 29 kg / 64 lbs of rubbish. But the highlight of the day was freeing a foot-long Mangrove Horseshoe Crab Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda caught in a giant knot of fishing nets! Alongside a second individual that was already dead, the crab was covered in barnacles and was probably stuck for a long time. Using scissors, the team worked on disentangling the trapped crab and finally, it was free! They released it back into the sea with a great sense of relief and joy. Even though beach cleanups do not solve the systemic issue of plastic pollution, they can save lives! What an encouragement to continue working in faithful hope that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God (Romans 8:21). 

You can see a video of the Mangrove Horseshoe Crab rescue on Instagram here.  

Elephant

Elephant traffic lights, India

In 2021, A Rocha India developed an early warning detection device to alert motorists of elephant movement on public thoroughfares and installed ‘smart’ laser fences at three points along the Kaggalipura Road within a protected area of Bannerghatta National Park. When an elephant crosses the road and triggers the laser, signal boards begin to flash to indicate the presence of elephants – an innovative traffic light!   

Due to the system’s success in Bannerghatta, the Kodagu Circle (Karnataka Forest Department – about four hours away) asked A Rocha India for a demonstration of the fences. With 80% of its land covered by trees, Kodagu is one of India’s most densely forested districts and the smallest of all Karnataka State districts. Humans accidentally encountering elephants in the area is a significant issue, often resulting in human and elephant casualties. A Rocha India was able to share with Kodagu forest staff about the importance of addressing elephant-vehicle collisions and how this can contribute to the conservation of Asian elephants in South India.  

There is further interest from other parts of the state to use the system. A Rocha India welcomes the opportunity to promote elephant conservation work and replicate it in other Indian landscapes. ‌ 

Want to support elephant conservation for Christmas? Through Gifts with a Difference, you can purchase an Elephant Crossing to help ensure the safety of people commuting on these roads and of elephants as they move between their habitats. 

Nigeria Eden - Berom Community Secondary

The Big Give Christmas Challenge is open!

The Big Give Christmas Challenge 2022 is now open! This means that until noon on 6 December any donation you make through our campaign page on the Christmas Challenge website* will be doubled (while match funds last).

Campaign target: £34,000

Your gifts to support A Rocha’s environmental education (EE) through last year’s Big Give made a difference: thanks to your generosity, teachers, church leaders and A Rocha staff gathered in May at Kira Farm in Uganda for an A Rocha EE conference and workshops. Together we strengthened capacity for EE and built on the excellent work already being carried out by A Rocha organizations across Africa. Participants explored the role of EE to reconnect people and nature and inspire action for a sustainable world. Teachers and church leaders went home enthused and equipped with new ideas and a stronger commitment to caring for creation in their work and communities.

This year, A Rocha International hopes to raise £34,000 to continue supporting and coordinating A Rocha’s global EE – ensuring they operate effectively to meet local needs. In 2023, this will include training webinars and a week-long EE conference, contextual material and digital resources, and facilitating EE officers to visit other A Rocha organizations to learn best practices and generate new ideas to apply in their local contexts.

With donations doubled, your gift will have twice the impact. Thank you for joining in with us!

Donate now

* Please note that only donations made through our campaign page on the Christmas Challenge website between 29 November and 6 December are eligible to be doubled.

A-Rocha-Table

A Gathering at the Table

We’re excited to announce the launch of a new initiative: a community of regular givers who are committed to seeing nature flourish. We’re calling it the ‘A Rocha Table’ and we’d love you to join! Thanks to A Rocha’s fabulous supporters, we have been responding to the global crisis of biodiversity loss for nearly 40 years, and we believe it’s this long-term commitment to people and places that makes the difference. By setting up a regular donation to A Rocha International you can help be a part of this commitment to caring for our most vulnerable habitats, species and communities and help us make longer term plans with confidence. We want to make sure you know how much your giving matters. Every six months, we’ll send you an issue of our ‘Table Talk’ emailing. It will contain highlights from the A Rocha Worldwide Family, invitations to exclusive online events and special discounts on A Rocha books and publications. We hope it will be a way for us to keep in touch with you better and help you feel more connected to A Rocha around the world. We hope to see you at the Table soon!
MORE INFO

Sign up to the A Rocha Table

Friends-of

Making Friends in Central America

Around the world, Christians are coming together to care for creation – and A Rocha is lending a hand through the Friends of A Rocha Network. Network members are groups and organizations, led by committed Christians, who are undertaking biodiversity conservation and interested in sharing and learning together with like-minded groups around the world. 

