Groups Work to Save Rain Forest Palms (Palm Sunday related)

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Groups Work to Save Rain Forest Palms

 

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http://story.news./news?tmpl=story & cid=624 & ncid=753 & e=1 & u=/ap/20050320/\

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56 minutes ago

 

Add to My Science - AP

 

By ANDREW SELSKY, Associated Press Writer

 

BOGOTA, Colombia - With a sprinkling of holy water, a

priest blessed thousands of palm seedlings in a

ceremony in Bogota's main park, sealing an unusual

Palm Sunday pact between the Roman Catholic Church and

environmentalists to save a critically endangered

parrot.

 

 

 

Thousands of miles away, 22 churches in the United

States are for the first time using environmentally

sustainable palm from Guatemala and Mexico for their

Palm Sunday services this year.

 

This convergence of religion and ecology is taking

root across scattered areas of the globe amid

heightened environmental awareness among some church

leaders. More than 300 million palm fronds are

harvested each year for U.S. consumption alone — most

of them for Palm Sunday.

 

" Most Christians wake up on a Palm Sunday, look at the

beautiful greenery but don't think about where it's

being grown and whether forests and people are being

affected, " said Glenn Berg-Moberg, pastor of an

800-member Lutheran church in St. Paul, Minn. " The

largest single demand of palm fronds is for Palm

Sunday, so we feel we need to be responsible in how we

are treating the forest. "

 

The effort in America, promoted by the Montreal-based

Commission for Environmental Cooperation and the

Rainforest Alliance in New York, is aimed at

protecting the rainforests in Guatemala and Mexico

whose canopy provides the shade for the shrublike

chamaedorea palms to grow.

 

The plan is to buy certified palms from communities

using sustainable forestry practices and improve the

communities' profit margins, giving them more

incentive to protect the rainforest instead of

clear-cutting it.

 

" Someone quipped that this is a palm pilot, but we're

really excited about it, " Berg-Moberg said.

 

The Colombian initiative has a special urgency,

because the survival of a species is at stake.

 

There are only 540 or so yellow-eared parrots left on

the planet. They exist only in Colombia. Their sole

habitat is the wax palm, which grows on the misty

flanks of the Andes Mountains to heights of 225 feet,

making it the world's tallest palm tree.

 

But for centuries, Colombians have used the fronds of

the wax palm for Palm Sunday, which commemorates

Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, where residents greeted

him by waving palm fronds.

 

When Colombian peasants cut off the fronds from the

young wax palms — Colombia's national tree — to sell

to worshippers, the trees die or their growth is

stunted. The practice has led to a dramatic thinning

of the towering palms.

 

A top Colombian cleric said it's important for the

church to join with environmental groups and

government agencies to promote use of other palms and

save the bright green-and-yellow parrots.

 

" We have a slogan: God pardons always, man pardons

sometimes, but nature never does. Every abuse of

nature you pay for, sooner or later, " said Monsignor

Fabian Marulanda, secretary-general of the church's

policy-making Episcopal Conference.

 

On a sunny, crisp morning in Bogota's sprawling Simon

Bolivar Park, the Rev. Alirio Lopez stood before

hundreds of people holding 6-inch seedlings of the

Alexandra palm — an alternative to the wax palm — in

paper cups. Schoolchildren, joggers, cyclists and

others streamed into a rotunda in the park to

participate.

 

" Dear Lord, who created the Earth, the waters, the

plants and the animals, bless these Alexandra palms, "

the white-robed Lopez, who flicked holy water onto

some of the seedlings, said in Friday's ceremony.

 

Thousands of the seedlings are being handed out, to be

planted for future Palm Sunday observances. Bigger

fronds of the alternative palms will be available for

Palm Sunday services this year.

 

Marulanda said the church refrained from joining the

campaign earlier because some groups were proposing

that worshippers display handkerchiefs, corn stalks

and an assortment of other items instead of palm

fronds.

 

 

 

" There would have been a burlesque aspect to it all, "

Marulanda said. But the church came on board after the

use of fronds from other palms was suggested.

 

" Maintain the Tradition. Respect Nature, " proclaim

posters that have been sent to churches nationwide to

promote the program.

 

One of the campaign organizers, Luz Mery Cortes of

Conservation International, said she does not think

all Colombians will immediately abandon use of wax

palm fronds, which are legally protected.

 

" We cannot expect that such a strongly held tradition

will change overnight, " Cortes said. " But if we don't

do something, the wax palm and the yellow-eared parrot

will disappear from the planet. "