Chile, Baby!

A few weeks ago, the Environmental Studies and Bio departments sent out an announcement about an essay contest. The winner of the contest would receive an all-expenses-paid trip to attend the Conservation Capital in the Americas conference this January in Valdivia, Chile, and I decided immediately that I wanted to enter. All I had to do was write a six-page paper describing an innovative example of conservation finance- how hard it could it be?

Pretty darn hard, it turned out. To start out with, I couldn't for the life of me figure out a working definition of conservation finance. I had never heard the term before, Google and Wikipedia were not living up to my expectations, and even my professors gave me somewhat conflicting explanations. At last I decided to assume that conservation finance meant the same thing as financing conservation, and took my research from there.

Finding a topic proved no easier than understanding the assignment itself, and I waded through stacks of journals, skimming article after article that proved about as inspiring as John McCain's performance in the presidential debates. After a while I started looking specifically for information about the arctic--I was hoping to discover some fabulous example of conservation in Lapland or Svalbard--but despite my best efforts, none of the examples I found seemed, well, innovative. Or interesting, even.

I was beginning to despair of ever finding a topic, and the deadline was fast approaching. Finally I admitted to myself that I was at a loss, and besides, what were the odds I'd actually win? Most of the other entrants from Colby were upperclassmen who were doing theses on their topics, so it was a good bet they knew what conservation finance was. I felt completely out of my league.

...unless...

Well, I know about dogsledding, and it's certainly something I can write passionately about. In a last-ditch flurry of activity, I engrossed myself in information about the Iditarod trail, and began to form the ideas for my paper. As far as I could find out, nothing much has been written about Iditarod conservation, and even the government websites describing the legal aspects of the preservation of the 2,000 mile route seemed distinctly outdated. Long before the serum run (the dogsled relay which brought diptheria serum from Anchorage to Nome, and for which lead dog Balto is famous), the trail was in use to bring supplies and mail to isolated communities. Today, tourists flock to the trail for the Iditarod race and a variety of other sporting events (like the Iron Dog snowmobile relay, for which Sarah Palin's husband is famous) and provide valuable economic benefits for those same towns. The money spent on conservation has been returned many times over by the rewards the trail provides--wait, doesn't that sound a little like conservation finance?

It did to me, and apparently it did to the judges of the contest, too... I found out yesterday that I won the trip to Chile!!