Dear GlobalGiving Community,
We are so excited to participate in GlobalGiving’s July Bonus Day on July 20th!
We have noticed that some of our wonderful donors are still giving to our recently completed project on GG. We ask you to now direct your donations to our new project: Regenerate the Peruvian Amazon!
But why now? What is the July Bonus Day?
Your support is our bread and butter and supports our regenerative programming. Last year you helped us to:
The goals of our new project, Regenerate the Peruvian Amazon! are to:
We are especially requesting Recurring donations to our new project because even small recurring monthly donations allow us to more clearly plan activities months in advance. Rather than giving one time, consider splitting up your donation over the year! With a recurring donation of as little as $10 a month over the course of a year, you really do help bring stability to our financial planning. Give to Regenerate the Amazon today!
We are infinitely grateful for your support! Together we can Regenerate the Amazon!
Best regards,
Blair Butterfield
Communications Director
Links:
Dear GlobalGiving Community,
We are so excited to share that thanks to you, we have reached our funding goal for Camino Verde’s project of 1000 trees a year 1000 acres of rainforest forever. We feel so blessed to have had your support – and are excited to announce that our work in the Peruvian Amazon lives on, with a new project page on GlobalGiving: Regenerate the Peruvian Amazon!
Whether you are a one-time donor or a long-time ally, please consider making a recurring donation to our new GG project today. You can do so here.
Your support of 1000 trees a year 1000 acres of rainforest forever helped us to accomplish SO much. Here’s a quick who’s who of the some of the outstanding highlights:
Where do we go from here?
The goals of our new project focus on:
We hope you will consider supporting our work because your donations, no matter how small or big, keep us planting trees, hundreds of species, and tens of thousands of individual seedlings a year!
We are especially requesting Recurring donations to our new project because even small recurring monthly donations allow us to more clearly plan activities months in advance. Rather than giving one time, consider splitting up your donation over the year! With a recurring donation of as little as $10 a month over the course of a year, you really do help bring stability to our financial planning. Give to Regenerate the Amazon today!
With sincere gratitude from all of the Camino Verde team!
Links:
Dear Friends of Camino Verde,
Can you believe that our project, 1000 Trees a Year 1000 Acres of Rainforest Forever,
is almost 100% funded? We have just $5,198 left to raise!
We send a sincere Thank you! to all of our 1,958 supporters on GG, you who have helped us keep achieving our goal of planting 1000 Amazonian trees a year on deforested land in the Peruvian Amazon and protecting 1000 pristine acres of primary rainforest. A huge milestone this year – we were able to expand this conservation area by acquiring additional land (just last month!). Your contributions have made a significant impact and contribute not only to capturing carbon and restoring vulnerable landscapes but also to uplifting local jungle communities.
By the way, when this project is fully funded on GlobalGiving, we're starting a new one! Our work continues, and we hope you will consider following its growth at the new project page. (Link coming in our next bulletin. More on this below.)
What is that work we’re referring to? Here are some of the accomplishments of this project in its years on GG:
Our new project – going live as soon as our current project funding goal is met! – will be a direct extension of our work to date, and includes:
We are thrilled for this work to spread its wings and grow. Thank you for being the breeze that keeps us floating seeds to new regions. I hope you will consider helping us to complete our current project goal by making a donation today.
Best regards from Tambopata,
Robin Van Loon
Dear friends,
This month is our last of three sharing the voices of CV visitors' experiences interacting with the Peruvian Amazon. We’re celebrating 2021’s return to some semblance of normal by featuring the stories of a few of the people who have lent their talents to making Camino Verde successful.
This report shares about the first time at Camino Verde for Blair Butterfield, who since that visit has returned to Peru and – for over a year now – has been CV's communications director. You can thank Blair for the improvement in our communications and social media! And now we get a chance to learn a bit about how and why she decided to start working in Amazonian regeneration after that first time in the jungle.
You can enjoy all the past months' reflections from guests of yesteryear on the CV blog page.
And – because people keep asking – we’re happy to report that indeed, now we are able to receive visitors once again!
