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Monkeysprologue

Jack Ewing provides the foreword for the book "Monkeys Are Made of Chocolate" by Jack Ewing. He summarizes that Ewing transformed his cattle ranch in Costa Rica, Hacienda Baru, into a protected wildlife refuge over many years after his views changed from seeing it as a business to seeing the importance of conservation. Ewing's transformation was part of a growing trend of more people becoming environmentally aware due to influences like books and each other, creating positive change. The book shares Ewing's experiences and adventures in restoring the land's ecology.

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25 views7 pages

Monkeysprologue

Jack Ewing provides the foreword for the book "Monkeys Are Made of Chocolate" by Jack Ewing. He summarizes that Ewing transformed his cattle ranch in Costa Rica, Hacienda Baru, into a protected wildlife refuge over many years after his views changed from seeing it as a business to seeing the importance of conservation. Ewing's transformation was part of a growing trend of more people becoming environmentally aware due to influences like books and each other, creating positive change. The book shares Ewing's experiences and adventures in restoring the land's ecology.

Uploaded by

aptureinc
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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You are on page 1/ 7

Jack Ewing

FOREWORD

When I’m before an audience, I’m almost always asked this question:
Do I see any hope for the future of our endangered planet? My
answer is yes, and I think this surprises many listeners, because they
and I look for hopeful signs in different places. They look for
hopeful signs in the tightening up of laws protecting the environ-
ment, in the rigorous enforcement of those laws, in the emergence of
informed, dedicated legislators and political candidates, and they see
nothing to encourage them in those places. Protective laws are weak-
ened or unenforced, and one of the first environmentally-aware U.S.
presidential candidates is defeated in favor of one eager to roll back
environmental protections to further big-business interests.
The indicators I’m looking at are very different from these.
If there had been an Amazon.com to search forty years ago, it
almost certainly would not have had a separate category for Envi-
ronmental Conservation & Protection—and if it had, it would have
listed a single book: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Today that cate-
gory lists more than five thousand—and I’d be willing to bet that the
vast majority of these were published within the past ten years.
What this signals to me is that a significant change in public
awareness has taken place and is spreading very rapidly. This is the
basis for my hope for the future. Change begins in changed minds.
Changing minds has a domino effect, a cumulative effect that occurs

ix
when one event sets off a chain of similar or related events.
Jack Ewing’s success in creating the Hacienda Barú National
Wildlife Refuge is part of this growing domino effect—as is the
book you’re reading.
To make it clear how important this domino effect is, I’d like to
give just one example of it in operation.
In 1994 the CEO of Interface, Incorporated—the industry
leader of the commercial carpet business—read two books. One was
Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce and the other was my
own Ishmael. Up to that time, this CEO, a man named Ray
Anderson, had been very diligent about being in full compliance
with all government regulations relevant to his business. But when
he read these two books, he saw that being merely in compliance is
not nearly enough. He made up his mind to do three things: first, to
eliminate petroleum from his carpeting (and it had all been petro-
leum-based until then); second, to develop carpeting that can be
100% recycled—into materials from which all his new carpeting
could be made; and third, to encourage his customers to think dif-
ferently about their floor covering needs. Instead of buying carpet
and discarding it when it’s no longer serviceable, he will lease them
carpet. When it’s no longer serviceable, he’ll take it back to be recy-
cled totally and replace it with carpeting made from totally recycled
materials.
My book and Paul Hawken’s were dominos that tumbled into
Ray Anderson, moving him to action. But Ray Anderson was a
domino as well, and when he fell toward creating a truly sustainable
business, his competitors were compelled to keep up in order to be
competitive. (Thus Mr. Anderson transformed not only a single
business but a whole industry.) Similarly, his suppliers—among
them giants like DuPont—were compelled to start developing new
materials and processes that would enable him to reach his goals.
Within five years, Ray Anderson was recognized globally as a
leading figure in the realm of sustainable development.

