Among birders, a Big Day is a day in which birders or teams of birders strive to identify and record as many bird species in a defined area as they can in a single day. 

This year, Amazon Conservation is proud to sponsor the first-ever Women’s Big Day in Peru at our Manu Conservation Hub in the Peruvian Amazon!

 

The first Women’s Big Day aims to highlight women birders and elevate the inclusion of women leaders in birding, naturalism, and conservation as well as raise awareness of the importance of protecting biodiversity.

Every year, birders from all over the world flock to Peru because of its rich avifauna. In and around Manu National Park, where our Manu Conservation Hub is located, one can encounter nearly 10% of all bird species found on Earth. Birding has long generated important economic value for Peru and incentivizes the protection of habitat and biodiversity. However, there are very few women bird guides in Peru, and this event hopes to change that.

The 2-day event begins with a workshop that explains the basics of birding, allows attendees to share their experiences, and demonstrates that learning from the environment is an important, worthy life goal. Open to birders of all skill and experience levels, the workshop empowers local women with the tools to learn about birding in a fun and supportive environment. Day 2, the Big Day, is spent in the field identifying and recording birds spotted. 

Doris Valencia Puclla, one of the very few women bird guides in Perú, observes:

“My experience in this field has been very satisfactory over the years. However, the beginnings were not easy as I felt that I don’t have the same opportunities. Many times, my ability has been questioned because I am a woman. It took a lot of time and effort to position myself as a professional in the field of birdwatching, basically because most professionals in this field are male and many still believe that women are not capable. I have shown that we are capable and can be even better. This has led me to form my own company to organize trips in Peru and recently Colombia, besides working for one of the largest birdwatching agencies in the world. I think that the only thing we have to overcome is ourselves, and believe in our worth.”

Meet the Team Behind Women’s Big Day

Doris Valencia Puclla

Doris is a keen Peruvian bird watcher and naturalist. Her passion for the outdoors and bird watching has its roots in her childhood in southeastern Peru. She leads birding trips throughout Peru and recently in Colombia. Doris marries her birding skills with a broad interest in all aspects of natural history. Currently, she is the director of the Pacha Conservancy Project, which works with reforestation, outdoor education, research, and community outreach in the fragile cloud forest north of Cusco-Peru.

 

Claudia Torres Sovero

Claudia is a passionate birder and university teacher. Currently, she is a Senior Consultant in ecology, sustainable development based on ecotourism, education, and science. She has more than fifteen years of experience in research, education, consulting, and implementation of citizen science projects in the tourist experience. She has been in charge of organizing the Global Big Day events since 2017 with Rainforest Expeditions.

 

Juliana Andrea Morales

Juliana is an Entomologist and bird enthusiast. Currently, she is the Manu Biostation Lab Manager. She has more than 10 years of experience working in Colombia and the Peruvian Amazon as a consultant. Juliana’s topics of interest include vector-borne diseases research projects, mostly Malaria, Dengue, and Leishmaniasis.

 

 

Thanks to support and training from our Peruvian sister organization, Conservación Amazónica – ACCA, 146 Brazil nut harvesters that make up the Indigenous Forestry Association of Madre de Dios (AFIMAD) renewed the organic certification of their Brazil nuts through the meticulous verification and renewal process of the international Certification of Environmental Standards (CERES).

This certification will benefit the market value of the products from indigenous communities who manage the sustainable production and sale of 71 thousand tons of Brazil nuts annually while helping conserve the more than 12,000 hectares (over 29,652 acres) of pristine forest in the Peruvian Amazon in which they grow. 

Conservación Amazónica – ACCA provided technical assistance to help strengthen the capacities of Brazil nut harvesters on issues related to sustainable forest management, organic certification, and the regulatory aspects of CERES. This training and capacity building helps ensure the quality and organic integrity of the products and leads to the successful renewal of the organic certification, thus ensuring better access to higher-value markets for these harvesters and the conservation of a healthy forest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Nashville to the Amazon: Linking Business, Sustainability, and Ecosystems

Business supporters are one of Amazon Conservation’s favorite avenues to raise awareness and support for our work because of their unhindered desire to give back to the planet. Whether directly donating to our work, promoting awareness of the Amazon’s importance to their clients, running campaigns to raise money for our cause, or all of the above, the support we receive from these partners is making a real difference in our work and messaging. Our business partners also inspire us and other supporters by how fully they align and integrate their commitment to the environment into their business and values.

