Not only do we do direct conservation work on the ground, we also partner with national and local governments, for-profit companies, local communities, indigenous groups, and other conservation nonprofits to ensure that local authorities have all the tools needed to take action to protect nature.
Many times it is difficult for the law to catch up to the crimes being committed against the Amazon and be able to prosecute offenders.
That is why we train judges and prosecutors to understand the latest in the technology that is being used to find, identify, and stop illegal deforestation, enabling them to present and accept the results of these technologies as evidence in trials.
In Bolivia, we have spent years of work as technical partners to the local and national governments.
That work culminated in the creation of set standards for the creation of new conservation areas, that are now applied at the national level to any new proposed areas and have become a standard in the field of conservation.
For years, we have been partnering with local indigenous communities to fight for their rights over their ancestral territories as well as aiding them in the conservation of their land.
For example, we helped establish the Wachiperi Haramba Queros Conservation Concession as the first conservation concession in Peru run by an indigenous community.
In addition, our Southwest Amazon Drone Center is helping train members of local communities to use drones to identify and report illegal deforestation to authorities who can put a stop to it.
One point of hardship the Peruvian government has faced has been to find the exact location of illicit activities in the Amazon, given the forests vast coverage and lack of access roads.
But thanks to our innovative MAAP Project, which identifies, monitors, and alerts local authorities of deforestation activities happening in near real-time from space – by using the latest satellites and radars.
Not only do we support these efforts through our MAAP project, we have also helped Peru establish their first Geographic Information System (GIS) office, adding to the capacity of local authorities to be self-sufficient in monitoring threats to nature.
The indigenous co-management organization of the Amarakeri Communal Reserve
A study conducted at our Los Amigos Biological Station and recently published in Nature revealed that intact forests near gold mining areas provide a critical ecosystem service. They intercept and sequester massive amounts of mercury, keeping it from entering the global atmosphere and preventing it from poisoning nearby ponds and streams, where it is substantially […]
Earlier this month, we worked with our in-country partner EcoCiencia to document the rapid illegal mining expansion threatening the Ecuadorian Amazon. With our satellite-based tools, we were able to identify the mining in real-time, and report it to local authorities, media, and the general public. Days after we launched the report, both the government and […]
With the ability to see through the dense layers of clouds that are a hallmark of the rainforest, track illegal gold mining, and send deforestation alerts throughout the year, RAMI is the most recent ally in the fight against illegal gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon. A newly developed geospatial technology tool, RAMI (Radar Mining […]