Grantee Carlos Lazo from La Molina University

Grantee Sandra Velazco from San Marcos University

ACA’s four year-old grant program for students and researchers working at Los Amigos recently gave its 100th grant. ACA has now given a total of 108 grants at Los Amigos: 36 to Peruvian undergraduates, 36 to graduate students, and the same number again to established researchers. Fully 60% of ACA grant winners to date have been Peruvian, helping drive a nationwide boom in biodiversity training and research.

Last month ACA awarded the first 15 grants in a similar program for Wayqecha Cloud Forest Research Station. To see a list of the winning projects at Wayqecha, click here. The impact of these programs is easy to measure.

This year alone, they will help more than two dozen students from around the world defend undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. theses based on research done in the Amazon headwaters. Alumni from Los Amigos are now publishing theses and peer-reviewed papers at the rate of more than two per month, on everything from bird morphology to primate behavior to epiphyte distributions

Ensuring that the next generation of tropical scientists has first-hand experience working in the Amazon doesn’t come cheaply.  Over the last three years we’ve invested more than half a million dollars in direct grants to students and researchers.

Five extraordinary new books on Amazonia’s sprawling river system were recently published with the support of ACA. Authored by an international team of aquatic conservation ecologists, the books distill research results from across the Amazon basin into volumes packed with photos and written for a broad audience.  To further increase the books’ usefulness, they have been published in English, Spanish and Portuguese versions:

An Unexpected Ecosystem: The Amazon as Revealed by Fisheries
Rolando Barthem & Michael Goulding (English, Spanish and Portuguese)

Palms: Sentinels for Amazon Conservation
Michael Goulding & Nigel Smith (English, Spanish and Portuguese)

Amazon River Fruits: Flavors of Biodiversity
Nigel Smith, Rodolfo Vásquez & Walter Wust (English and Spanish)

Rio Branco: Fishes, Ecology and Conservation in Roraima
Efrem Ferreira, Jansen Zuanon, Bruce Forsberg, Michael Goulding & Sylvio Romerio Briglia-Ferreira (Portuguese)

Larvae of the Large Migratory Catfish
Rosseval Galdino Leite, Carlos Cañas, Bruce Forsberg, Ronaldo Barthem & Michael Goulding (Portuguese and Spanish)

The books were written by the Amazon Rivers Program team, which brings together scientists and students from the University of Florida, Brazil’s Museu Goeldi and National Institute for Amazonian Research, and Peru’s Museo de Historia Natural and Wust Ediciones. The team aims to gather and synthesize ecological data to provide the information needed to promote wetlands conservation in the Amazon Basin. Apart from inspiring a new generation of researchers and conservationists in these little-studied ecosystems, these books will have an important impact on headwaters protection and wetlands management in the world’s largest river system.

The research was funded by the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the books will soon be available through the ACA website.

Red line indicates core program areas; yellow line indicates areas of influence

Last October a consortium of leading conservation organizations comprised of ACA, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law, Fundación Puma, and the Fondo de las Americas, was awarded nearly eight million dollars by USAID as part of the Amazon Basin Conservation Initiative.

The funds will support an ambitious binational initiative across the Río Madre de Dios watershed, home to two national parks of global importance: Manu in Peru and Madidi in Bolivia.  The five-year initiative is designed to help mitigate imminent threats related to large-scale infrastructure projects like highway construction and oil and gas exploration, by strengthening local organizations that promote protected areas and the sustainable use of natural resources.  ACA’s long-term support of Brazil nut collectors along SE Peru’s soon-to-be-paved Interoceanic Highway is one of many projects that will receive a helping hand from ABCI.

The project will be getting up to speed in 2007, so stay tuned for more news in the next newsletter!

ACA’s Peruvian counterpart, ACCA, recently joined the Red de Conservacion Privada, a private conservation network with representatives from various civil groups, native communities, and private companies that work together for the conservation of Peruvian forests.

The network’s mission is to promote initiatives for private conservation. Its members have protected lands in Huiquilla, Chaparri, and Canioncillo. Other member organizations include the Association for Children and their Environment (ANIA), the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law (SPDA); and ecotourism companies like Rainforest Expeditions and Inkaterra.

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From June 26th trough 30th, members of the weavers association of the community of Quico participated in the VI Feria Internacional Huancaro 2006, celebrated in the Peruvian district of Santiago, Cusco. Quico is one of the eight traditional Quechua communities in the Q’eros Nation, and ACA has been supporting this community in efforts to generate income through the sales of weavings made with traditional patterns and natural dyes.

The Huancaro Fair provides an opportunity for these weavers to discuss techniques with others from around the region and most importantly, it brings new trade opportunities for isolated communities that could be otherwise forgotten.

