A Harpy Eagle Story

Birdwatching with Raul Arias de Para By Raul Arias de Para Businessman and Conservationist 28 June 1992  During the past five years or so, I have been dedicating a good part of my spare time to bird-watching. I never imagined that this peaceful and apparently useless activity could captivate me so thoroughly. I have discovered, however, that it offers multiple levels of satisfaction and delight; as a result, I have become an avid practitioner.  I would now like to share some comments about this pastime, hoping to interest the reader in this fascinating activity. The greatest enjoyment I obtain from bird-watching is the visual delight of the birds' colorful plumage. For example, watching the flight of a Resplendent Quetzal, with its long, wavy tail and its red breast on the dark-green background of a cloud forest, is an extraordinarily beautiful natural spectacle. This bird's plumage has a metallic appearance like that of hummingbirds. When the sun shines upon its feathers, they glow as if they had an inner fire. I suppose this is the same sensation art lovers obtain when they admire a painting from a great master. I doubt, however, if any artist in the world can duplicate the glow of the Quetzal in full flight. Besides the visual pleasure described above, we can also derive intellectual satisfaction when we correctly identify the species of bird that we are watching. This is not an easy task because in Panama there are 1,100 species of birds, including migratory birds that cross our skies twice a year. This number is greater than that corresponding to the United States and Canada together. In other words, in our country there are many bird species in a relatively small physical area, and it is easy to watch them. However, it is difficult to identify

Ecotourism: An Instrument of Conservation by Raúl Arias de Para, 1994  Ecotourism, an activity seemingly in vogue nowadays, is much more than sporadic visits to regions of extraordinary natural beauty. By the same token, to live the unforgettable experience of spending a night in the rainforest is only a superficial part of ecotourism. To understand what ecotourism is all about, we must know the meaning of the word "ecology", which comes from the Greek words "eco", meaning house and "logie", meaning science or doctrine. The dictionary defines ecology as the discipline that studies the relationships between organisms and their environment, that is to say, between an organism and its home. In a broader sense, ecology deals with the relation between living beings and the planet Earth: our great home, our only home. The word tourism does not need any further explanation. In one way or another, we have all practiced tourism at some moment in our lives, because tourism is simply visiting a place different from our home simply for pleasure. The combination of the words ecology and tourism results in Ecotourism, a fascinating activity on which I will comment summarily in the following paragraphs. We shall begin our trip bearing in mind that “eco” means home. Therefore, ecotourism can be construed to mean the act of visiting our home. However, this does not mean the concrete and glass structure we inhabit daily, but the primitive dwelling of our ancestors, the home we left thousands of years ago. I am talking about the primeval forests in which the human being is only one of the countless species that inhabit them. To return to our ancestral home, that is, visiting a primeval forest and to walk in it alone, is in many ways, an instructive experience. For example, it serves for

Ecotourism Facilities as a Reality: Canopy Adventure Presentation of Raul Arias de Para, President, The Canopy Tower for Conservation Panama's Panama Conservation and Ecotourism Workshop February 19, 1998 Good afternoon, I would like to share with you some ideas on ecotourism. Ecotourism for me is an instrument of conservation. It is not an end unto itself, but a means to reach an end, which is the conservation of forests. I arrived at this conclusion through my personal, direct experience. It turns out that in El Valle de Antón, in lands belonging to my family for almost 80 years, there is a very beautiful waterfall. With the passing of time, it became popular with people with little ecological awareness, and it deteriorated. They came to have picnics, they left their food scattered around the place, and made a lot of noise. They brought their radios and it reached a point where they even wrote graffiti on the walls of the waterfalls. I knew we had to stop this situation, but the solution was not to close the area with a fence, for this would be very selfish of us, although we had the legal right to do so. Instead, we controlled access to the site in an orderly and sustainable manner. I contracted a person and we charged $1 admission fee so that people could see this beautiful waterfall. And thus, this ecotourism business was born. The purpose was not to make money, but to protect the site while keeping it open to the public in a sustainable manner. I hired a person, then two, then three. I liked the proximity with nature and I began to read about ecotourism. I spent 2 weeks in Costa Rica, which I had read was a mecca of ecotourism. I traveled around the country