This month, we are proud to highlight Ryan Bailey, a star supporter from the business community who has been an Amazon Conservation donor since 2016. As part of their integrated commitment to sustainability, he and his family have been donating a portion of the sales from their family business Bailey Equipment and Intralogistics as well as Ryan’s own business Cumberland Kayak, both based in Nashville, Tennessee, towards our work to protect the Amazon. For Ryan, his passion for the outdoors and conservation – from the forests of Tennessee to the rainforests of Central and South America – is driven by a deep appreciation for the interconnectedness of these ecosystems:

We have purple martins that nest in Nashville. There’s a big roost of about 100,000 birds every year, and then they fly down to Brazil. Just seeing the way that we’re all connected, from here in Tennessee to Brazil and South America, it’s just amazing.

Instilled with the desire to protect nature from a very young age, Ryan and his family have put the environment at the forefront and are leading the way in environmental sustainability and zero-waste in Tennessee. Leading by example, Bailey Equipment and Intralogistics encourages other businesses to become environmentally sustainable and donate to impactful nonprofits making a difference.

Learn more about Amazon Conservation’s business partnership opportunities here or contact donations[at]amazonconservation[dot]org to get started.

Read the full interview with Ryan below: 

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Can you tell us about your background? 

My name is Ryan Bailey, and I’m from Nashville, Tennessee. Growing up, my whole family was always really passionate about the outdoors. We grew up hiking, and my mom is a naturalist, so we would always look for frogs and birds, and things of that nature in Tennessee. And as a kid, we went a couple of times to Costa Rica, which was a great opportunity to see the jungle. That is where I first started caring about the rainforest. Maybe it’s also tied to growing up in the 90s; those Captain Planet videos got me! 

I went to school at UNC-Chapel Hill and studied environmental science and business, and then I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica. I lived in Costa Rica for two years, in the jungle, between two volcanoes. It was a small town, and there was a national park nearby. I worked with the biological corridor and started a microfinance bank in the town that supported women’s groups, small businesses, and ecotourism projects. I was able to teach accounting in Spanish, which was tough at the time for me, but I figured it out. That microfinance bank is still going today, about 14 years later!

After that, I moved to DC for a couple of years, where I worked at Latino Economic Development Corporation (LEDC) in their microfinance department. Ever since, I’ve been living in Nashville, where I co-run my family’s forklift dealership called Bailey Equipment and Intralogistics with my brother, dad, and aunt. We have 12 locations across Tennessee, Georgia, and Kentucky. I also started Cumberland Kayak in 2015, which is a kayak and adventure outfitter in Nashville with two locations – one under the Nashville skyline and the other offering trips to the base of a 136’ waterfall.

I also like to exercise, get outdoors, and I’m on the board of a non-profit called TennGreen Land Conservancy.

What initially inspired you to support environmental causes generally and to help conserve the Amazon rainforest more specifically? Why do you think it is important to protect it? 

As someone who has always cared a lot about the rainforest and biodiversity – the Amazon was always particularly important to me. I learned Spanish, and I’ve started learning Portuguese, in part so that I can be in tune with conservation work in Central and South America, visit the area, and support efforts in the Amazon. For me, the Amazon really represents the lungs of the Americas and a place of rich biodiversity – I’m really a wildlife nerd – that’s always been really exciting to me, as well as the importance to the global ecosystem as a whole. So that’s why I’ve always been interested in the Amazon.

Also, when living in Bijagua, my town in Costa Rica, I particularly became interested in jaguars and mountain lions because those both lived in my town. I think the biological corridor for those two animals is so interesting. It just runs up through the entire Americas, with the Amazon really being the center of it all. It’s interesting seeing the different habitats and the different ways the species move around. We have purple martins that nest in Nashville. There’s a big roost of about 100,000 birds every year, and then they fly down to Brazil. Just seeing the way that we’re all connected, from here in Tennessee to Brazil and South America, it’s just amazing.

What stands out about Amazon Conservation compared to other organizations? 

It’s the longevity of the organization, the desire to not only make an impact when it comes to land conservation, but also the overall stewardship of the land – working with indigenous populations, governments, everybody that really is a stakeholder in the success of the Amazon and keeping it from being destroyed.

As a donor since 2016, what keeps you coming back and supporting us?

You all do a great job of telling the story of the work that you’re doing, which is always powerful. I usually check in with Amazon Conservation Association at the end of the year, and it’s apparent every year the track record of success and improvements. But not only that, there’s an evolving strategy that changes and utilizes technology and is proactive, it’s not just doing the same thing year after year.

Do you have a favorite program or initiative that stands out to you?

The IT program, where the drones look at forest fires and help monitor the property. That’s really cool. I’ve done a lot of bushwhacking myself, and it can be difficult to get to some places, so you need technology to do that.

What would you say to other environmentally-conscious people and businesses about how they can help make a difference and help conserve the Amazon?

If you want to support an organization or a particular type of work like the work this organization does, I recommend contributing a percentage of sales. We donate 2% of sales at Cumberland Kayak and that holds us accountable through our donations. I think that’s been a great tool for us and also allows us to talk about the nonprofit organizations we support as people come across the website, and they engage with the kayak company. I really like that strategy.

