Argentina

Fundación Vida Silvestre is a referent among organizations that work for a balance between development and respect for biological diversity

Diego Moreno, Fundación Vida Silvestre General Director.

Please describe what you do:
With my fellow workers and volunteers from the Vida Silvestre Foundation, we help to preserve nature. In my case, through several activities, like directing the Vida Silvestre Magazine, teaching about the environment and communicating through media and press.

What do you enjoy most about what you do?
To share the educational adventure. To be able to pass on knowledge that my own teachers and colleagues gave me generously, and the ones I learnt from my own experience.

What is your inspiration?
Hope. I believe myself capable of living in a world with wild nature and not domesticated as we struggle to achieve. I don’t pretend people to go back to the caverns, but I still want the caverns to be preserved, and let nature remain as virgin as possible with its huge diversity of wild species.

How would you define luxury today? (or) What is, to you, the essence of luxury today?
The most common definition of luxury is to be surrounded by objects, goods and services that may lead to dependence and make us feel “better”. If one doesn’t have these objects you may feel “less” than the rest. In life there is what is necessary and important and what’s not necessary or superfluous. For me, it’s necessary to know who I am, the purpose of my life, what I try to achieve, what I do expect from life and with whom I want to share it. All the other things in my opinion are secondary.

Eco-awareness is growing as is social consciousness and the need to be responsible towards our world and its people. What part do you play in this global mission?
A modest part. Each one of us can make changes in the widest sense. We constantly make decisions that may affect others and our environment. It’s important then to take advantage of these opportunities. From every day activities, we can practice teaching through example. Words can persuade, but actions move people. To be more specific, I try to motivate others to have more eco consciousness, to be more self confident and commit to a cause, whatever it may be, and becoming role-models.

When and how did your project originate?
It begun in 1977, based on the suffering of a person who tried to look for hope and strength by creating this foundation. I think it was successful, thanks to friends and people who supported the project.

What continues to be your vision for this project?
It may sound vague and modest, but it isn’t. We want to live in a world able to develop while preserving nature. Is this too much to ask for?

How are your creativity and passion an important part of this project?
Every project needs vocation, conviction, passion and perseverance. In addition to that, I would add in some cases the adversity. One has to be stubborn and, as I was advised by a great museum teacher (Roberto Crowder) “In certain cases you must pretend madness”. I mean, keep your projects alive and going even if they seem strange.

If you were to choose a colour and an adjective to describe it, what would they be?
I don’t like the question very much, but I’d say: the rainbow, that combination of colors that represent many things: what’s indivisible, surprising, wonderful and mysterious in nature, the universal (capable of being in several places at the same time), the intangible yet real…

What is the message you wish to pass on?
Once I heard Atahualpa Yupanqui saying that the first thing a man has to do is to identify him/herself. So my message is that you must identify yourself and be consistent with that definition. In many ways this is a path that one has to walk in loneliness and deep sacrifice, but in that path there is also the immense joy of being capable of helping nature. If somebody feels that an inner spark, that everlasting curiosity, that genuine feeling of getting in touch with nature, I would tell him-her to pay attention and not betray that feeling…he or she must be involved in something, even if its small and modest.
I would say to take an activity that helps preserve nature, a daily commitment. Once a person from Chaco (province, Argentina) told me “a lot of nothings make nothing, a lots of fews make a lot”

Name a person or place that has inspired you with their progressive vision.contacts
To mention only one person is really difficult and I don’t want to be unfair. There were a lot of inspiring people. Such as the naturalists that preceded me (as the Perito Francisco P Moreno, the Dr. Esteban L. Maradona, Eduardo L. Holmberg and William H.Hudson) up to the teachers as Julio R. Contreras, Tito Narosky, Elio Massoia y José M. Cei and my old friends that are teachers and colleagues, Juan Carlos Chebez, Marcelo y Pablo Canevari, Eduardo Esparrach, Egon Ciklai, Carlos Fernández Balboa…they are important for me. Each one of us must choose our icons and identify ourselves with their good qualities. No-one is 100% admirable or 100% infallible but some of them can shed light on our path. It’s important to have light within ourselves to be able to see and walk.

www.vidasilvestre.org.ar

Opening spot by German Mesuno, Creative Director Jorge Heimman, Art Direction Carlos Torregrosa. Produced by Flehner Films in 1989.

Tags: eco consciousness, environment, preserve nature

E-mail this post

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 6:15 pm and is filed under social. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.