Arriving
There’s nothing like being completely ringed by primary forest, it hugs you with its warm breath, it surrounds you in an auditory landscape that attunes your primal senses, and it floods your olfactory, creating a memory so unique, it will be hard to recollect or describe it when you are back to your normal life.
Arriving to Camino Verde, via Peru’s many airports, I can’t help but think of the story of colonists coming to this country and delivering the violent fate that we all know. In the Lima airport, there are sky-high ads for designer brands, hanging like gods over your head. White, tall, emaciated models, you know the ones, the legacy of colonization still driving us to social and environmental depletion.
Going from Lima to Cusco to Puerto Maldonado airport, things began to get more humble in appearance. The Puerto Maldonado Airport is very small, a little dingy, and inoculated with the buzzing energy of its city. Walking out of the airport is like having someone breathe hot air onto your face. Palm trees sway in the background, the horizon is totally green and invites you to go with the flow. There are a myriad of men on small motor carts and motorcycles who offer you rides, their colors are vibrant, yellow jackets that you see swarming around the city like bees buzzing on a flowering bush.
Into the Jungle
But Puerto is not my final destination. I am greeted by Robin, my colleague and host, then we are driving to a rural area where we get out of the car and begin our walk through the jungle. We hike in further and further and the forest grows denser and denser. Robin has a machete that he uses to trim the path as we walk along; he occasionally turns to offer me crushed leaves of various species of plants to smell. We cross over spindly bodies of water via fallen trees, we tiptoe, shimmy, and balance trying not to slip and fall with our full bags on our backs. We pause for moments to observe unique mushrooms, beautiful flowers, strange insects, and I take various Polaroids to document our journey.
After about two hours of walking through the forest and smelling many different scents, we arrive to a river and to a boat, a small canoe-like vessel with a tiny motor. It is a relief to drop my bag, which contains a large scanner and photo equipment inside. We travel the river for what feels like an hour, moving across the water like a dried palm frond floating just on the surface. We putter against the deep and murky water surrounded on all sides by the unique ecotones of rusty colored mud, thick swaying clumps of golden grasses, giant tree crowns standing out of a blanket of bursting green canopies. The motor is loud, it is hard to hear anything, or to think, you just are.
Being Together
In Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement, he attempts to define the concept of the sublime. One of his arguments draws out the difference between beauty –which is dependent upon an object and has bounds– versus that of the sublime, which has a quality of boundlessness. I find that I understand what he is trying to say when I bear witness to something that is much larger and more expansive than myself. (The concept of the sublime is an attempt to describe a human experience or emotion that arises out of us, and is not exclusive to those of us who happen to be concerned with philosophy!)
Perhaps it’s a feeling like when you’re sitting under a completely dark sky on a tributary of the Amazon River and you can see the dust of the Milky Way and the planets that surround us. We comprehend our mortality as a species – but see the mirror that reveals the vastness of our spirit. Winding our way along the river, amidst the tapestry of raw earth and all her transformations, it is almost palpable to feel the wisdom humans once had dissipating into the cosmos, lost forever.
We arrive at the Reforestation Center and we are greeted by Olivia. She is a strong, beautiful woman with long inky black hair. She wears mud boots and often carries a machete to clear footpaths. She later becomes a close companion during my visits, I will stay in her house, practice my Spanish with her, meet her family, she will teach me plant names, we will discuss intimate topics of being a woman, relationships, and our hopes for global change. But for now, she greets us on the banks and ties the boat up. We quickly drop our things in our stilt houses, strip down to our bathing suits or underwear and go swimming in the Tambopata River. It is silty and muddy, our feet sink down uncomfortably deep. The water is surprisingly cold even though it’s so hot outside.
Before coming to the Amazon I had read legends of anacondas, of little fish who swim up your urethra, dysentery, mercury from local gold mining, legends of the forest and the river judging your soul and having the ability to take you out of this life. But I let all that be suspended, my heart is full of love and joy. I embrace the imperfections of myself, I am a whole person who is a child of this planet. I swim in the river, I even put my head in. Floating on my back in complete suspension, surrendering my anxiety, my thinking, releasing the person who I think I am, my identity, the stress of the world, of jobs, of money... and I just let the river take it all. I think of Mary Oliver‘s poem, The Summer Day. The end of the poem asks, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do, with your one wild and precious life?” and I answer, “this.”