Do you have anything else to add that you’d like people to know?

Bailey Equipment and Intralogistics Company is really focused on environmental sustainability. We’re the first zero-waste certified company in Tennessee and also the first TRUE zero-waste certified material handling solutions company in the US. We’re very proud of that. We’re also trying to figure out how we can help other businesses become more environmentally sustainable, and part of that again ties back to donations.

 

 

In the first two installments of a new series monitoring soy deforestation in Bolivia, we provide more accurate estimates of total soy production-based deforestation and some of the major actors driving this significant source of deforestation.

It is generally well known that the production of commodities such as soy, oil palm, and cattle are major tropical deforestation drivers, but concise estimates of just how much deforestation occurs as a result of these commodities are often difficult to find or create.

Merging a new data set released by Global Forest Watch with high-resolution forest loss imagery, our team of GIS specialists from our Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) were able to analyze the data and determine just how much forest loss has occurred.

In the first report, MAAP #179, our team documented the soy-driven deforestation of 904,518 hectares (2.2 million acres) over the past 20 years (2001-2021). This is a massive area, similar to the size of the U.S. state of Vermont. Over 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) were deforested in just the past five years (2017-21).

In the second report, MAAP #180, our team incorporated additional data and estimated that Mennonite colonies caused nearly one quarter (23%) of the total soy deforestation over the past 20 years (210,980 hectares, or 521,344 acres) and increased to 33% over just the past 5 years.

These reports are part of a series focused on the Bolivian Amazon through a strategic collaboration between the sister organizations Conservación Amazónica – ACEAA in Bolivia and Amazon Conservation in the U.S.

 

 

 

Our sister organization in Peru, Conservación Amazónica – ACCA, has joined forces with Consecuencias (Consequences in English), a USAID initiative that seeks to encourage youth to learn about the dangerous effects of environmental crimes and get involved in taking action to stop them by reporting and denouncing the crimes through various social media platforms.

Dangerous extractive practices like gold mining and logging are significant sources of negative ecological and social impacts in the Amazon. To promote the campaign and raise awareness to these dangers, Consecuencias teamed up with Peruvian musical group La Explosión de Iquitos for a music video that has reached hundreds of thousands of young viewers, educating them about the dangers and effects of environmental crimes.

By uniting with Consecuencias, our Peruvian sister organization, Conservación Amazónica – ACCA, has joined the ranks of a host of Peruvian and Latin American celebrities and well-known organizations, significantly raising awareness worldwide of the urgent need to stop environmental crimes in the Amazon. 

 

The park ranger team at Los Amigos recently completed training in the use and management of EarthRanger, a software that aids protected area managers, ecologists, and wildlife biologists in making more informed operational decisions for wildlife conservation. EarthRanger will allow park rangers, or “promotores” in Spanish, to better monitor and stop environmental threats such as logging, mining, and deforestation connected with these threats. Los Amigos Conservation Hub is the first entity to use this new technology in all of Peru.

The two day workshop covered the properties of the software and how it can be used as an effective monitoring tool with simply a tablet or smartphone.  The software also facilitates data collection from the field from anywhere at anytime with backup protection to the cloud. This means, that teams on patrol can collect data without worrying about signal or loss of data due to connectivity issues. The software can also be coupled with animal tracking devices such as tags or collars which can make tracking animal routes and locations much more effective and timely.

“This tool greatly facilitates the collection and organization of geospatial data in the field at no cost, achieving greater efficiency in information management, reducing processing times and having an intuitive graphical interface that favors the visualization of the collected data. The great thing about this tool is the large number of additional cloud-based plugins that can be included, the great technical support and regular updates it receives”, highlighted Osmar Yupanqui, GIS and Remote Sensing assistant at our Peruvian sister organization, Conservación Amazónica – ACCA and who was responsible for the training.

The team of park rangers at Los Amigos have indicated that this new tool will help them improve animal monitoring, the monitoring of environmental crimes and threats, and will allow them to produce alerts and                                                                                                                   reports in a more timely manner.

 

 

Several weeks ago (on December 17, 2022), the Venezuelan government conducted a military operation against illegal mining activity in Yapacana National Park, located in the heart of the Venezuelan Amazon.

This operation came just after a high-profile article in the Washington Post exposing the severity of the illegal mining within the park, including on top of the sacred Yapacana tepui mountain, using images and analysis from our MAAP team and support from Venezuelan organization SOS Orinoco. The article also drew heavily from our work published in MAAP reports #156 and #169).

According to a series of tweets, the military was dismantling illegal mining camps, equipment, and supplies.

We obtained and analyzed very high-resolution satellite images taken just before (December 10) and after (December 22) the crackdown (December 17), covering the tepui and part of the surrounding lowlands (see Map).

