The Ridgefield Press People

Helping the Earth - and the dogs - at the bottom of the world
Ridgefield Native Bruce Willett is an environmentalist and animal advocate in Chile

Thursday, September 5, 2002

by JEREMY ESPOSITO
Press Staff

As the summer burned lawns in Connecticut, at least one Ridgefield native was experiencing a brutal winter.
“It’s hard to think of summer now in the States when just last week we had three feet of snow on the ground with temperatures below zero,” said Bruce Willett. “This was after the worst snowfall in 45 years that closed the city down for a week. The streets are still icy after more than two weeks of temperatures in the single digits. The days are also very short. Friday the 21st the sun rose at 9:30 a.m. and set at 4 p.m...”

Bruce Willett lives in Punta Arenas, the southernmost city in the world. Punta Arenas is closer to Antarctica than it is to the country’s capital, Santiago. Mr. Willett, who grew up in Ridgefield and graduated from Ridgefield High School in 1982, works as a consultant for the city’s Department of Planning, but he is also involved in trying to protect some of the most beautiful wilderness in the world.

Mr. Willett received a bachelor’s degree in geography from Syracuse University in 1986 and a master’s degree in environmental resource engineering from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. Using GIS His education has trained him to work with GIS, Geographic Information Systems. He collects geographical data of physical places, such as cities, rivers, and lakes. He then describes the characteristics of
these geographic features, such as population, length and area, and analyzes the links between the physical places and their features. Although GIS is technical, his attempts to map out different geographical areas have led him to work primarily with people from vastly different areas — from the city of Syracuse, N.Y., to the Hopi reservations of the Southwest, to Punta Arenas.

While in Syracuse he worked for the local Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council where he used GIS for transportation planning, including bicycle and pedestrian advocacy. Since then he has applied GIS to forestry issues on Navajo, Hopi and Mapuche Indian lands and to toxic waste remediation for the Navy on Coronado Island off the coast of San Diego. “While in San Diego making good money working with the Navy, I met several crazy Chileans working on a conservation project in Tierra del Fuego. They needed some help with the technical aspects of GIS. I took a three-month leave of absence from my job in San Diego and I’m still here,” he said in an e-mail.His interest in conservation GIS had already developed after he spent four years working with GreenPeace and WAC Corp., an aerial photography firm, in Oregon gaining experience in environmental organizing and developing skills in aerial photography and mapping.

Tierra del Fuego
In Chile, Mr. Willett’s day job involves using GIS to map out tax parcels for the city. But he moonlights for the conservation project in Tierra del Fuego. “My project in Tierra del Fuego is much more interesting than working for the city,” he said. “The fun part is it involves field work, which means hiking, camping and exploring wilderness.” In Tierra del Fuego, he is working on the International Gondwana Forest Sanctuary Project, which is part of a larger network of similar projects in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. He helps provide GIS support for the project. “We will be using these tools and data to assist in the purchase of this land for conservation,” he said. The drive to conserve the forest opposes a management plan of the forest that would call for the construction of new roads.

Punta Arenas is the capital of Chilean Patagonia. He describes it as a beautiful port city at the Straits of Magellan with a population of about 125,000. He sees in the architecture a blend of European and Chilean influences. Although the region of Magellanes has an area larger that that of New York and New England combined, it has a population of only 150,000, most of whom live in Punta Arenas. The closest city, he said, is three hours by boat. “The area is mostly unpopulated and is a mixture of breathtaking isolated fjords, mountains, barren pampas, deep beech forests, huge sheep and cattle ranches,” he said. Although in new surroundings, Mr. Willett has found that his routine is similar to what it was in the United States. He works during the day at the planning department, then leaves work to go to the gym, backpack or take trips. However, he still has trouble adjusting to some things. For example, Punta Arenas shuts down in the middle of the day to allow people to go home for a siesta to eat lunch and take a nap. From 12:30 to 3:30 most offices, stores, banks and even many restaurants shut down. The result of the siesta is that people also stay up later at night, even until 5 or 6 in the morning.

City of dogs
Mr. Willett has also been involved with the local humane society since arriving in Chile. He describes Punta Arenas as a place where tens of thousands of dogs used to roam freely through the streets. “Chile, like many Third World countries, does not have much in the way of dog control,” he said. Mr. Willett works for La Protectora or the Coporacion De Defensa De Los Derechos De Los Animals — the Corporation in Defense of the Rights of Animals.

La Protectora began in 1990, when countless strays roamed the streets and the government was using strychnine-injected meat to deal with the problem, he said. “With public support, La Protectora was able to stop this horrible practice while still dealing with the high stray population,” he said. La Protectora has enlisted the help of several local veterinarians to euthanize sick or injured animals. La Protectora also attempts to adocate humane treatment of domestic animals while stressing the importance of spaying and neutering. “My heart is working with La Protectora,” he said.

Working with dogs has also influenced Mr. Willett’s personality. Both his Web site and his e-mail include the same quote from an anonymous source: “Be the kind of person your dog thinks you are.” “Having a dog means that there is always somebody who thinks you are a great person,” he said. “Be that person.” However, working to help others in a country so far from his family, where he is the only foreigner working for the city and where few speak English may have caused Mr. Willett to think about going somewhere else. “I have taken the choice to move around quite a bit to get a taste of other cultures and experiences, living in different places, though sometimes it would be nice to settle down. At this point I am getting tired of Punta Arenas and looking for my next stop, which may be back to the States.”