El Ecoturismo Como Actividad Empresarial Presentación en la Conferencia Regional Centroamericana para el Año Internacional del Ecoturismo Hotel Fort George Ciudad de Belice, Belice 26-28 de Noviembre, 2001 Presentación de Raúl Arias de Para, Canopy Tower, Panamá 27 de Noviembre, 9:30 AM Buenos días a todos y muchas gracias a los organizadores de este evento por invitarme a compartir con Uds. mis ideas sobre el ecoturismo como actividad empresarial. Confieso que cuando recibí la invitación para esta conferencia y vi el tema que me habían solicitado sentí perplejidad y confusión. ¿Cómo hablar sobre ecoturismo como actividad empresarial, es decir como actividad con fines de lucro, si para mí el ecoturismo es mucho más que un negocio? Es una pasión, una misión, un instrumento de conservación! Además, ¿cómo hablar desde el punto de vista empresarial si yo, más que un empresario, me considero un conservacionista? Estuve tentado de agradecer y declinar la inesperada invitación pues pensé que mi presentación tendría que ser necesariamente muy breve y escueta. Sin embargo, decidí aceptar el reto pues presentí que, a pesar de mis aparentes deficiencias, podría aportar enfoques interesantes a la discusión y, sobre todo, sabía que en el proceso de preparar esta presentación aprendería algo valioso. Y es que estas conferencias resultan en aprendizaje y descubrimientos no sólo para la audiencia sino también para nosotros, los expositores. Yo me inicié en este fascinante mundo del ecoturismo, que tantas satisfacciones me ha brindado, allá por el año de 1991, hace 10 años más o menos. Y lo que me animó hacerlo no fue un análisis riguroso de costos y beneficios, una estimación de la tasa interna de retorno del capital a invertir, ni ninguna de las otras consideraciones típicas que hace un hombre de negocios antes de invertir su dinero. Lo que me animó,

World Ecotourism Summit Presentation by Mr. Raúl Arias de Para Representative of Panama, Central America and Mexico Québec, Canada May 18, 2002 More than 10 years ago, when I started in this fascinating world of ecotourism that has given me so much satisfaction, the first objective I had in mind was the conservation of the environment. In fact, my first eco-tourism activity was carried out exclusively by the desire to protect a beautiful waterfall that was threatened by the disorderly influx of visitors without ecological awareness. However, as I entered the world of ecotourism, I gradually realized that the raison d'être of ecotourism, when practiced as a business, must be the creation of jobs. This statement must be explained and qualified. Ecotourism as a business must play with the rules that prevail in the business world, otherwise it would not succeed. That's how simple the thing is. And what are the rules of the current world of business? Profitability Customer satisfaction. Sustained profitability and satisfaction of the long-term interests of consumers and society. These are the goals of modern business, businesses that are aware of global trends, businesses that look beyond profit in the next quarter. Thus, futurist John Naisbitt, renowned writer whose works on world trends have sold more than 14 million copies worldwide, says in his book The Global Paradox published in 1995, almost seven years ago, " When companies support sustainability, when they integrate a serious commitment to the environment into their corporate mission, they become something bigger than themselves, even larger than their respective industries, which become part of a global movement that it will change the world. " On the other hand, and more recently, at the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, in 1999, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan,

The Canopy Tower A Pilot Project of the TCR Alliance TCR Strategic Alliance: Tourism, Conservation, Research International Conference on Heritage Tourism for the Next Millenium Hotel Miramar, Panamá, December 2, 1998 Raúl Arias de Para I have a confession to make. On August 22, 1996 I fell in love with a building. It was not a regular run of the mill glass and concrete building; it was a steel structure, a radar tower built by the United States Air Force in 1965. It was not a spring chicken either. How can anybody in his right mind fall in love with this metal structure that looks so forbidding and which has been described by some people as resembling a gigantic beer can? It defies logic. In any event, it was love at first sight not only with the tower but also with its location, right in the center of Soberanía National Park. As with all relationships based on first impressions, there was a lot of imagination involved. I imagined the view from the top would be fantastic and it is! You can even see ships traversing the Culebra Cut, the narrowest part of the Panama Canal. I imagined it would be easy to see beautiful birds and mammals and I turned out to be right. I imagined I could transform the tower into a unique lodge with rooms opening at the level of the treetops and I did. This metamorphosis from an abandoned radar tower to a mini-lodge took two years, lots of money and more sleepless nights than I care to remember. I call it the ultimate recycling project, from a military installation to a bird watching center…and what can be more peaceful that bird-watching? The biblical passage of turning swords into plowshares acquires a new meaning and it is

The Isthmian: Raúl's Canopy Tower Update By Raul Arias de Para Businessman and Conservationist published in The Isthmian December 1997 As you may recall, in the last article I mentioned that because the tower was within Soberania National Park I had to submit an environmental impact assessment to the park authorities (INRENARE) and I was still waiting for its approval to start construction. To speed up this process I met on November 6th with INRENARE's Deputy Administrator and explained to him that I needed to start construction right away in order to take advantage of the tourist season which begins in January. Fortunately, I was able to convince him and he gave me a "preliminary limited approval" and I started construction right away so that while the environmental impact assessment was going through all the nooks and crannies of the bureacracy I could start preparing the Canopy Tower for opening in January 1998 as scheduled. The first thing I did was to start the construction of an adequate staircase to go up the first floor, which is located 8.5 meters (25ft) from ground level. The old stairs were built for GI's, and are very steep and narrow. The stairs I am building are wide and comfortable, appropriate for visitors of all ages. I also started construction of the first rain forest observation vehicle, "Rainfomobile No. 1". This is a completely open vehicle which will take visitors up the one mile road to the Canopy Tower. It is amazing the things you can see while on the road. For example, the other day I saw a Crane Hawk (Geranospiza caerulescens niger), which is a rare species of raptor, usually seen in Darien. A friend of mine, Roberto Fabrega, a Canal Pilot who likes to go jogging up and down this road