PJF In the Press

Finding a Connection, Though a World Away
By: Alan Bisbort
December 16, 2001

According to an environmental mantra, one must think globally and act locally. Some Connecticut residents, however, have the thinking globally and then acting on their thoughts. Because of this, Connecticut residents have had an impact on the environmental health of the planet.

Jim Brunton, who is based in Westport, runs JAB Enterprises, a computer software company whose profits drive the work of two conservation efforts, the Pajaro Jai Foundation and Ocean Wood Gallery, which sells “rain forest furniture” and other products created by indigenous peoples.

The area Mr. Brunton seeks to protect is the Darien Rainforest in Panama, and his conservation partners are the indigenous Chocoe Indians in the village of Mogue.

Their symbol is a boat, named the Pajaro Jai (a half-Spanish, half-Chocoe phrase describes a phoenix-like bird). This 92-foot ketch, due to be completed in July 2002, is being built by the Indians from the hardwoods found in the nearby forest.

Though it will become the foundation’s flagship, it is the resurrected kindred spirit of the original Pajaro Jai, also built by the Chocoe and launched in 1986. That vessel had a string of environmental successes including being a driving force behind preserving the coral reefs of Montego Bay in Jamaica, but it was lost in a tropical storm in 1991.

“The key to everything is to let the people themselves do the work,” Mr. Brunton said. “We can’t solve ecological or human economic problems with Band-Aids. Money alone sometimes brings action to a halt. I’ve seen it do more damage than good.”

Mr. Brunton said the Chocoe are skilled with their hands, “so the project emphasizes boat-building and furniture.”

"But, in the long run, “ he added, “we want to create an economic development dynamic inside the culture itself, to catapult them 20 years ahead. They’ll be eaten alive if we don’t.”

Mr. Brunton dates his relationship with the Chocoe to 1967, when as a Peace Corps volunteer he found himself in the Panamanian rain forest.

"They had dignity, beauty and an intact culture, and I began to fear that my presence was going to destroy some of this,” Mr. Brunton said. “Fate dropped me, an ordinary person of average morality, into an extraordinary situation. Since the cultural disintegration would proceed with me, or without me, would it be a cop-out to walk? Might I contribute to a healthier future in some way?”

Almost 40 years later, Mr. Brunton is still involved with the Chocoe. “All of this comes from my guts, from knowing these people," he said. “Trust is important.”

Mr. Brunton said that the products the Chocoe can produce from a single tree in the rain forest are worth more income generated from 40 acres of cattle grazing, and three trees can generate as much income as a village the size of Mogue’s entire cropland.

“Despite all the awareness and efforts to do green business in the tropics, the rate of destruction of the rain forest is increasing, not diminishing” he said. “Something we’re doing is wrong.”

Caring for the environment and people
By: Laurie Schreiber
January 3, 2002

GOULDSBORO - Young David Cahn, in his mid-20s, leads the way from the Brunton family campground, Ocean Wood, down a lovely side road to nearby Bunker's Harbor.

Sunshine shimmers off the fresh snowfall. David, a recent University of Maine graduate, is the boyfriend of a niece of a fellow named Jim Brunton, an affable man in his late 50s who is today wearing raggedy, old sweats, an image of Popeye figuring prominently on the chest of his shirt. As a highly successful developer of trouble-shooting software, Mr. Brunton is doubtless often in button-down mode. But don't peg him. His humanitarian impulses see him frequently in the rain forest of Panama, helping the Chocoe Indians deal with the incursions of Western influences; on the coast of Maine, setting up a fishery research facility; or on the boat built by the Chocoes under the auspices of his foundation, the Pajaro Jai, liaising with the movers and shakers of the environmentalist world.

David works for Mr. Brunton's software firm in Westport, Conn., and has enthusiastically invested himself in Mr. Brunton's many projects. This wouldn't be hard to do, given the older man's good-natured warmth, his inspired ideas for helping others by working outside most any box, and his ability to make them successful. It's something of a trick to puzzle out the connections between Mr. Brunton's projects. On the one hand, he's got boats and furniture a-building in Panama, and on the other, he's interested in connecting fishermen, scientists and other parties through what he says will be a state-of-the-art research center in Bunker's Harbor. Although the venues may be worlds apart, the connecting thread is his desire to help others by providing, for free, a means for people to come together in the spirit of communication and cooperation, and find ways to improve their lives and the environment that sustains them.

Today, David is taking time to show progress on the research center, which will be located in the former McLoon Lobster Co., just above the public landing in Bunker's Harbor and nestled below a residence-lined incline. A small inlet that is part of the pound was once kept flooded by a dam topped by a wooden walkway, so that lobsters caught during the summer could be held over for the more profitable market. The dam has long since deteriorated; the middle portion of the walkway has fallen into the sea.

Inside the main building, the garage is taken up by a pickup truck, an outboard motorboat, and crates of dowels and frames, made by the Chocoes out of wood from the rain forest, for the manufacture of benches and chairs. As needed, Mr. Brunton helps two or three Chocoes travel to Maine to assemble the furniture, where it is sold in the Ocean Wood Gallery in Birch Harbor. An indigenous tribe that lives in the Darien Rain Forest in Panama and Colombia, the Chocoes have

developed a self-sustaining way of life but have been under fire from many factions who seek to keep the natives from their traditional hunting and fishing.

It has been Mr. Brunton's role, evolved since his time there with the Peace Corps, to demonstrate how the Indians would be better off to use tropical hardwoods - reseeding as they go - for the manufacture of wood products, rather than burning it for firewood and to clear farmland.