Santusa Mamani, president of the association’s textile committee, husband Nicolas Flores and other fellow weavers organized a stand to promote their work and represent their community.

At the fair, members of the weavers association (Asociación de Tejedores de la Nación Q’ero) were able to network with national textile organizations and learn from their experiences. Now, they are directly informed about pricing tendencies, techniques, and marketing strategies to satisfy a broader public’s demands.

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During daylight, butterflies reign over the rainforest, but at night other winged marvels appear to claim the throne: Moths. ACA’s Wayqechas and Los Amigos Research Stations are the two most important sampling stations for the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT), which is currently conducting studies of selected moth families in the Andes-Amazon region of southeastern Peru.

BRIT has engaged in long-term investigation of the diversity, ecology, and distribution of the Sphingidae (hawkmoths), Arctiidae (tiger moths), and the Saturniidae (emperor moths); species that easily found among the tropical vegetation of the ACA field sites. In 12 months of sampling at one light trap site at the Los Amigos Biological Station, Pedro Centeno, BRIT Moth Project 2005, sampled nearly 100 hawkmoth species, more than 500 tiger moth species, and dozens of species of emperor moths, such as the Automeris liberia depicted in this image.

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As some of you may remember, Vanessa Sequeira, a dear friend of us and colleague passed away in Brazil last year while doing her thesis research.

Vanessa joined the ACA family in 1999 dedicating herself to work with Brazil nut producers and setting thus the foundations of our now fully established and successful Brazil nut Project (PCC). As a way of remembering Vanessa, our partner organization in Peru, ACCA, built a boat and named it after her. The “Vanessa Sequeira” is now sailing along the Madre de Dios River in the Amazon basin.

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ACA is working with the Field Museum to produce two new field guides in 2007: hummingbirds and terrestrial mammals. Both field guides will depict species surveyed in the Madre de Dios Watershed, including species specifically for our Los Amigos Biological Station and our Wayqecha Cloud Forest Research Station.

There are many field guides produced at Los Amigos that are already available at the Field Museum website (www. fieldmuseum.org). These include:

• Mamíferos (Mammals) del S.E. Perú by author Renata Leite Pitman.
• Reptiles del Centro Río Los Amigos, Manu y Tambopata by authors: von May, Emmons, Knell, Jacobs & Rodríguez.
• Arboles y Arbustos del Centro Río Amigos by authors Foster, Betz & Beltrán.
• Herbs of Centro Río Amigos by aurthors Foster, Betz & Beltrán.
• Palmas of Centro Río Amigos by authors Foster, Betz & Beltrán.
• Trepadores y Epifitas of Centro Río Amigos by authors Foster, Betz & Beltrán.

Make sure you read our Cicra Letter to learn about other research projects being conducted at our Los Amigos Research Station.

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The Association of Sacha Inchi Growers in Manu (APASIMANU) has signed an agreement with AgroIndustrias Amazonicas, Peru’s main distributor of Sacha Inchi oil, to become one of its suppliers.

After several months of continuous conversations between APASI-MANU and AgroIndustrias Amazonicas, ACA’s partner organization in Peru could finally facilitate an agreement that will benefit the Sacha Inchi growers of the Kosñipata valley.

“We have achieved a unification of interests: the private sector, the community and the ACCA NGO, and this group can have only one result which is the confidence in the future.” Said Mr. José Anaya, Director of AgroIndustrias Amazónicas.

This agreement is a milestone achievement of our Micro-enterprise initiatives’ project, currently funded by the Blue Moon Fund. Sacha Inchi, also known as Inca Inchi, is an Amazonian seed high in Omega 6 (36.8 %) and Omega 3 (48.6 %). Being of vegetable origin, the Sacha Inchi oil has 0 cholesterol.

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At the end of last year we had a spectacled bear sighting at our Wayqecha Research Station. Two of our staff workers where doing maintenance work in a trail near the station when a strong, big, messy-coated bear slowly approached them. Our staff stood still, nervous, but still. The bear in turn, was quietly chewing a chunk of Bromelia sp. 5 meters was all that separated our staff from that powerful, robust but yet adorable beast.

The spectacled bear or Tremarctos ornatus is an endangered species that can only be found in a few countries of South America. Although this type of bear is adaptable and can be found in many types of habitats, like rainforests, cloud forests, and even in desert lands, the rapid loss of habitat has been the main threat that pushed this bear species population close to extinction.

Over the past decade or so, conservation programs have made a tremendous effort to protect this animal’s habitat and have contributed to a rebound in its population size. However, numbers are still very low and the spectacled bear continues to be listed under the IUCN Red List.

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