To learn more about the current Friends and to see if your group could apply, see the Friends page. Meanwhile, meet our two most recent members: 

Casa Adobe is an intentional Christian community rooted in Santa Rosa, Heredia Province, Costa Rica. It was born in 2013 when people from different contexts and cultures came together with a common goal: to be good neighbours. Casa Adobe seeks to promote integral human development, facilitate cultural interchange amongst people from different contexts, care for the environment and stimulate its protection. 

Their current environmental activities include a local community composting project and a plan to recover one of Casa Adobe’s most neglected ‘neighbours’, the Virilla River. The Virilla flows down from its source in the cloud forests through densely populated areas where it is impacted by sewage, litter and degraded riverine forest. Casa Adobe is re-engaging the community with the river and liaising with other stakeholders. 

 

Huellas Panamá (meaning ‘Footprints’) was born in 2018 as a project in Kuna Nega, an indigenous settlement heavily impacted by the operation of Cerro Patacón, one of the main landfills in Panama. The original project raised environmental awareness in the community through the community church and setting up a waste collection point. 

Huellas Panamá is now setting up an online Virtual Academy to promote creation care theology and wiser consumption habits; supporting recycling as they can (there is no recycling collection in Panama!) and litter clean-ups; and developing an Eco Tours Programme to create opportunities for friendship, recreation and learning about caring for the earth.  

AR-Australia_planting-trees

Planting trees and restoring ecosystems in Australia

During another wet winter, A Rocha Australia has been getting their hands dirty by planting native plants and nurturing relationships with the communities who care for them.  

Volunteers from A Rocha Australia were invited by Clyde and Rose Rigney – elders from the Raukkan aboriginal community – to help with revegetation events in partnership with Cassina Environmental in South Australia. In June, over 30 people braved challenging weather to plant 1700 seedlings! In August, a smaller group planted 584 seedlings at Mount Sandy and 325 seedlings at Raukkan, this time in lovely sunshine. Alongside tree planting, the Rigneys offered inspiring hospitality, with singing round the fire, hot drinks, delicious food and inspirational storytelling.  

Another planting session was organised by Onkaparinga council staff at Hart Road Wetland, the traditional lands of the Kaurna people. Twenty adults and four children gathered to plant about 380 native plants. Several of these are endemic to South Australia, including Atriplex paludosa, Goodenia amplexans and Thomasia petalocalyx. These plants are not only unique to their particular area, but they are also critical to maintaining biodiversity. 

With their project in Toowoomba escarpment parks, A Rocha Australia goes beyond planting seedlings to protecting mature plants in Queensland. Partnering with Friends of the Escarpment Parks, A Rocha controls invasive weeds at three bushland parks which contain endangered ecosystems. At Redwood Park, A Rocha removes Cat’s claw creeper Dolichandra unguis-cati. This aptly named invasive plant is one of several that smother trees and shrubs, destroying the canopy and harming the ecosystem. Creeper control is slow and labourious work but highly rewarding as mature trees are cut free and seedlings are discovered underneath masses of removed creeper. The vulnerable Black-breasted Button-quail Turnix melanogaster has raised several sets of young under the semi-evergreen vine-thicket (‘dry rainforest’).  

In the eucalypt forest of Nielsen Park, A Rocha volunteers remove other choking weeds, allowing indigenous understory species to establish. And there are already positive results: bird surveys have found that several small bird species persist in the now generous cover of shrubs, including the first ever sightings of the ground-feeding Painted Button-quail Turnix varius in the park!