Goodbye Miners. More Land. Great Team.

I am back from the Amazon and excited to share with you some of the latest news! I can’t write it all here without making this a 10-page newsletter so here are some of the highlights.

PARC and the Lower Amazon Forests

The main objective of the trip to our brazil nut concession was to support Darwin in removing the remaining illegal gold miners from our land. To this end, Darwin, myself, a security guard and Dr. Daniel Collins (a PhD in Tropical Forest Science and Land Management) spent days walking our land. We visited each of the 11 illegal mining camps that had invaded our land during the pandemic. We were prepared for confrontations and had contingency safety plans in place.

We were thrilled to discover that thanks to Darwin’s determination, courage and diplomacy there was only one mining camp remaining. And those last miners are vacating our land as I write this. I could not be more proud of Darwin.

ARCNP and the Cloud Forests

Our wildlife corridor is expanding! Thanks to Cindy and Sam’s hard work, we now have six parcels of land totalling 78 ha (193 acres).

It was wonderful to spend time with our incredible team of forest guardians. Cesar, our supervisor of the forest guardians, has an impressive amount of knowledge about Amazonian plants. He is also an exceptional leader of the team.

Cindy and I asked each member of the ranger team if they had a particular project that they wanted to take the lead on. It was interesting and inspiring to hear their answers. Cesar would like to construct a tree house so he can observe wildlife and collect data. Lukas is interested in promoting the population of meliponia bees. Jorge would like to focus on the nursery and, in particular, collecting seeds from medicinal plants. And Efrain would like to focus on the regeneration of the cattle pastures. I am so proud to be part of such an inspiring team of forest guardians.