Celebrating Earth Day - An Update On Wonderful Developments in Honduras.

You may remember Steve Elkins' incredible adventure in Honduras, discovering the Lost White City. On the occasion of Earth Day, we contacted Steve - as you might have guessed, we are well acquainted - to see what followed the discovery of lost civilizations in the Honduran rain forest. The impact on conservation overall is an even better story than what we would have expected!

A quick recap for those who may not have followed the adventure: in 1994 Steve Elkins visited the Honduran Mosquitia jungle for the first time to film a television documentary about the legend of the Lost White City. It was an arduous trip with heavy camera equipment in extremely difficult terrain. The film makers did not locate the legendary lost city. The team returned to the USA and Germany, respectively, and everyone went on about their daily professional lives.

Except for Steve.

He started on what would turn into a quarter-century long quest to discover it, spending countless hours on the computer, in archives and on the phone to gather every bit of information and detail known about the area and the legend.

Fast forward to 2012. Steve Elkins' passion paid off. New technology in remote sensing, in this case using LiDAR, financed by a team assembled by Steve and executed by an American and Honduran team of scientists from the University of Houston, TX, rendered results. The fly-over remote sensing expedition of the region Steve had determined to be the most likely possible location resulted in LiDAR imagery clearly showing the outlines of large square and rectangular structures under the heavy jungle vegetation.

A ground expedition organized by Steve Elkins in collaboration with the Honduran government and Honduran scientists from the Instituto Hondureño de Antropologia y Historia (IHAH) made the first physical contact. The team did confirm the presence of a large lost city. Author Doug Preston chronicled the adventure in the global bestseller "The Lost City of the Monkey God". National Geographic featured the expedition in print and on television.



We could end the story here, a decades-long passion pays off.

But as it turned out in the four years since the ground expedition, the discovery of the Lost White City was just the beginning of a much larger project with global involvement and implications!

Steve Elkins: "In 2012 when we did the first LiDAR expedition, the idea was to prove or disprove whether there was a lost city in the jungle. In order to achieve that goal we used LiDAR from an airplane. That was our primary objective and it worked great. We also noticed that there was extensive deforestation going on. Even though that was not our primary objective we decided we needed to do something about it. We were actually shocked to see how much forest was burning and being destroyed. Over the next few years when we flew over the area in helicopters and went on the ground we noticed it more and we realized that if this trend continued that this primeval jungle would cease to exist within 15 years. My partner Bill Benenson and I decided to work with a major NGO in this field, Conservation International. We personally financed a team of 12 biologists to travel to the area and to execute a Rapid Area Assessment of the flora and fauna in the winter of 2016/17. The area turned out to be even more pristine than we had thought. They found species they thought had gone extinct and even completely unknown species. It exceeded every one's expectations. We supplied the information to the government. Doug Preston wrote articles for The New Yorker and National Geographic about it and we launched an awareness campaign. The Honduran Government came on board immediately. This campaign was the spark that started an intense environmental movement with international support for Honduras and the Mosquitia. By the end of 2018 the efforts culminated with the formation of the Kaha Kamasa Foundation. Kaha Kamasa is the indigenous Pech word for "White City". The current government under President Juan Orlando Hernández started the foundation to safeguard the protection and preservation of the rain forest independently of politics. All government ministries participate. The military immediately assigned soldiers with strong local ties and inherent pride in their history and culture to guard the primeval valleys and archaeological sites and remove narco-traffickers and illegal growers who deforest the forest from the area.
Since the formation of Kaha Kamasa the movement has steadily gained steam and support. Honduran officials have gotten two very large USA-based NGOs on board: Wildlife Conservation Society and Global Wildlife Conservation. They are now developing and deploying strategies to protect the forest long term. They continue the biological research and have even started to reforest devastated areas in an ongoing restoration effort. This is a monumental achievement for a small country like Honduras. It is all moving in the right direction so we are optimistic."

Javier Suazo, Kaha Kamasa Foundation Spokesperson:

"30% of the Moskitia forest has been lost since the year 2000. This is the second biggest Mesoamerican forest and a most important Lung of the Earth. It also embraces ancient cities, lost amidst the exuberant jungle. Most of these ruins belong to civilizations still unknown to us. Therefore all the actions geared at stopping its destruction are of great relevance. 

In July 2018, the Kaha Kamasa Foundation was created at the initiative of Honduran President, Juan Orlando Hernández. It is an organization committed to assuring the continuous scientific research in La Moskitia and the environmental protection that this jungle requires.

Kaha Kamasa, is an ancient Pesh (native settlers of this region) word which means "White City". Throughout centuries, the myth of a colossal white city lost in the middle of the jungle has aroused the imagination of the public.

It wasn't until 2012 that actual remains of cities lost in the Moskitia jungle were discovered by a team under the leadership of North American explorer, Steve Elkins, who used state of the art technology known as LIDAR, to discover this sites under the forest canopy.

Nowadays, the teams of scientists that work in the Ciudad Blanca Project (archaeologists, anthropologists, biologists, and more), have given us a broader understanding of the complete richness of the jungle: its environmental value for all mankind but also the cultural legacy of the people who inhabited it centuries ago, living in harmony with the forest, building Eco-friendly cities where they developed a peaceful and prosper nation.

There is much to be saved at Ciudad Blanca, and the Kaha Kamasa Foundation is committed to do it."

THINGS YOU CAN DO TO HELP

Make a donation via the GLOBAL WILDLIFE CONSERVATION. 

Follow Kaha Kamasa on Facebook or Twitter. 

Sign up for the Kaha Kamasa video game newsletter. The educational and fun game will go live soon.  Your children will love to learn Spanish with this game.

It is simply amazing and so inspiring to see what one single man from Pasadena, CA, can put into motion, simply because of his passion, perseverance, tenacity, hard work, tireless research and endless commitment.

We in the Event Industry can do our part!

Clean River Recycling Solutions published this very easy 

8 Steps To Plan An Eco-Friendly Event guide.

Happy Earth Day!