WALLA WALLA, Wash. - Mother Nature must take comfort in knowing that Sarahlee Lawrence is among the next generation of conservationists, ready to stand vigilant guard over what remains of the world's wild rivers.
Lawrence, a sociology and environmental studies major at Whitman College, graduates in May and heads to Siberia in August, her focus riveted on a year-long first step into a life of international river conservation.
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Lawrence, born and raised on a ranch in central Oregon, not far from the Deschutes River, is one of 50 graduating seniors from around the nation recently selected to receive post-graduate fellowships from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation. Her 12-month study and travel project, titled "Rafting and River Conservation on the World's Biggest, Wildest Water," will include stops at rivers in Siberia, Zambia, Chile and Peru.
"Commitment to river conservation defines who I am and who I want to be," Lawrence says. She plans to devote the next year to understanding the "complex issues that surround the world's rivers, explored through the fluid medium of rafting."
Nearly 1,000 seniors at 50 of America's top liberal arts colleges and universities applied for Watson fellowships this year. Each recipient receives a stipend of $22,000 to travel outside the U.S. while engaging in an independent study project of their own devising.
Based in Providence, R.I., and founded in 1968 to honor Thomas J. Watson, Jr., the founder of IBM, the Watson Foundation Fellowship program is designed to reward and empower "seriously creative" students. It encourages applicants to devise travel/study projects that allow them to explore specific interests and concerns, test their aspirations and abilities, view their lives and American society in greater perspective, and develop a more informed sense of international concerns.
Lawrence, a graduate of Redmond (Oregon) High School and a resident of the small rural community of Terrebonne, is the 16th Whitman graduate to receive a Watson fellowship in the past nine years.
Lawrence has worked as a trained whitewater rafting guide for the past three summers, logging more than 2,000 miles on the Tuolumne, Merced, Kings and American rivers in California. As a Whitman student, she has worked for its Outdoor Program, leading other students on rock-climbing, rafting and backcountry trips in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. "I have a solid base of skills, challenged and improved from seasons of guiding on many different rivers," she says. "I am unique in that I have these skills as well as the drive to apply them to conservation."
"I will always question how industry, agriculture and people will dam, pollute and channel (rivers) in the name of cheap power and progress," Lawrence adds. Her Watson project was designed, she says, as a "personal investigation" of where and how her commitment to river conservation might be applied in the years to come.
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| Sarahlee Lawrence at the Yampa, the only free-flowing river that remains in Colorado. More than 50 years ago, David Brower, an activist with the Sierra Club, led a successful battle against construction of two dams on the Yampa, which for the most part flows through wilderness area. |
"The rivers I have incorporated into my proposal all have a unique ecology and cultural landscape through which they flow," she says. "What links these rivers is that they all have dam proposals encroaching onto their high walls and into the lives of the indigenous people intertwined in them."
Lawrence plans to work as a river guide on each of the rivers listed in her Watson proposal. She also has time allotted for fact-finding aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the conservation efforts and development pressures at work in the case of each river and surrounding community. "I want to know the countries and cultures that rely upon these rich river systems and to meet the people and organizations confronting the issues that put these rivers in peril. My goal for my Watson year is to identify the role I will play in finding solutions to these problems."
Lawrence plans to spend her first month in Siberia, staying with a Mongolian family before joining the guides and clients of Bio Bio Expeditions for a rafting trip on the Tungar and Katun rivers. Beginning in September, she plans to spend three months in Zambia, a country in southern Africa slightly larger than the state of Texas. She will spend stretches of several days on the Zambezi River, working as a guide for both Bio Bio Expeditions and Safari Par Excellence. The remainder of her time will be spent with the Zambezi Society, a grassroots effort to protect the river, which has been threatened recently with a potential dam project. She will stay in the Bio Bio guide house with local Zambian guides, learning the Shona and Ndebele languages.
While in Zambia, Lawrence will also assist the International Rivers Network. "I have the option to help with both ecological and social research as well as public education programs," she says. "The IRN is working to empower the local people by educating them about the threats that face the river they depend upon for food and water."