No signs of the raid taking down mining camps on top of the tepui can be seen, mining camps on the tepui appear intact and not dismantled.

In conclusion, given the massive scale of illegal mining activity in Yapacana National Park, it is clear that a single operation is not sufficient to dismantle thousands of mining camps and remove thousands of illegal miners. A large-scale and long-term effort is needed.

 

Read the full report HERE>

 

At 2022’s COP15 (the United Nations Biodiversity Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity) in Montreal, Peru announced the recognition of Los Amigos Conservation Concession as its first of two Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECM), as part of Peru’s efforts to meet the goal set by the Biological Diversity Agreement to conserve 30% of the territories on the planet by 2030 and to formally acknowledge the significant progress that Los Amigos has made in conserving such an ecologically important natural area.

OECMs are areas that are achieving the long-term and effective conservation of biodiversity outside of otherwise designated protected areas and are defined by the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) as:

A geographically defined area other than a Protected Area, which is governed and managed in ways that achieve positive and sustained long-term outcomes for the in-situ conservation of biodiversity, with associated ecosystem functions and services and where applicable, cultural, spiritual, socioeconomic, and other locally relevant values.

This honorable recognition of Los Amigos as an OECM increases its visibility as an important site for conservation outside of the National System of Protected Areas by the State (SINANPE), the Peruvian national parks system, while not requiring it to be managed, governed, and integrated into the national parks system. 

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.

We are incredibly proud to see this key site for conservation grow in size and stature and with it the field of conservation itself. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On December 20, 2022, with technical support from our sister organization in Bolivia, Conservación Amazónica – ACEAA, the Mayor’s office of Porvenir in the Amazonian department of Pando, established the Natural Area of Integrated Management of the Porvenir Forest. 

This new protected area will ensure the health and sustainable management of these productive forests with the development of a long-term plan to strengthen communities’ plans to maintain and benefit from their land and natural resources. 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, also promises great ecotourism potential.  

To be able to establish these areas and increase social and governmental participation, we strengthened our own approach as well – scaling up our GIS and remote sensing technology to produce the ecological information the government required to declare these areas. We also stepped up and reached out to help communities gain access to and participate in online meetings so that their voices could be heard throughout the process.

 

Ultimately, 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.

The creation of this natural area is an important victory for the acknowledgement of local governments of the necessary balance between conservation and sustainable resource management and strengthening governance through social participation.

 

 

On January 11, 2023, Science Magazine, one of the world’s leading peer-reviewed scientific journals, published an article on the effects of illegal gold mining in rivers around the world, including the Peruvian Amazon.

Legal and illegal gold mining activity has surged over the past 20 years and affects 173 large rivers in 49 countries today.

Many of the world’s most powerful rivers, like the Amazon, make for excellent natural miners. Every day, thousands of gallons of water constantly erode and take rock away from mountains above the lowlands, liberating precious metals and whisking them downriver to areas like the Madre de Dios region of Peru, a hotspot for both biodiversity and illegal mining. This sediment, oftentimes containing precious metals, is deposited among riverbeds and floodplains where miners then set up extractive operations.

These small-scale operations to extract gold and other riches from river sediments are poisoning waters and harming aquatic and human life in the affected communities. A recent study by Evan Dethier, Miles Silman, et al., shows that levels of suspended sediment have doubled, compared with pre-mining levels, in some 80% of the rivers. In total, almost 7% of all large tropical river stretches are now cloudy with mining debris. “It’s completely flown under the radar,” says Miles Silman, former Board Member of Amazon Conservation and coauthor of the study. “The pervasiveness was really shocking to me. It’s just nuts.”

Gold miners in Madre de Dios use homegrown techniques to sift sediment through fine mesh. However, to more easily collect large nuggets of precious metals, including gold, from the sediment they take out of the Amazon tributaries, they add mercury, a toxic liquid metal that binds with gold and allows the less valuable settlement to fall back into the river – along with the poisonous mercury.

The operations may be small-scale but it is the number of these operations occurring that is alarming scientists and endangering ecosystems that depend on these rivers. Up to $3 billion in gold is thought to be exported each year from Madre de Dios alone. Gold mining is now the world’s top source of mercury pollution, emitting more than coal-fired power stations. “In the general picture, it has gotten worse by the day,” says Enrique Ortiz, co-founder of Amazon Conservation.

However, Enrique Ortiz adds, “there is a silver-lining thanks to the raised awareness of the dangers presented by these operations. Whereas the source and legality of gold is hard to trace once it goes to market, heavy machinery—and the fuel it needs—can be tracked and controlled,” presenting a opportunity that could bring an end or at least a significant impediment to these extractive mining operations.

 

 

 

A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 379, Issue 6628