Environmental Film Night

Free Ages 5 and older

The Northwest Environmental Education Council and Camp Long Advisory Council are happy to bring you monthly Environmental Film Nights. The films are free, and we welcome donations. This month we explore the world of international farming and migratory birds.

"Bird Song and Coffee: A Wake Up Call"

Coffee drinkers will be astonished to learn that they hold in their hands the fate of farm families, farming communities, and entire ecosystems in coffee-growing regions like Costa Rica. In this film we hear from experts and students, from coffee lovers and bird lovers, and-most important - from coffee farmers themselves. We learn how their lives and ours are inextricably linked, economically and environmentally.

Thursday, October 23, 7 ? 9 p.m.

Stefan Lovgren of National Geographic Magazine states that coffee is produced in 70 countries, and the industry employs some 20 million farming families around the globe. It is the second most traded commodity in the world, after oil.

Migratory birds have found a sanctuary in the forest-like environment of traditional shade grown coffee plantations in North, Central and South America. However, because of changes in coffee production and marketing, shade coffee plantations are being converted to sun coffee production.

Coffee production with no shade canopy at all has resulted in major habitat change for migratory birds in the past two decades. The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center biologists have found that ?of the permanent cropland planted in coffee, the amount under modern, reduced-shade coffee systems ranges from 17% in Mexico to 40% in Costa Rica and 69% in Colombia. The few studies that have been conducted have found that the diversity of migratory birds plummets when coffee is converted from shade to sun.?

Birds can play a beneficial role to the coffee farmer and coffee producers in that they counteract the damage caused by the coffee berry borer. With funding from National Geographic, studies showed that when foraging birds were free to visit coffee plants, there was up to 14 percent less borer infestation than in plants that were caged off from the birds. The researchers also found that berry damage was cut nearly in half, providing a significant boost in coffee yields and farm income.

"This is one of those win-win-win situations?something that is good for the farmer, good for the birds, and good for the environment," says ecologist Matthew Johnson.

Come learn more about the benefits of shade grown coffee and play a role in saving migratory birds.