News
A Healer's Last Journey
In Sibundoy, the ancestral territory of the Kamentsa and Inga indigenous people, both the elders and lands that sustain traditional knowledge are disappearing. To keep pace with climate change, globalization and the region’s mining development, local groups are banding together to record this information before it disappears.
Read MoreCongress of Communities Convenes Indigenous Representatives of Caquetá
Indigenous representatives of the Caquetá department are participating in the Congress of Indigenous Communities, an activity that is part of a project to strengthen the indigenous organizations of Caquetá, executed by the NGO Amazon Conservation Team (ACT).
Read MoreIndigenous Park Guard Program Expands in Suriname
ACT-trained indigenous park guards play a critical role in monitoring traditional lands, data gathering, and environmental education in South America’s most forested country. This month, 13 new recruits will begin training in the villages of Kwamalasamutu, Tepu, Apetina and Sipaliwini.
Read MoreKogi People Inaugurate New Temples
In March, ACT’s Liliana Madrigal traveled with ACT board members to Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta to participate in the christening of two new Kogi temples. The buildings were constructed on Jaba Tañiwashkaka, a sacred site that ACT worked to purchase in 2013 with Kogi leaders and the Colombian government. This land will now be forever protected from development.
Read MoreACT Completes Detailed Map of Chiribiquete National Park
ACT cartographer Brian Hettler has spent over a year collecting all available information on the spactacular Chiribiquete national park. Starting with the initial map begun by Harvard explorer Hamilton Rice in 1907, Hettler has pored over Google Earth images, aerial photographs, and dusty maps in the Library of Congress, and has compiled the most detailed map of Chiribiquete yet assembled.
Read MoreTechnology Can Help Save the Environment
It is hard for me to believe that I will have lived on planet Earth for 80 years as of this Thursday. I was born on April 3, 1934 and the world has changed in almost all ways possible. I write this article from a laptop computer while flying in an airplane to Nebraska, where I visit every year to see the migration of the majestic Sandhill cranes…
Read MoreAmazon Conservation Team and DigitalGlobe Form Innovative Partnership
The Amazon Conservation Team is pleased to announce a partnership with DigitalGlobe that will allow for the use of the world’s highest quality commercial satellite imagery to strengthen ACT’s community-based conservation efforts in the diverse ecosystems of the Amazon rainforest. DigitalGlobe’s advanced remote sensing capabilities and vast archive of high-resolution satellite imagery are invaluable tools for ACT’s conservation initiatives in Colombia and Suriname, which can encompass millions of hectares of forestlands.
Read MoreA foot injury? Give me your machete!
“What’s wrong with your foot?” asked the medicine man as I ducked into his grass hut to escape the tropical downpour. He could see that I walked with a slight limp. Like many an aging athlete, I had injured myself while training for a hike. I knew I had to condition myself to be able to walk 50 miles carrying a backpack at 9,000 feet.
Read MoreNASCAR, the NBA, Rubber and the Rainforest
As you watch the NBA playoffs this spring, impress your friends with this fact: the idea for those Nikes worn by LeBron James and Kevin Durant was actually born in the rainforests of the northeast Amazon.
In 1775, French botanist Fusee Aublet observed local Indians there coating their feet with rubber tree sap and holding their feet over the fire, creating the first custom-made athletic shoes.
In Honor of the Late Melinda C. “Mo” Maxfield
After several years of failing health, our very dear, longtime friend and mentor Melinda C. “Mo” Maxfield passed away on January 9, 2014. We are profoundly grateful for Mo’s sage counsel and generous support dating nearly back to ACT’s inception, and will miss her company, kindness, and wisdom more than we can adequately express. As…
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