We helped establish two new protected areas to safeguard nearly 50,000 acres from deforestation and unsustainable development in one of the most biodiverse areas in the Peruvian Amazon. Señor de la Cumbre now protects 7,800 acres of forest in Madre de Dios, an area heavily affected by deforestation from illegal gold mining. The second supports indigenous communities in the Cusco region, where we helped establish the Ccollasuyo Agrobiodiversity Zone. This innovative type of protected area focuses on rescuing ancient agricultural practices capable of growing a wide variety of native crops sustainably. One of the first of its kind in the country, this area conserves over 35,000 acres of forest and the unique species that inhabit it.

Señor de la Cumbre

Small but mighty, this conservation area contains highly-biodiverse forests, important water sources, and has a high tourism potential thanks to its abundant wildlife. Due to its particular habitat and climate, Señor de la Cumbre is inhabited by several threatened species as well as species endemic to Peru, such as the saddle-back tamarin. To help protect this vital area and its important species, we provided the local community and government with the continuous legal and technical support needed, throughout the arduous 8-year process, to achieve its declaration.

The establishment of Señor de la Cumbre also helps advance our larger conservation strategy in the Manu-Madidi Conservation Corridor. By creating a mosaic of conservation areas like this one between Manu National Park in Peru and Madidi National Park in Bolivia – the two most biodiverse national parks in the world – we are strengthening habitat connectivity so that wildlife have the needed space to move across uninterrupted swaths of land. Not only that, but bridging large tracts of forest also builds greater climate resilience and adaptation capacity into the region’s forest and aquatic ecosystems.

Ccollasuyo Agrobiodiversity Zone

Another conservation success was the establishment of the Ccollasuyo Agrobiodiversity Zone. This area, located in the Peruvian province of Quispicanchi, is home to a hundred indigenous Quechua families who cultivate more than 100 varieties of native potatoes, 12 types of native corn, and unique root vegetables such as oca, mashua, olluco, quinoa, kiwicha and tarwi. For generations, the families of Ccollasuyo have continued to apply their ancient practices to grow these plants that are important markers of the world’s agricultural genetic diversity.

Complementing the conservation of this region, we also began to help a neighboring Quechua community, Marcapata Ccollana, to establish a conservation area that will protect an additional 50,000 acres. Combined, these agrobiodiversity zones and conservation areas help mitigate the effects of climate change in a unique way by promoting and preserving ancestral forest-friendly and climate-resilient farming practices.

This story was featured in our 2020 Impact Report. Click here to read about other conservation successes from 2020.

 

 

By working closely with local communities and governments, we helped establish four new protected areas in 2020. Two areas in Bolivia and two in Peru together safeguard over 650,000 acres of irreplaceable wild places.

In Bolivia, we supported the establishment of the Puerto Rico and Porvenir conservation areas – protecting 513,000 and 78,000 acres respectively – by providing the legal and technical support needed by local communities and municipal governments to officially declare these areas.

Puerto Rico Conservation Area

Declaration of this vast swath of forest helps connect three important conservation areas in Bolivia – Manuripi-Heath National Reserve, Multiethnic Indigenous Territory (TIM II), and the Santa Rosa del Abuná conservation area, which we helped establish in 2017. With the addition of the new Puerto Rico conservation area, this biodiversity corridor now covers nearly 1.5 million acres. This region includes the territories of 20 native communities, many of them members of the Tacana indigenous people who rely on the forests for their livelihoods. Iconic species that benefit from the creation of this massive biological corridor include the giant armadillo, giant anteater, jaguar, crested eagle, the endangered Goeldi’s monkey, and the South American tapir.

Porvenir Conservation Area

This new protected area will ensure the health of these very productive forests with the development of a long-term plan to help communities sustainably manage their natural resources, primarily Brazil nuts and açaí berries. The area is home to hundreds of families, more than 1,000 species of plants, and more than 800 species of vertebrates. Its proximity to the region’s urban center, Cobija, combined with its beauty and biological diversity, provides great ecotourism potential.

To be able to establish these areas during the global pandemic, we had to adapt our approach – relying more heavily on our GIS and remote sensing technology to produce the ecological information the government required to declare these areas. We also stepped up to help communities get access to and participate in online meetings so that their voices could be heard throughout the process.

All in all, these types of large-scale conservation achievements are crucial for keeping the Amazon from reaching its tipping point. By supporting a sustainable forest-based economy and creating the network of interconnected protected areas needed to maintain climate resilience, healthy habitats for species, and functional ecosystems that provide the goods and services vital for our survival, we can achieve a thriving Amazon.

This story was featured in our 2020 Impact Report. Click here to read about other conservation successes from 2020.

