Every year, independent evaluators comb through nonprofit financial records, governance practices, and program data to help donors answer one of the most important questions in philanthropy: is this organization worth my trust?

We’re glad to share that in 2026, their answer about Amazon Conservation was yes, across the board.

Candid has renewed our Platinum Seal of Transparency, Charity Navigator has awarded us 4 stars for another consecutive year, and we’ve received accreditation from the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance for the first time. We’re proud of these results, and grateful to the team whose consistent, careful work makes them possible. If you’re not already familiar with how charity watchdogs work, or why their ratings matter to you as a donor, read on. Understanding what these organizations look for, and what it means when a nonprofit earns their top marks, can help you give with greater confidence, not just to us, but to any organization you choose to support.

Plus, if we’ve already earned your trust, scroll to the end: one of the watchdog platforms we work with invites reviews from donors and supporters, and a few words from you can go a long way toward helping others find us.

The Problem These Ratings Solve

Choosing a nonprofit to support isn’t always easy. There are hundreds of thousands of registered charities in the United States alone, and most of them will tell you, in good faith, that their work matters. The ones that are less effective, or less honest, will say the same thing.

Charity watchdogs exist to help donors cut through that noise. They do the investigative legwork that most donors don’t have time to do: scrutinizing tax filings, auditing governance structures, reviewing program data, and interviewing the communities an organization serves. Their ratings aren’t based on compelling storytelling or a beautiful website. They’re based on evidence.

When Amazon Conservation earns top marks from the most rigorous watchdogs in the field, it means independent evaluators, with no stake in our success, have looked hard at how we operate and concluded that we meet the highest standards of transparency, accountability, and effectiveness.

That’s what these ratings mean. That’s why they matter.

What the Watchdogs Found

Candid Platinum Seal of Transparency

Candid (formerly GuideStar) evaluates nonprofits on a single, essential question: how openly does an organization share information about itself? Financials, governance, leadership, strategy, impact metrics — Candid wants it all on the table.

The Platinum Seal is the highest level Candid awards, and it signals that an organization has met the most rigorous public reporting standards in the field. Only a small fraction of U.S. nonprofits hold Platinum status in any given year.

Amazon Conservation has earned and maintained the Platinum Seal for multiple consecutive years. You can explore our full Candid profile, including finances and leadership, here.

BBB Wise Giving Alliance Accreditation

The Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance is perhaps the most thorough evaluator on this list. To earn accreditation, a charity must demonstrate compliance with 20 standards of charity accountability, covering everything from board governance and conflict-of-interest policies to fundraising practices, financial oversight, and donor privacy.

We are honored to receive this accreditation for the first time in 2026. It reflects not just the integrity of our programs, but the care and rigor our team brings to every aspect of how this organization is run.

You can review our BBB Wise Giving Alliance report here.

Charity Navigator: 4 Stars Rating

Charity Navigator takes the broadest view of any major watchdog, evaluating nonprofits across financial health, program effectiveness, cost efficiency, long-term stability, and accountability practices. Its four-star rating, the highest it awards, signals that an organization exceeds best practices across nearly every dimension it measures.

Amazon Conservation has held a four-star rating from Charity Navigator for over 13 consecutive years. That’s not an accident or a lucky streak. It’s the product of consistent, disciplined organizational management across more than a decade.

You can review our full Charity Navigator profile here.

 

What It Means for Your Giving

These ratings don’t tell you whether the Amazon matters. You already know it does. What they tell you is that when you give to Amazon Conservation, your contribution is managed with care and deployed with accountability. That your gift reaches the forests, the scientists, the community rangers, and the policy advocates who are doing the actual work of protecting them. And that we will continue to report back to you, honestly, on what that work has achieved.

In a moment when the Amazon faces some of the most serious pressures in its history, from deforestation, mining, and climate change, the organizations working to protect it need to be as effective as possible. These ratings are independent confirmation that Amazon Conservation is.

One More Way to Help: Leave a Review on GreatNonprofits

There is one watchdog we haven’t mentioned yet, and it works a little differently. GreatNonprofits doesn’t evaluate financial records or governance structures. It asks the people who know us best, donors, partners, volunteers, and community members, to share their firsthand experience.

If you support Amazon Conservation and our mission, we’d love to hear from you. Your review helps others discover why this work is worth their support and contributes to our rating on the platform. Create a free account at GreatNonprofits and share more about why you support our work!

These recognitions belong to everyone who makes this work possible: our team on the ground, our partners across the Amazon, and the donors and supporters who trust us with their resources and their faith in what conservation can accomplish. Thank you, for that trust, and for helping us earn it again.

