Celebrating Indigenous Group’s Milestones in the Fight to Defend their Territories
February 3, 2025
For decades, local Indigenous communities have continued to experience threats, incursions, and illegal deforestation in their territories, destroying thousands of acres of pristine forests and vital natural resources they depend on. To support local Indigenous communities in Peru, we have been working with the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios River Region (FENAMAD), a regional Indigenous federation representing 38 communities from the Madre de Dios region, to bring them the technology tools and legal support needed to protect their ancestral lands. This January, FENAMAD celebrated 43 years as a federation, and we are proud to have been partnering with them for over 7 of these years to support their fight against the illegal activities that threaten their homes.

To celebrate their anniversary, FENAMAD hosted a presentation to share more information about their organization and updates on projects and initiatives they have actively been involved in. Amazon Conservation’s Senior Geospatial Analyst and Partner Strategy Lead, Nadia Mamani Chavez, attended this event and shared her input on the progress of our close partnership with FENAMAD. She shares, “We congratulate our colleagues at FENAMAD for their 43rd anniversary and for all the results achieved so far for the dozens of communities they represent. During the event, the achievements of our real-time satellite monitoring and action work were presented, and we couldn’t be more proud of all the deforestation we nipped in the bud together. It was great to hear from the community leaders on the importance of expanding and strengthening technology-based monitoring and legal action for the protection of their ancestral territories, something that is a core part of Amazon Conservation’s efforts.”
Since 2021, Amazon Conservation has provided FENAMAD with real-time satellite monitoring of Indigenous territories in the Peruvian Amazon through our Monitoring of the Andes Amazon Program (MAAP) while also building their technological capacity to use high-tech monitoring tools, such as drones, to patrol their territories. The information and data gathered from these reports and tools are then cited in “denúncias” – a legal complaint sent to authorities to call for government intervention. This partnership, supported by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), marks how Amazon Conservation is directly partnering with Indigenous leaders to transfer technology and build their capacity to strengthen their existing surveillance systems, inform their on-the-ground patrolling, and help take action to stop illegal deforestation and degradation in their homelands.
To date, the federation has successfully filed 200 legal cases – 141 of which they have already won – against activities affecting Indigenous territories in the Madre de Dios region of Peru. Additionally, FENAMAD’s legal efforts to protect their territories not only impact the 38 communities they represent but also several uncontacted Indigenous groups around their established communities who depend on healthy forests for their survival. Now, the federation has expanded its fight against illegal deforestation to the international arena, filing an international case in November 2024 with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to report the violation of territorial rights that threaten the agency, culture, and well-being of Indigenous groups in voluntary isolation and initial contact, referred to as “PIACI” in Spanish.
Moving forward, FENAMAD envisions big goals for 2025 to strengthen its monitoring systems, including establishing 15 new community oversight offices to monitor the territories of 38 Indigenous communities more closely and simultaneously build the technical capabilities of local leaders. Amazon Conservation continues to support the federation, providing the necessary equipment, satellite imagery, technological and legal training, and other resources to help them enact their territorial rights and keep their forest home standing.