 

On August 4, attendees at our webinar Fires in the Amazon: What You Need to Know in 2021 learned what to expect during this year’s intense fire season and the implications for climate change, indigenous peoples, and protected areas.

Real-time monitoring experts, scientists, and local organizations witnessing the impact of the Amazonian fires shared their insights through a series of short informational presentations over three distinct sections:

• The Findings
• The Tech
• What It All Means

Click here to see the full agenda, or watch the full recording of the webinar (original audio available only, English translations coming soon). Click here to download the presentations.  Interested in supporting fire prevention and response efforts? Click here.

 

The Findings

During the first section, The Findings, attendees learned about the fires in the Amazon, the patterns we’ve identified, and the drivers behind them.

Amazon Conservation’s Director of MAAP Matt Finer started off this section, presenting “What We Know About the First Fires in the Amazon in 2021.” He explained that because most fire detection systems are based on heat and temperature anomalies, it tends to show thousands of red dots indicating fires everywhere. “Our app filters through these hundred and thousands of red dots and fires and really just distinguishes those that are burning lots of biomass.” 

He also warned that, “With the current indications, this season may be intense more than last season, and at the end of 2020 we documented over 2,000 major fires.” One reason behind this is that the fires season this year started one week earlier than last year, along with record high levels of deforestation. Lastly, Matt Finer highlighted the very strong link between deforestation and fires, “Of these fires in the Brazilian Amazon, the vast majority are burning recently deforested areas; the fires are actually burning the remains of freshly cut forests. There’s a very tight link between deforestation and fires.”

Climate Scientist Kátia Fernandes, who works at the University of Arkansas and SERVIR-Amazonía, followed with “Expectations for the Rest of the Fire Season and Climate Change Implications.” She explained various graphs showing the temperature of the Atlantic ocean, the sea surface temperature forecast for the upcoming months, and how this affects weather patterns and the Amazon. She says that “In Brazil we see the season has started…the conditions at the beginning of the fire season are very dry in Mato Grosso.” 

 

 

The Tech 

The next section revealed the technology to use to detect the fires, with demonstrations on how to use them that can be replicated at home by any user interested.

Lucio Villa, GIS and Remote Sensing Specialist at our sister organization Conservación Amazónica – ACCA in Peru, gave an overview of our novel Fire Tracker App. He explained that the app works through satellite information and demonstrated how to use it, switching through each of the layers panels. One aspect of the app that he highlighted was being able to actually see the coordinates of the fires. “By making a small click on the screen we can obtain the coordinates in the lower left part with good precision. Then you can put the coordinates in another source of information to reference it.” This system of checking the coordinates and referencing them with an outside source (for us, it is Planet satellite imagery) is how we are able to track fires in the Amazon daily.

Brian Zutta, from the NASA Applied Science Team then demonstrated how to use the new Amazon Dashboard, which tracks individual fires in the Amazon region using a new approach to cluster and classify active fire detections by type. Based on the fire location, intensity, duration, and spread rate, each individual event is classified as a deforestation fire, understory forest fire, small clearing & agricultural fire, or savanna fire.  Users can use the map to explore specific regions or fires of interest, including fires burning in protected areas or indigenous territories, or download the data in shapefile format for a complete look at 2020 fire activity across the southern Amazon study region. He noted that, “The objective is to be able to look at policy and prevention, and understand what’s occurring in real time.”

 

 

What It All Means

The last section synthesized what we learned from the findings and the technology behind them into what it all means.

Dolors Armenteras, from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia presented “Fighting Fires in the Amazon: What Can Be Done”. “With the technology available to us, we have a greater ability to show exactly what’s happening and to predict it,” she explained. She also noted that it is important to discuss the drivers of deforestation and fires, referencing in particular the increased demand of agricultural products. Additionally, the importance of maintaining open communication with local communities and stakeholders was not understated. “We have to come to a solution recognize the rights of indigenous communities and also train communities and people in sustainable activities…We need sustainable infrastructure.”

Marcos Terán, Executive Director at our sister organization Conservación Amazónica – ACEAA, concluded with his presentation “Applying Technology to Fight Forest Fires: How Real-Time Monitoring in Bolivia Can Be Used to Help Make Decisions on Firefighting Efforts.”  He noted that in the Bolivian region of Pando, there are a number of fires . “What do we do within this context?” he asks. “We need to integrate several tools to be able to have more strategies in the region.”  He explained that the majority of tools to monitor the fires are using the “hotspots” as an alert system. There are different systems to show the fires, and some have made a lot of progress to isolate the temperature variations to identify the major fires with the hotspots. “As Lucio said, this helps us identify major fires within the region. But we also have the problem that not all hotspots turn into fires and not all fires can be detected with this kind of tool…but we can use the tools and images we have.” When referencing the fire with the use of land they then can identify if it is legal or not, and refer this information to local authorities that can take action. Marcos also took time to thank those for their efforts in detecting and stopping the Amazon fires, saying “I’d also like to thank all those who are involved in fighting fires. Those who work in an office with satellites giving information, but also those who are involved in the fight on the ground. 

