News
Protecting a Global Food Staple: Statement on Cassava Disease
The Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) is monitoring the potential spread of Witches’ Broom disease in cassava crops across the Guianas. The fungal pathogen Ceratobasidium causes broom-like shoots and can sharply reduce yields of one of the world’s most important staple foods. “Cassava is the major food crop in these regions imagine what crop failure would mean,” Dr. Mark Plotkin, ethnobotanist and ACT president, said. “For millions of families,…
Read MoreHow jaguars lost their connection to the coast, and why it’s critical to bring that back
Thousands of years ago, when jaguar populations were at their peak, they could be found hunting along the coasts across the Americas. After colonization, these apex predators lost access to the sea in much the same way many Indigenous communities did. Today, the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) is working to research and restore this natural…
Read MoreTop ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin’s COP30 reflections on Amazon conservation (analysis)
As the world gathers for COP30 in Belém, Brazil, Dr. Mark Plotkin, co-founder and president of the Amazon Conservation Team, offers perspective on what thirty years of protecting the Amazon alongside Indigenous communities has taught us. He recently shared his reflections in an article for Mongabay, an independent environmental news organization. Read the full analysis…
Read More‘Our Territory Is Sacred’: Q+A with Ednalva Rondon
Ednalva Rondon grew up in Pakuera village, located within the Kurâ-Bakairi Indigenous Territory in the municipality of Paranatinga, Mato Grosso—one of Brazil’s most ecologically diverse regions, in the central-western part of the country. At 27, she is an active member of the Union of Indigenous Women of the Brazilian Amazon (UMIAB). This year, she is…
Read MoreSolving the problems of the Amazon will require serious commitments at COP30
Carolina Gil, regional director for the Amazon Conservation Team, wrote the following op-ed, published in the Colombian digital news outlet La Silla Vacía (“The Empty Chair”). The original, Spanish version of the piece can be found here. The Amazon is not just a territory that must be preserved, but a vital system that sustains the climatic,…
Read MoreCosta Rica Gathering 2025: Honoring 30 Years and Building ACT’s Future
From October 20 to October 22, 2025, ACT members from the USA, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, and the Guianas gathered in Costa Rica for a transformative event. Joined by board members, donors, guests, and Indigenous partners — María del Rosario “Charito” Chicunque, Pablo Chindoy, and Marinete Tukano — the gathering focused on strategic conversations to align ACT around its next chapter while…
Read MoreMongabay: Indigenous monitoring project helps protect isolated peoples in Colombia’s Amazon
Mongabay, an independent environmental news organization, recently highlighted two communities in the Colombian Amazon, who are working to protect the rainforest and its peoples. Members of the Curare-Los Ingleses Indigenous Reserve and the community of Manacaro use traditional knowledge and technology alike to monitor threats to their territory and to protect nearby communities living in…
Read MoreWhere the forest meets the sea: connecting Osa to the Amazon
Manuel Sanchez, a field coordinator with the Amazon Conservation Team, remembers the first time he saw a sea turtle growing up on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. He had been fishing one night with his father, and they were walking back along Playa Piro (Piro Beach) on the Pacific Coast. “It was around eight at night…
Read MoreRemembering Dr. Jane Goodall
Dr. Jane Goodall served as a beloved and trusted advisory board member to the organization for more than a decade. There are a few biologists of my generation – and subsequent generations – who were not inspired to pursue a career devoted to the tropics by either Indiana Jones or Jane Goodall, or both. The…
Read MoreFrom Bogotá to Belém: What’s at stake for the future of the Amazon
Carolina Gil, Regional Director of the Amazon Conservation Team Colombia authored this op-ed, published August 27, 2025 in El Espectador, a daily newspaper in Colombia. OPINION | “Today it is clear: the environmental agenda is the political agenda. What happens in the Amazon will define not only the climatic future, but also the stability of…
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