Students Write Letters to Save Rainforest

Last month, former Frances Bardsley Academy student Lucy Houliston visited The Bridge to talk with students about her involvement with Reserva: The Youth Land Trust. Reserva is a brand new, global organisation working to empower youth in conservation through education and storytelling. Its flagship project involves the creation of the world’s first entirely youth-funded nature reserve, which will be located in Ecuador’s Chocó cloud forest.

The organisation’s ‘1 Million Letters’ campaign is calling on young people around the world to write short, informal letters addressed to world leaders explaining what they love about nature and why they believe it should be protected. Every letter received will be matched with $3 to go toward reserve projects (that’s enough to protect a classroom-sized patch of rainforest!), and exhibited at the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity later this year.

Following Lucy’s presentation which included information from frogs which burp up their babies to spectacular photographs of rare orchids and newly discovered species of rodent coupled with tales of her expedition to Reserva’s first site, students were keen to get writing their own letters. The Reserva site is home to the critically endangered brown-headed spider monkey and several never-before-seen species of amphibian, this forest and its inhabitants are under increasing threat from hunting and unsustainable agricultural practices. For more information about the project, go to http://www.reservaylt.org, or contact Lucy at lucy@reservaylt.org.

A selection of the letters written by the students at The Bridge, these will be displayed at the United Nations convention on Biological Diversity later this year. Each letter will preserve an area of Rainforest the size of a typical classroom.