 

 

In conclusion the webinar was an overall success, with attendees from all around the world learning about the implications of this year’s intense fire season, the technology behind the detection of the fires, what it all means, and how we can help. 

Interested in supporting fire prevention and response efforts? Click here.

Click here to view the full recording of the webinar (no translations, original audio available only), and here to download the presentations.

 

 

 

Attend our free, one-hour webinar to learn about what to expect for this year’s fire season in the Amazon and its implications for climate change, indigenous peoples, and protected areas, straight from real-time monitoring experts, scientists, and local organizations witnessing the impact of these growing fires. Simultaneous translation will be available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Click here to see the full agenda (in English).

The Ccollasuyo Agrobiodiversity Zone supports indigenous communities in the Cusco region, and focuses on rescuing ancient agricultural practices capable of growing a wide variety of native crops sustainably. One of the first of its kind in the country, this area conserves over 35,000 acres of forest and the unique species that inhabit it.

Located in the Peruvian province of Quispicanchi, this area is home to a hundred indigenous Quechua families who cultivate more than 100 varieties of native potatoes, 12 types of native corn, and unique root vegetables such as oca, mashua, olluco, quinoa, kiwicha and tarwi. For generations, the families of Ccollasuyo have continued to apply their ancient practices to grow these plants that are important markers of the world’s agricultural genetic diversity.

Complementing the conservation of this region, we also helped a neighboring Quechua community, Marcapata Ccollana, establish a conservation area protecting an additional 50,000 acres. Combined, these agrobiodiversity zones and conservation areas help mitigate the effects of climate change in a unique way by promoting and preserving ancestral forest-friendly and climate-resilient farming practices.

 

Washington, DC, July 27, 2021. A new analysis by Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) shows that protected areas and indigenous territories offer the best defense against deforestation for the Amazon Rainforest.

Through Amazon Conservation’s latest Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) analysis, the organization studied how land use designations in the four countries of the western Amazon – Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru – impacted primary forest loss in 2020. 

The primary finding solidifies the importance of protected areas and indigenous territories as key mechanisms to fight deforestation.

“The results speak for themselves,” says lead author Dr. Matt Finer, Director of Amazon Conservation’s MAAP. “They strongly show that protected areas had the lowest recent deforestation across the western Amazon, closely followed by indigenous territories. Protected areas in Ecuador and Peru and indigenous territories in Colombia were especially effective.” 

The results showed that, across an area of 229 million hectares (568 million acres), lands designated as protected areas, covering 43 million hectares, had the lowest rates of primary forest loss, followed closely by those designated as indigenous territories, covering 58 million hectares. 2020, a year marked by the COVID-19 global pandemic, presented a peak in forest loss in the Amazon as well as a flip in this overall pattern, with indigenous territories having less primary forest loss than protected areas. This increased forest loss in protected areas last year was primarily due to intense forest fires in Bolivia.

Areas with other land use designations had deforestation rates that were two times higher than in protected areas and indigenous territories.

“This data helps reinforce that protected areas and indigenous territories are doing their intended job in safeguarding these irreplaceable forests and the region’s ecological function and services,” says John Beavers, Executive Director at Amazon Conservation. “However, in addition to creating protected areas and helping indigenous peoples reinforce their territorial rights, greater investment is needed to protect them from increased deforestation threats and to build these areas’ resilience in the face of climate change. Strengthening ongoing management and their ability to adapt will provide the continued conservation needed to help the Amazon survive.”

To see the full study, visit MAAProject.org.

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About the Amazon Conservation Association 

Amazon Conservation is a pioneering Alliance of local conservation organizations — Conservación Amazónica-ACEAA in Bolivia, Conservación Amazónica-ACCA in Peru, and Amazon Conservation in the United States  — working towards a thriving Amazon. The organization’s holistic approach focuses on protecting wild places, empowering people, and putting science and technology to work for conservation. Visit amazonconservation.org for more information.

 

 

This year marks the 20th anniversary of our Los Amigos Conservation Concession. When Los Amigos was established in 2001, it was the first private conservation concession in the world. Located in the Los Amigos watershed in the department of Madre de Dios in southwestern Peru, the 360,000-acre concession borders the world-famous Manu National Park, and is a mosaic of terrestrial and aquatic habitats, including old-growth Amazonian forest, palm swamps, and bamboo thickets. Wildlife is abundant, including 12 globally threatened species, 11 primate species, and over 550 bird species.

