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Access PanAm / Acceso PanAm is a non-profit environmental advocacy organization of rock and mountain climbers. Its goal is to keep climbing areas open and to protect climbing environments in all the Americas. Access PanAm was formed in August 2009, when climbing activists from Latin America, Canada, and United States met and decided to form an organization to represent climbers in all the Western Hemisphere.

Access PanAm consist of a two-person staff, based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and in Wilson, Wyoming, U.S.A.; a network of volunteer directors in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and the United States; and outdoor industry partners, such as Black Diamond, Marmot, Patagonia, Petzl, and The North Face. Access PanAm is not yet an I.R.S. approved non-profit entity, and until it is, The Access Fund of the United States, a 501(c)3 organization, is its fiscal agent.

Mission

Access PanAm’s mission is to foster and support local climber access and conservation initiatives in the Western Hemisphere, based on the principle that preserving or creating access to climbing areas must be done by locally organized climbers, who are familiar with the area and the issues. Its goal is to become the the first-stop for climbers in Latin America when confronted with closed or endangered climbing areas.

In Latin America “access” threats are “conservation”. The climbing areas are usually roadless, remote, wild places, and the threats are exploitative and catastrophic, such as mines, dams, and hydro-power. The success of the 20-year old Access Fund in the U.S. has established the brand “access” as the name for a climbers conservation organization. Access PanAm, as well as each of the new organizations in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, calls itself an access organization to denote a commitment to conservation of the climbing environment.

Activities

Access PanAm’s first campaign was to save one of the hemisphere's biggest potential climbing areas, and its most endangered, Valle Cochamó, in Chile's Patagonia, an alpine wilderness with some of the longest rock routes on earth. Working with a local organization, Conservación Cochamó, and the newly formed climber’s access group in Chile, Acceso Sur, utility companies efforts to dam the Valley for its water and hydro-power wer stopped in 2011, at least for now.

Also in 2011, Access PanAm transformed its first generation website to its Grassroots Toolbox, a bilingual, self-help guide focused on critical first questions for local climber-activists facing environmental threats and start them on the process toward grassroots organization and stewardship of their threatened climbing environment. The Toolbox covers the formation of a local organization, political strategies and analyzing appropriate strategies, structuring programs for stewardship and responsible climbing, and guides to protecting private and public lands.

In 2012, Access PanAm organized training workshops on building a local climbing organization and land stewardship campaigns. The training session, entitled Capacitacion, brought 39 climbing activists together in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The participants were from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, and Peru. The 4-days of training included hands-on, skills-based workshops on campaign strategy, climbing management plans, fundraising, working with the outdoor industry, lobbying, and online tools.

At the time Access PanAm was formed in August, 2009, there were climber access/conservation organization in several provinces of Canada and several states in Brazil, and the nationwide Access Fund in the United States. Since then, climber access/conservation organizations have been created in Argentina (ACCESO Argentina) and Chile (Acceso Sur).