Rewilding
For the rest of my visit, I mostly went without shoes, I wanted to be barefoot on the muddy earth, I allowed my skin to receive all the new additions to my localized ecology. To become integrated with the new environment, to rewild the body.
More guests arrived at the reforestation center including an olfactory artist and refined “nose” out of New York City. A distillation was made of moena alcanfór essential oil. We watched the distillation process for most of the day and when it was complete there was a bucket full of hydrosol. The olfactory artist introduces me to hydrosol bathing. We take the bucket near a huasaí tree (Euterpe precatoria), we strip down to our skin and we take turns pouring the moena hydrosol over each other‘s heads. We giggle like little girls as we take a shower in potent and magical botanical aromatics from the Amazon. That night we slept beautifully and both of us reported in the morning of wild and vivid dreams.
I spend my days collecting plant material, learning about trees, and walking around the forest. I feel like I quickly assimilate, and familiarize myself with the Reforestation Center’s various paths, planting projects, nurseries, rhythms of the day held by the team members, and when it is time to leave, my heart breaks. It breaks because this is such a magical place, it breaks because when I return to the United States I see there is a rigidity in our culture. It is fast-paced, there is a constant demand for production and to use our time efficiently. We do not take siestas, we do not take time to sit and socially share herbal tea or mate. It is not common for us to receive our neighbors unexpectedly at lunchtime, abandon the productivity of the day to share conversation and what is at our dining table.
Integrating the Experience
The saddest part is that this magical land is threatened, it is vulnerable, it is being extinguished by the demands of a global economy. Returning to the United States and seeing cacao, açaí berries, bananas, any tropical fruits or spices, reminds me of the critical status of the landscapes and people who produce these products. I ask myself, what native land was destroyed to produce this item for a mass market? Or, which of these items are supporting work being done to protect these places? I make choices to vote with my dollars, I vote to support my local farmers and product producers (I live in Vermont, so there are lots to choose from), and when I buy other products or ingredients, I vote for regenerative, ethical, and sustainable practices.
When I eat cocoa nibs I remember the fragile wild ecosystems that are full of magic, mythologies, dying languages, and I know I can make choices to help preserve and uplift these places and people so they do not become extinct.
---
Since soon after that first visit to the Reforestation Center, I am now the Communications Director for Camino Verde. That means it’s my job to bring the Amazon to life for people who might not have ever thought they were connected to it. It is a passion project that I contribute deep work, thoughtfulness, and time to with my entire heart. I hope this story might inspire you to spend more time barefoot, to let go stress, to vote with your dollars to support regeneration, to donate to Camino Verde’s work or maybe even visit the Reforestation Center yourself.
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver
Me with a giant lapuna tree. Photo by Michelle Gagnon
Dear Friends of Camino Verde,
For those of you who are experienced Report readers (and, wow, we’ve been sending these out for over a decade now), you know that we tend to give a mix of concrete news, hard facts on numbers of trees planted, and – as much as possible – compelling stories from the Peruvian Amazon. We’d like to think that the stories and pictures can help make Camino Verde’s work feel a little more real and tangible.
We want the strategies to make sense but we also hope that what you read makes you feels something. It’s meaningful to us, and we hope it’s meaningful to you. Because after all, dear reader, you are the ones who keep us at work. Your donations keep us planting trees, hundreds of species, tens of thousands of individual seedlings a year.
And, it is your interest and awareness and belief that are what really keep the lights on at Camino Verde, really keep the wind in our sails. Did you know? The majority of you receiving this Report have volunteered, visited, or donated. You have impacted – and maybe been impacted by – CV. These reports are notes to a small but worldwide circle for which we are so grateful. Thank you for being a part of our journey.
The story I’m excited to share with you today is about a program years in the making and yet just now turning one year old. It’s a story from Peru, but it comes from a whole other Amazon, far from the region of Madre de Dios that CV has called home for 15 years. That’s right, Camino Verde’s program in the northern region of Loreto – home to the Amazon River proper – is now just past its first birthday. So let’s go to Loreto, let’s meet the team, and talk about what it is that has Camino Verde up there in the first place.