Amazon Conservation launches a first-of-its-kind tool comparing mining governance across all eight Amazonian countries

As record-high gold prices continue to fuel the expansion of artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASM) across the Amazon, governments face mounting pressure to address one of the region’s most persistent drivers of deforestation, ecosystem degradation, and social conflict. To help strengthen these efforts, Amazon Conservation has launched the Amazon Mining Policy Scoreboard, a new tool that evaluates and compares the legal and policy frameworks governing gold mining across all eight Amazonian countries.

The Scoreboard is the newest feature within Amazon Mining Watch, Amazon Conservation’s online platform that provides comprehensive information on gold mining activity across the Amazon. Developed with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in partnership with Earth Genome and the Pulitzer Center, the platform combines satellite-based monitoring of mining activity with policy and governance information, creating a more complete picture of the challenges and opportunities facing the region.

The Amazon Mining Policy Scoreboard helps fill that gap by providing a transparent, comparative view of mining governance across the region. Together with the mining footprint data available through Amazon Mining Watch, the tool offers decision-makers a powerful resource for identifying weaknesses, sharing best practices, and strengthening the policies needed to protect forests, rivers, Indigenous territories, and communities across the Amazon. Read more about our current findings below or in the platform.

Explore the Amazon Mining Policy Scoreboard

Want to know more? Read the Policy Scoreboard Explainer Report. 

Explainer Report English Explainer Report Spanish Explainer Report Portuguese

Satellite monitoring and drone analysis reveal the expansion of mining into national parks, biological reserves, and protected forests that are critical for the biodiversity and ecological connectivity of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

The expansion of gold mining in the southern Ecuadorian Amazon continues to push into strategic ecosystems and protected areas of high ecological importance. This is highlighted in the report by Fundación EcoCiencia, “MAAP #243: Mining in the Southern Ecuadorian Amazon – Zamora Chinchipe Province,” which documents the growth of mining activity within and around key conservation zones in Zamora Chinchipe.

Zamora Chinchipe, located at the southern edge of the Ecuadorian Amazon, is one of the country’s most ecologically significant regions due to its position at the transition between the Andes and the Amazon lowlands. This unique geography supports high biological diversity and includes strategic ecosystems such as cloud forests, páramos, and rare formations like the sub-Andean tepuis.

The analysis identifies approximately 111 hectares affected by mining within protected areas and conservation zones across four case studies monitored between 2011 and 2025. The impacted areas include Podocarpus National Park, the Cerro Plateado Biological Reserve, the Maycú Nature Reserve, and the Cuenca Alta del Río Nangaritza Protective Forest, territories that are essential for ecological connectivity and for conserving emblematic species such as the jaguar, tapir, and spectacled bear.

One of the most concerning findings comes from the monitoring conducted in Podocarpus National Park, where 44 hectares affected by mining were identified between August 2023 and December 2025. The study shows that mining activity is taking place inside a protected area where mineral extraction is prohibited by law. In addition to forest loss, satellite monitoring revealed impacts on the Loyola River, part of the park’s hydrological network and a key element for the conservation of cloud forests and Andean páramos.

The report also documents impacts within the Cerro Plateado Biological Reserve, a core zone of high ecological importance in the southern Amazon. Between August 2024 and December 2025, 13 hectares affected by mining were recorded, including areas inside the reserve itself. The analysis further found that 92% of the intervened areas lie outside authorized concessions, indicating possible irregular mining activities in environmentally sensitive territories.

Additional impacts were identified in the Maycú Nature Reserve, where 21.22 hectares were affected by mining, and in the Cuenca Alta del Río Nangaritza Protective Forest, with 44.27 hectares impacted. The study warns that the expansion of mining continues to increase pressure on strategic ecosystems in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Using high-resolution satellite imagery and drone monitoring, the report identified the clearing of vegetation, soil erosion, sediment pools, and abandoned camps associated with mining activity. These findings reveal an extractive pattern marked by the repeated opening and abandonment of mining fronts, generating cumulative impacts and increasing challenges for environmental oversight.

The report also notes that Zamora Chinchipe has gone from registering around 5 hectares affected by mining in 1995 to more than 6,800 hectares in 2024, solidifying its position as one of the main hotspots of mining expansion in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

In this context, the report recommends strengthening the mandatory use of satellite-monitoring technologies and early-warning systems to detect new mining activities in protected areas and remote zones. It also underscores the need to incorporate technological evidence – such as satellite imagery, drones, and georeferencing systems – into administrative and judicial processes related to environmental crimes and illegal mining.