Back in the early '80s, he employed the Indians to build a sailing ketch, the Pajaro Jai, from rain forest timber, and has since helped them to develop the furniture-making business, with the manufacturing end in Panama and assembly and sales in Maine.

Launched in 1981, the Pajaro Jai became the linchpin of his larger vision, which was to create a sort of traveling Chattauqua on issues concerning the marine environment and other ecological problems - whatever people wanted to talk about.

The boat, Mr. Brunton says, acted as a bridge for bringing antagonists together in an intimate setting that encourages them to find solutions. As a traveling liaison, it allowed folks to network, bringing more people together on what are essentially common environmental problems.

"The boat was built by poor people," he says. "It's a beautiful collaboration between different cultures. So the boat itself is quite inspirational. It breaks down the walls of isolation, the usual barriers between people."

She was sailed until 1986 in the Panama region, followed by four years off the East Coast, doing 60 to 80 events per year in the Caribbean, New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., and the like. In Montego Bay, Jamaica, for example, the foundation, in collaboration with the Nature Conservancy, brought together fishermen, scientists, environmentalists, tourist businesses, celebrities and the press to address the challenge of preventing further deterioration of the coral reefs, which are not only essential to the marine habitat but also drive much of tourism and the local economy.

"It focused a tremendous amount of concern on the issue," Mr. Brunton says.

In the meantime, he had bought a stretch of Birch Harbor coastline to homeport the boat. In 1990, he founded the Pajaro Jai Foundation, to support the boat's activities. But in 1991, the boat sank in a storm after hitting a reef, near the coast of Jamaica. A new 90-foot sailboat, by the same name, is under construction now, also in Panama, and is expected to be launched late next summer. Plans are in the works to take her to Europe for a year or more, sailing to major cities and, in conjunction with the United Nations and conservation groups, bringing together groups on ecological and marine problems.

In its role as a connection between people, the new Pajaro Jai will also be key, Mr. Brunton says, to attracting people to what might otherwise seem like a remote outpost, a small research center on the coast of Maine.

"The potential of such a facility is boundless," Mr. Brunton writes on company's Web site (www. jabinc.org). "Imagine scientists seeking the advice of fishermen in structuring research projects. Projects designed not only to increase knowledge of the oceans and fisheries but also to work in the economic dynamic in which everything must ultimately function. Imagine fishermen benefiting from knowledge gained by applied scientific research. The Bunkers Harbor Research Center would create an environment where scientists and fishermen can work on an equal footing in a combination which will carry great weight influencing government policy, ultimately resulting in a healthier environment and community."

The research center will be owned and administered by JAB Enterprises and the foundation. A board to be created and overseen by the foundation will be composed mostly of area fishermen and perhaps members from the University of Maine. The board would be charged with ensuring that projects have a clear goal with regard to solving specific problems. Projects, Mr. Brunton writes, will be organized to address "a wide range of topics with an emphasis on practical solutions to fisheries problems, stressing: conservation of fisheries, development of new ocean products, and economic opportunities for local communities. One of the most important goals of this project is to create a forum to bring together scientists, government regulators and, most importantly, fishermen."

Accepted proposals would have use of the 2-acre pound area, 126-foot-long dam, 2,000 square feet of dock, and a 2,400-square-foot building free of charge. Real estate and buildings will be developed to support research efforts.

To avoid the kind of "politics or bureaucratic tangle" that plague other institutions, Mr. Brunton writes, research projects will be approved by fishermen. The panel will be solicited through contacts in the fishery and research community, initially through the Lobster Institute. The solicitation for proposals will go out locally at first, and, as the idea develops, open up globally.

"We think people will really want to be part of it," David says. "It will be a real grassroots thing."

The divide between fishermen and conservationists on the issue of right whale protection is a perfect example of where research might start, David says.

The renovation means moving the furniture-assembly operation. A climb up the stairs opens onto a large room, which will be used as the center's office. The unfinished space now has a couple of desks, a drafting table, computer, and a draft drawing of the new Pajaro Jai. Windows overlook the cove.

Mr. Brunton bought the property in the early '80s and, with this project, intends to make an initial investment of a couple of hundred thousand dollars to repair the dam and provide the resources needed by researchers. The inlet is viewed as an ideal spot to keep live stocks - lobster, finfish - for study. The foundation will provide the resources needed to get projects off the ground and keep them going.

"We'll supply the tools they need," David says.

Back at the campground, Mr. Brunton is getting down and dirty. He's been driving a backhoe, and has just finished shifting a massive boulder onto a steel-beam sled, ready to transport elsewhere as a memorial stone. He explains that he likes to build, not only tangible things but connections between people. The research center, like the boat, he says, will be an example of how to bring various, often opposing parties together.

"You see a lot of effort being made by government, sometimes successful, sometimes not," he says. "Because they often leave the people who are in the soup out of the equation, they often fail."

Pajaro Jai, the ship, will be part of the means for making people aware of the center.

"We'll be all over the world with the boat," he says. "We'll have people who do marine research in Asia and Scandinavia using the facility - free of charge. When you make something free, people come, usually."

The center will be state-of-the-art, he says.

"We'll start simply. If we make it available, why shouldn't someone want it? That's what happened with the boat."

With a motto of "conservation through innovation," Mr. Brunton says the idea is to develop "wide-reaching, self-propelling, and long-lasting solutions to the problem of natural resource destruction."

The technologies that got the world into the mess it's in can probably be used to get it into better shape, he says.

"My parents," he says, "made me believe there's a nobility of the human spirit, and the idea that this is a great world we inherited, and it's not going to stay great if we don't help it."