From December through May, Lawrence will focus her attention on Chile's Futaleufu River Valley. From its origins high in the Argentine Andes, the Futaleufu carves west into Chile's Palena Province, tumbling down 34 miles amid dramatic glacial valleys, mountain peaks and temperate rainforests. Lawrence again plans to split time between river expeditions, training on what she calls "some of the world's wildest water," and volunteering with FutaFriends, a local conservation group, as well as the area's IRN office. The mission of FutaFriends, she notes, is to "support viable economic alternatives" to possible dams on the river. "My time will be well spent, both educating and being educating about the complex issues that the river and surrounding communities are faced with."
While in Chile, Lawrence also plans to visit the Bio Bio River, which is already dotted by a series of hydroelectric dams. "I will visit the building site of a dam that is displacing 90 Mapuche families who had managed to hang onto their traditional way of life until just recently," she says. "I will stay with the Mapuche family who was last to sell their land after actively fighting the dams for years. The final stages of the building process are underway and I will be there to see the slow, suffocating death of one of the world's greatest rivers."
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Bearing witness to the loss of a great river is something Lawrence wasn't able to do last year when new dams began operating on China's Yangtze, a river she first admired as a child while gazing at the pages of National Geographic magazine. "In January 2003, I cried when I read that the first of three great gorges would soon be under water," she recalls. "I felt an ache to go, even in the 11th hour, to seek the stories of the Yangtze before they were drowned forever. I became obsessed, frantically searching for a way to get there, but I was unable to muster the funds for such a trip."
This time, however, "I won't let this river (Bio Bio) slip away like another Yangtze, without personally being there to collect its final story, shed my tears and say my prayers. I hope to leave there with an unrelenting drive and a deeper understanding that might come from what I see in the eyes of the Mapuche and the spirit of a lost river. I hope this personal experience. . .will help me assist other people in their struggles against dams."
A 35mm camera, a small container of paints, brushes and waterproof paper are among the few provisions Lawrence plans to take with her. Her goal is to use the camera and paints to "expose the magnificence of the rivers and canyons that I visit," and to fill her journals with "words and thoughts I will later use to share the story of the rivers I come to know."
A damned reservoir already exists in the Futaleufu headwaters, Lawrence says. "Its name, Amutui Quimei, means 'lost beauty' in the Mapuche language, a prophecy of what may come without a passionate defense of what remains of the wild and beautiful valley."
In June of next year, Lawrence will travel to Peru, stopping first to train and raft on the Apurimac River, an upper tributary of the Amazon. Later, on the Cotahuasi River, she will visit the highest gorge on earth. "Between trips, I will involve myself in local efforts to save these rivers whose canyons hold ancient archeological ruins that are just now being discovered," she says. She looks forward to taking photos and writing about a "place that only a handful of people in the world have been lucky enough to see."
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The rivers Lawrence plans to explore during her Watson travels are in "danger of vanishing without anyone knowing what is being lost, because they are inaccessible to most people," she says. "The damming of any one of these rivers would be no different than the extinction of a species."
One of the issues Lawrence plans to explore is the role eco-tourism might play in river conservation. If eco-tourism ventures avoid exploitation of local communities, they can be a sustainable use of natural resources, she says. "Tourism is also capable of placing a dollar value on an unobstructed river, which is how our society assesses worth."
While only 21 years of age, Lawrence is no stranger to the highly political world of natural resource conservation. She divided her junior year between East Africa and the American West, studying conservation biology and wildlife management for six months in Kenya, and then traveling through several western states for three months as part of Whitman's first "Semester in the West" class. About two dozen students took part in the class, traveling 12,000 miles while studying a variety of environmental and social justice issues. "I stood face to face with struggling people of communities divided over mostly environmental issues," Lawrence says. "I learned how complex and confusing an unfolding issue can become."
Lawrence, whose future plans include the possibility of enrolling in the International Resource Management graduate program at the University of Montana, approaches her chosen career path with equal parts confidence and realism. "I have the courage to commit my life to conservation, despite the reality that these rivers may be doomed," she says. "I think few people can say that. (Most people) fear loss and disappointment. I know these rivers are worth the risk of disappointment. I want to take responsibility to leave this planet more beautiful, more healthy, and more loved than I found it."