The study emphasizes that effectively protecting Amazonian protected areas requires reinforcing territorial control, surveillance, and institutional coordination to prevent the expansion of extractive activities in ecosystems that are critical for Ecuador’s biodiversity and ecological connectivity.

The report further warns that the rapid expansion of irregular mining activities in remote and environmentally sensitive areas poses an escalating challenge for territorial governance and the State’s capacity to exercise control. This trend highlights the need to strengthen monitoring systems, early-warning mechanisms, and more robust administrative and judicial processes to address environmental crimes and illegal mining.

Access the full report: https://www.maapprogram.org/ecuador-gold-mining-zamora/

 

This month, our Monitoring of the Andes Amazon Program (MAAP) released two major reports on illegal gold mining in two of the Amazon’s most critical territories: the Yanomami Indigenous Territory in Brazil and the Tambopata National Reserve in Peru. The findings are both encouraging and deeply alarming.

Brazil: Progress in Yanomami, but miners are adapting

The new report released by Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) in partnership with our MAAP initiative, documents a sharp decline in mining-driven deforestation inside the Yanomami Indigenous Territory following the Brazilian government’s large-scale intervention in 2023. Newly cleared mining areas dropped from roughly 1,800 hectares in 2022 to just 45 hectares in 2025. This means a reduction of over 90%. But the threat has not gone away, it has shifted. Satellite mapping shows that illegal miners have adopted a more decentralized tactic and are moving toward areas closer to the Venezuelan border to evade enforcement. The Yanomami Indigenous Territory Alert System recorded 66 territorial alerts in 2025 alone, the majority involving clandestine aircraft, river incursions, and the movement of supplies into mining zones.

 

Peru: A dangerous resurgence in Tambopata

The analysis conducted by Conservación Amazónica–ACCA, in partnership with our MAAP initiative, documented more than 500 hectares of forest lost, and identified 183 active mining structures, 67 illegal camps, and an estimated 1,000 people currently operating within the protected area. What makes this resurgence especially alarming is that mining is now expanding close to government control posts inside the reserve, significantly increasing risks for the park rangers who defend it. In 2025 alone, mining-driven deforestation inside Tambopata exceeded 400 hectares, surpassing even the worst years of incursions recorded between 2016 and 2017. The report points some factors driving this return: record-high international gold prices, weakened environmental regulations, and reduced enforcement capacity, all creating conditions in which criminal networks can reorganize faster than the State can respond.

 

Together, these two reports show a defining challenge for the Amazon: enforcement works, but it must be sustained in order to protect these territories.

Earlier this month, Amazon Conservation joined climate and forest leaders from around the world at the 16th Annual Meeting of the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force (GCF Task Force), held in Caquetá, Colombia from May 18–22, 2026. The GCF Task Force unites 45 subnational governments across 11 countries, representing more than a third of the world’s tropical forests.The meeting brought together subnational governments, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, civil society, and the private sector around the theme “New Forest Economy for Climate Action: Territorial Development and Innovation.”

At the meeting, Amazon Mining Watch was highlighted as a valuable tool in the fight against illegal gold mining across the Amazon basin . Discussions made clear that more tools of this kind are urgently needed. Amazon’s Conservation participation in spaces like this is invaluable for building the alliances and cross-sector collaboration required to make lasting progress. 

Andrés Santana, Amazon Conservation’s Senior Manager for Combating Illegal Deforestation, shared his reflections on the meeting: “Since its creation, the GCF Task Force has been mainly oriented to building a forest-based economy, highlighting the role that regional governments can play. This year’s annual meeting was a milestone because organizers and members are increasingly acknowledging the importance of tackling environmental crimes that are preventing the enabling conditions necessary for a thriving bioeconomy.”

The week also included field visits across Caquetá, where participants explored community-led initiatives in sustainable ranching, agroforestry, and bioeconomy, living proof that forest-compatible economies are not just possible, but already being built. “During the field visit to the “Territorial Space for Training and Reintegration – ETCR Aguabonita” we could witness first hand how a new and prosperous forest economy can help social reconciliation in post conflict zones by harvesting and transforming fruits such as Açaí, Canangucha, Copoazú and other Amazonian products. That is true peace with nature” states Santana. 

At Amazon Conservation, we recognize the importance of these initiatives for long-term forest conservation. Visiting them is an opportunity to learn, connect, and strengthen our work across the region.