Amazon Conservation Team

ACT works in partnership with indigenous peoples across Amazonia to conserve biodiversity, traditional culture, and human and ecological health. The forest has a voice; but needs you to be heard.

Why do we exist?

ACT’s mission is to work in partnership with indigenous people in conserving biodiversity, health, and culture in tropical America, specifically the Amazon Basin.  Together, we work to increase indigenous rights to ancestral territories, produce ethnographic maps and natural resource management plans for those territories, to improve human health through traditional medicine, and to revitalize elements of indigenous culture in the face of rapid and oftentimes destructive culture change.  ACT responds to needs as voiced by the indigenous people themselves and works in direct partnership to provide the necessary tools to ensure that the indigenous communities can address threats independently of any outside help.

Succinctly put, ACT “helps the keepers of the Amazon forests keep the forests,” a matter of no small significance to the health of the overall world ecosystem and to the preservation of the potential of countless species whose potential as medicines and forest plants might otherwise literally go up in smoke (recent analyses have shown that up to 40% of the 100 most commonly used prescription medicines have their chemical origin in medicinal plants).

What have you accomplished?

In Colombia, our long-term relationship with the indigenous people of the northwest Amazon has fostered replicable models that have sustained the hopes and livelihoods of its peoples.  Foremost has been the inauguration of a national park to protect an area of unique biocultural diversity, the Parque Natural Nacional Alto Fragua, designed and co-managed by its indigenous inhabitants.  ACT then supported the creation of a park management plan and completed cultural and biological maps of the region.  At the World Parks Conference in Durban, South Africa, a conference that convenes only once a decade, ACT’s work with the UMIYAC indigenous association and the creation of Indi Wasi was highlighted as one of the most progressive and promising conservation initiatives in the entire Neotropics.  ACT also continued its sponsorship of the Putumayo indigenous health brigades and the longstanding Shamans and Apprentices program, and has proudly supported the formation what may be the first network of women shamans in this region.  Additionally, Colombia’s Academy of Sciences (COLCIENCIAS) has officially received ACT’s Traditional Medicine Research Group, an affiliate of the Universidad del Rosario, into its program. 

In Brazil, ACT partnered with the Brazilian government to work with our indigenous colleagues to map and begin to improve management of the seven million acres that comprise the Xingu Indigenous Park, home to 14 different tribes and considered the single most important biocultural conservation priority in the Brazilian Amazon.  The result is a series of cultural maps, legal documents that will help drive the management and protection of the preeminent stand of forests in the southeast Amazon.  ACT has a long-term commitment to these people and their forests, and looks forward to expanding and consolidating the scope of these efforts for many, many years to come.  In addition, ACT and its indigenous partners completed a full series of maps of the ten million-acre Tumucumaque Indigenous Reserve. 

In Suriname, the Kwamalasamutu clinic, now over four years in operation, provides both traditional and Western healthcare.  ACT and its indigenous partners have also completed the construction of a clinic and conservation training center in the Kayana village.  Indeed, the success of our ethnomedical programs in the most remote forests of southern Suriname was recognized by the World Bank when it decided to help ACT expand the program among two additional tribes.  Also, to provide sustainable development opportunities in southwest Suriname, ACT sponsored a Brazil nut crop management project for the Tirio indigenous communities.

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