x
Paul Hawken and Ray Anderson both began their careers as
entrepreneurs and ended up being famous as environmentalists.
Jack Ewing’s career followed the same trajectory. When he first
visited Costa Rica’s Hacienda Barú in 1972, he was looking at it
with the eyes of an entrepreneur, and what he saw was a cattle ranch
and rice farm carved out of a coastal rain forest. He became a
rancher and farmer. Paul Hawken’s experience as a businessman
gradually changed his vision of commerce. Jack Ewing’s experience
as a rancher and farmer gradually changed his vision of Hacienda
Barú. By 1979 it no longer looked to him like a cattle ranch and rice
farm carved out of a coastal rain forest; it now looked like a half-
destroyed coastal rain forest.
Paul Hawken’s changed mind prompted him to write a book.
Ray Anderson’s changed mind prompted him to reinvent his com-
pany. Jack Ewing’s changed mind prompted him to turn Hacienda
Barú into a wildlife refuge.
Such a work of restoration doesn’t occur as quickly as a book is
written, but by the turn of the century all traces of the farm and
ranch had disappeared, and Hacienda Barú was once again a natural
habitat, teeming with wildlife—world famous and officially desig-
nated as Hacienda Barú National Wildlife Refuge.

What gives me hope for the future of the world and the human
race? It’s Jack Ewing—and the fact that he belongs to a growing
community of people with changed minds who are changing the
world and the people around them.

To read Monkeys Are Made of Chocolate is to share in a small


way the great adventure Jack Ewing undertook in transforming his
part of the world. In fact, reading this book is an adventure in
itself—rather like hiking through a jungle: you never know what
you’re going to stumble across next! I won’t spoil your fun by
listing the surprises ahead of you, but they’re certainly there in

xi
multitudes—things you’ve never heard of, things you never even
dreamed could exist or happen. There aren’t many books that will
tell you which phases of the moon are best for pruning trees, for
castrating horses, and for cutting weeds—and convince you that
this isn’t just moonshine!
You’ll learn from this book, you’ll shed a few tears, and you’ll
have a lot of laughs. I certainly did.

— Daniel Quinn

xii
PREFACE

In February 1972 I first visited a ranch called Hacienda Barú, located


on the southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica. At that time about half
of the land had been deforested and was being used for grazing cattle
and growing rice. The other half, approximately 170 hectares (420
acres), was tropical rainforest, one of the few large forest reserves left
in this part of the country. My wife, Diane, our four-year-old
daughter, Natalie, and I had moved to Costa Rica in December of
1970. Our son, Chris, was born in San José in May 1972. Between
1976 and 1978 I worked full time at the hacienda, commuting weekly
between there and San José. Then the whole family moved to
Hacienda Barú. For eight years we lived without ordinary conven-
iences such as electricity, telephones and all-weather roads that many
people consider to be basic necessities of life.
After having grown up in the typical, pampered lifestyle of
upper-middle class America, the experience of living and raising a
family in rural Costa Rica was sometimes trying, sometimes frus-
trating, usually fulfilling and never boring. The children thrived,
Diane survived, and I found myself drawn ever deeper into the fas-
cinating realm of tropical ecology while at the same time losing
interest in livestock and farming.
The year 1979 marked the beginning of a long period of transi-
tion for Hacienda Barú. Thirty hectares of grazing land was retired

xiii
as pasture and allowed to regenerate naturally into secondary forest.
In the tropics, when you quit chopping the weeds, land quickly
reverts to jungle. Today, ninety percent of the hacienda has been
restored to natural habitat, and farming and ranching are no longer
practiced. It has been given the official category of National Wildlife
Refuge by the president of Costa Rica and has the same protected
status as a national park. The refuge is known internationally and is
visited by people from many different countries.
It was from these years of experience that I drew the substance
for a series of essays that I began writing in the year 2000. These
were published by several local English-language monthlies
including Quepolandia, from Quepos; PZ Guide, from San Isidro;
and the now defunct Dominical Current, formerly published in
Dominical. Monkeys Are Made of Chocolate is a collection of
thirty-two of those essays. They do not necessarily need to be read
in order.
The tropical rain forest holds a fascinating story which is told
through the interaction of its life forms. Ever tantalizing, its natural
history is revealed only in bits and pieces, always full of surprises,
begging you to look deeper. Discovering some new tidbit of sapi-
ence about the jungle doesn’t bring you any closer to knowing all
there is, but simply opens more doors, each unveiling its own
enticing web of knowledge. In Monkeys Are Made of Chocolate, I
give to you a portion of the reality I have acquired in more than
thirty years of living in the jungle. It is my desire that in addition to
being entertained, the reader will acquire a deeper appreciation for
the natural marvels of planet Earth, and the millions of living organ-
isms with which we share it.

— Jack Ewing
November 2004

xiv

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