The Amazon and the Center The Amazon region of South America is home to the world's largest river, tropical forest, and concentration of plant and animal species. Appreciation for this area's ecology and diverse human societies is growing, but the extent of Amazon forest burning and degradation is still very high. The causes and effects of Amazon deforestation are found both in and outside the region. Addressing these problems will, therefore, require inspiration and creative action by people in the Amazon and beyond. The mission of the Center for Amazon Community Ecology is to promote the understanding, conservation and sustainable development of human and other biological communities in the Amazon region. Our three strategies are research, community support and education. One of our main goals is to study the ecology and develop the sustainable harvest and marketing of non-timber forest products such as fruits, fibers, resins, and oils. We also work with indigenous and other forest peoples to sustain local resources and support their communities. See More

Visit CACE Peru Project Page

Support CACE Artisan and Forest Conservation Project in Peru on Global Giving. Visit: http://goto.gg/12229 CACE is helping native artisans in Peru to increase their income and supporting their communities to improve health, education and forest conservation. Every donation counts! Please Share the CACE Project Page on Facebook to spread the word. See full Project Description and Progress Report #1 on Global Giving.

In early Feburary, Project staff from CACE and our partner NGO Camino Verde safely escorted 900 rosewood seedlings on a two-day journey by truck, ferry, speed boat, motor-canoe and basket backpacks from a government nursery on the Ucayali River to fields in the Bora native community of Brillo Nuevo on the Ampiyacu River. Five families each planted a share of the seedlings in a secondary forest site near the village. The effort was supervised by Robin van Loon, CACE advisor and executive director of Camino Verde which carries out reforestation and other community forestry projects in the southern Peruvian Amazon. We hope these trees will grow enough in three to four years to sustain a modest harvest of leaves that can be distilled into an aromatic essential oil that can be sold to fragrance companies. See more photos of the journey and community planting.

CACE pays artisans up front for their work and sets aside 20% of craft sales from our partner communities to help support their health, education and conservation needs. People from the Bora native village of Brillo Nuevo just finished a community pharmacy with some CACE social rebate funds and will buy more medicines and curved saws to carefully harvest young chambira palm stems in place of machetes. See more pharmacy photos. The campesino community of Chino has used past rebates from CACE basket sales to build desks for its school and basic supplies for students. A Rainforest Conservation Fund representative in Iquitos helped CACE buy a toilet, plumbing and construction supplies for Chino residents to build a new bathroom for its primary school. CACE sales of jewelry and other crafts from Jenaro Herrera has helped this small town buy a printer and basic equipment for its school and medical supplies (small surgical tools, blood pressure cuff, etc.) for its health clinic. Our next goal is to get a delivery bed for its maternity ward. See more social rebate photos.

Thanks to a grant from the Marjorie Grant Whiting Center, CACE and Camino Verde, a conservation NGO based in the Department (state) of Madre de Dios, are collaborating on several projects to develop value-added non-timber forest products in both the northern and southern parts of the Peruvian Amazon. The director of Camino Verde, Robin van Loon, is providing his experience with reforestation and Camino Verde resources to plant rosewood trees with CACE at the Bora native village of Brillo Nuevo. In March, CACE Director Campbell Plowden joined van Loon to consult with shaman Don Ignacio Duri about the medicinal resin called Dragon's Blood ("sangre de grado" in Spanish) at his home in the town of Infierno and then helped van Loon design an experiment to measure the sustainable harvest of this liquid from his Dragon's Blood trees at Camino Verde's field station at Baltimori. They then harvested leaves from a rosewood tree relative called "camphor moena" and ground them up for a small trial distillation in the field station kitchen. See more info and photos.

See updated versions with extra photos on the new Center for Amazon Community Ecology Blog

- New markets, opportunities for copal and crafts (updated version): Natalya Stanko and Campbell Plowden present highlights of the Center's research on copal resin and making a fragrant essential oil, developing innovative handicrafts with Bora natives and exploring connections with Maijuna communities in Peru, and Plowden's return visit to Ka'apor and Tembé Indian villages ten years after working with them in Brazil. See updated version with extra photos on the CACE Blog.
- Artisan Spotlight (updated version): Meet two of the Center's artisan partners - Monica Chichico from the Bora native community of Brillo Nuevo and Romelia Huanaquiri from the Huacamayo Handicraft Committee in Chino.
- Connections Profile (updated version): Dr. Dennis del Castillo - from son of slash and burn farmer to top investigator with the Institute for Investigation of the Peruvian Amazon (IIAP). He know seeks solutions to conserve the Amazon's threatened biodiversity and support its rural people
- Gilmore: Connecting plants and people (updated version): Ethnobotanist Michael Gilmore discusses the challenges being faced by the Maijuna native people in Peru and some things he has learned working with them for eleven years
- Amazon Field Volunteer in Action (updated version): Natalya Stanko spent six weeks in Peru with the Center and interviewed many of its artisan partners. She wrote about her experiences in many formats and wrote most of the articles for this issue of Amazon Connections. Read her fully illustrated version of "What makes a journalist?" and her recent story Amazon Trip in Greeniaks.com.
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Students from Penn State University are helping the Center with their skills and time with photography, video, graphic design, marketing, writing and research. See Profiles of Current and Past Interns and Key Volunteers