After exhaustive negotiating with the Brazilian bureaucracy, touring with Raoni in a worldwide awareness campaign and fund-raiser, and participating in heated, hostile debates in Brazil over the proposed damming of the Xingu River (at which he received death threats), the Sting who had once enjoyed popularity became a despised person in Brazil. His career, he says, plummeted because people thought his efforts to save the rain forest were cloaked in an egocentric effort to promote himself.
"What I'm not happy about," Sting said, "is some people get the impression that that was some sort of self-serving...that I was doing it to further my own fame, my own career. In fact, the opposite is true. My career took a dive because of that. I took a lot of flak for it."
In 1993, an area the size of Switzerland was legally demarcated as a kind of national park. According to The Rainforest Foundation US's web site, it "was the first ever privately funded demarcation to be officially recognized in the history of the country."
Like most organizations, The Rainforest Foundation had a rocky start. But over ten years later, not only is it still in existence, it is thriving, thanks in large part to the annual Carnegie Hall fund-raiser, which routinely adds over $1 million to the Foundation's coffers.
For more information about the rain forests of the world, indigenous peoples, and the other important work of The Rainforest Foundation (and how you can help), visit these web sites:
- Rainforest Foundation International: Also called the Rainforest Foundation US, this site features all the latest news on RFI campaigns, RFI merchandise, and press releases.
- The Rainforest Foundation: Sting and Trudie are pictured on the "Who's Who" page, an excerpt from Jungle Stories can be found here by clicking on "Our Origins," plus access general rain forest information, links to similar, friendly sites, and a list of RFI publications.
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