Since its establishment, scientists and researchers have conducted studies at the station addressing botany, conservation biology, geology, hydrology, and zoology, among others. Additionally, many field courses have been held at the station with students from Peru and around the world.

See what they have to say about Los Amigos:

 

Our Los Amigos Biological Station, located in the Peruvian Amazon, has inaugurated a new conservation technology lab that will conduct advanced wildlife tracking, conservation genomics, safe pathogen screening, and toxicology monitoring of key species in the Amazon. This targeted biodiversity monitoring will enable us to gather key information on zoonotic diseases and transmission risks, helping support government health agencies and protecting local people – and, in our globalized world, people everywhere – from diseases that cross the human-wildlife interface. 

By safely taking DNA samples of wildlife and domestic animals in the region – without harming or killing any animals and following strict security protocols – scientists at the Wildlife Conservation Laboratory will monitor the health and disease status of a range of species, including frogs, snakes, and monkeys. To achieve this, some of the scientific activities carried out at the Laboratory will include sample biobanking, expanding barcode of life reference libraries for the Amazon rainforest, field testing pathogens and environmental contaminants, and developing sequencing solutions for population monitoring of key species. 

The Laboratory will also create a conservation technology “makerspace,” that is, a space for inventing new technologies, innovating current ones to be used for conservation, and piloting novel models. For instance, the first custom device researchers will work on will be a wildlife GPS tracking device much more lightweight, low-cost, and long-lasting than the ones currently in existence. The device will take advantage of a new long-range forest mesh network and have wildlife microchip reading stations, enabling scientists to track down wildlife movement in a similar way that toll roads track cars through the EZ-Pass system. 

With the addition of this Laboratory, we are creating a community-based model for monitoring biodiversity and wildlife health that can be replicated on a global scale, by using the novel approach of the In Situ Lab (ISL) initiative. “What is great about In-Situ Labs like this is that it’s not a top-down effort,” highlights Dr. Mrinalini Erkenswick Watsa, lead scientist in the project, “The lab will engage with and be adopted by local partners thanks to the affordability and ease-of-use of the technology and methodology being developed in the field.”

Another innovative aspect of the Laboratory is that all methods on how to acquire data and conduct analysis data created at the lab will be openly shared on protocols.io and Github for other scientists to use. The data produced at the lab will also be freely shared in other public online repositories, such as the public data servers BOLD and NCBI, all coordinated through the In Situ Labs project website. 

This initiative, launched in October 2020, is a collaboration between several academic and nonprofit organizations, including Amazon Conservation, Conservación Amazónica – ACCA, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, Field Projects International, Washington University in Saint Louis, and the LOEWE-Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics at the Senckenberg Museum. This project is made possible thanks to the generous financial support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and to Amazon Conservation Association. 

With the finalization of the Laboratory’s construction, these partner organizations will now launch pilot projects to develop protocols and methodologies. The initiative aims to create a model for a decentralized, community-based One Health laboratory network within two years. 

For more information about the Wildlife Conservation Laboratory or if you’re interested in visiting our Los Amigos Biological Station, please contact info@amazonconservation.org

 

 

The Madre de Dios region of Peru has long been home to a variety of cultural and ethnic groups for nearly three thousand years. The Indigenous Federation of Madre de Dios (FENAMAD in Spanish) is a regional organization that represents 37 indigenous communities belonging to seven linguistic groups. With the support of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), we will bolster FENAMAD’s territorial monitoring efforts within five key indigenous communities, and strengthen our efforts connecting real-time deforestation monitoring and reporting with policy action. With our partner EcoCiencia, we will expand our program to Ecuador and aid monitoring efforts of the Waorani indigenous community, who have experienced an influx of illegal loggers and gold miners following road construction in pursuit of oil within their territory. 

Through our partnership with these indigenous communities, we will provide real-time satellite monitoring of their territories while building their capacity to use this high-tech monitoring in the future. This project marks the first time we are able to share our satellite information with indigenous communities directly, in order to strengthen their existing surveillance systems, inform their on-the-ground patrolling, and help take action to stop illegal deforestation and degradation in their ancestral homelands. 

Not only will this project establish systematic monitoring focused on protected areas and indigenous territories, it will also deliver high-quality, actionable, real-time analysis to governments, centering our approach on providing both national and local support against deforestation. Nationally, we will help governments better utilize and act on real-time monitoring information, and locally, we will strengthen the abilities of key indigenous organizations in Peru – like FENAMAD – to detect and respond to threats in their territories by utilizing technology and engaging with the government.

Norad has been a long-standing partner of Amazon Conservation, supporting four of our forest monitoring projects over the past ten years. This new project will build upon the results we have accomplished with Norad so far in Peru and begin to extend our model to combat environmental crimes using technology and forest governance in Ecuador through local partnerships.