Lexington businessman makes good — in Ecuador
Those who have been reading Nicholas Kristof’s recent columns in The New York Times know he has been writing about a former Lexington businessman, Douglas McMeekin, who has been in Ecuador since the early 1980s.
McMeekin, 65, grew up in a house off Tates Creek Road where the McMeekin Place subdivision is today. He had several small businesses that went belly-up in the 1982 recession.
“Pained and disillusioned,” Kristof writes, McMeekin “decided to go far away — to Ecuador, where he eventually found work in the Amazon as a liaison between international oil companies and indigenous tribes. He came to love the people, and his heart went out to them.”
McMeekin launched the Yachana Foundation in 1991 to promote education among native peoples of the Amazon region. He also built the 18-room Yachana lodge to cater to American tourists and help fund Yachana programs.
Later in the 1990s, McMeekin partnered with a native hunter, Juan Kunchikuy, in a campaign to save the rain forest. “Of all the struggles to fight climate change, this is one of the more quixotic — and inspiring,” Kristof writes.
The McMeekin story was in Sunday’s and Thursday’s New York Times. If you missed it, go to www.nytimes.com and check the archives.