Because I know you’re busy and some of you are here for the hard facts, let me give you a few stats before the story. In our first year in Loreto it looked like this:
With those headlines out of the way, let’s talk about how it all happened. Buckle up, I believe you’re about to be inspired.
A Tale of Two Regions
Many will be surprised to learn that the area of Peru that is covered by rainforest is as large as Turkey, is around the same size as Pakistan. Not everyone knows that Peru is big. 60% of the surface of the national territory of a country so often characterized as Andean is in fact east of the Andes, down in the humid tropical broadleaf forest.
Madre de Dios, the region or departamento of Peru where Camino Verde was founded, is at the southern extreme of that C-shaped expanse of Amazon that helps make this one of the top 5 mega-biodiverse countries in the world. Madre de Dios alone is the size of Austria, or South Carolina. It borders Bolivia and Brazil, and its southern- and westernmost portions are in the foothills of the Andes, not that far from Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca. CV first set up shop in MDD’s Tambopata River basin in 2007, when it all began.
And as of 2020, we finally did the same, set up shop, in a second region called Loreto, the northernmost extent of that Amazonian C-shape and of Peru’s national territory. Loreto is by the far the largest departamento in Peru. Rounding out our size comparison exercise, its territory is one and a half times larger than Ecuador’s (thanks in part to Peru annexing a large piece of Ecuador into Loreto, not that long ago historically). Loreto is the same size as Germany, as Japan, almost as big as Montana, larger than Vietnam and significantly larger than say, New Mexico or Poland.
And Loreto is home to the place where the world’s largest river assumes its name. At the confluence of the Ucayali and the Marañón is the place where the river starts to be called Río Amazonas. Iquitos, the capital of Loreto and the largest city in the Amazonian portion of Peru, technically serves as a seaport, thanks to the Amazon’s deep channel, even though it is thousands of kilometers upriver from the mouth at the Atlantic.
In addition to its impressive territorial size, Loreto is also home to a much higher population than sparse Madre de Dios. Hundreds of native communities representing dozens of ethnicities dot the hinterlands on the squid-shaped river map in the surroundings of Iquitos, placed where it was due to its proximity to important convergences with significant tributaries: the Nanay, the Itaya, the Napo, and indeed the thickest roots of the tree of rivers, the Marañón and the Ucayali.
For those astute readers, you know that it’s nothing new that CV has been in Loreto. Our first report describing CV activities there was in 2011 (10 years ago!). And it’s true, we have been fortunate to get our hands dirty planting trees in the region starting in 2013. But it’s only since 2020 that Camino Verde has a real presence – a team of our own – in Loreto. What a team it is, and what a year it has been.
Let me tell you a bit about how we got there.
Rivers Flowing Together
Believe it or not, it was thanks to some wonderful folks in Pennsylvania. In this small world in which we live, the Marjorie Grant Whiting Center (unfortunately, no longer functioning) provided a small grant for a young Camino Verde to get to know better another MGWC grant recipient that happened to also be working in the Peruvian Amazon, the Center for Amazon Community Ecology (CACE). CACE founder Campbell Plowden of State College, PA visited Madre de Dios that year, and I had the chance to visit a few of the communities where CACE works in northern Peru in – you guessed it – Loreto.
CACE and CV have been close allies ever since, and you’ll probably recall many photos in these reports taken by Campbell, who is an excellent photographer. It was thanks to the relationships that CACE carefully cultivates with native communities that CV was given a warm welcome in these far-flung, deep forest communities. And it was via close and thoughtful collaboration that CV, CACE, and our native community partners first embarked on the reforestation of the highly endangered, highly valued rosewood tree (Aniba rosaeodora).
Rosewood is a special tree. Its fragrant essential oil was an ingredient in Chanel No. 5 until aggressive wild harvesting rendered the species highly endangered throughout its homeland in the area between Iquitos and Manaus, Brazil. Rosewood is a familiar and culturally significant species to our community partners, some of whom also remember seeing trees cut from the forest and distilled back in the rosewood heyday. The IUCN Red List and CITES both consider rosewood endangered and subject to control measures to prevent it from going extinct. Yet a black market continues to fuel rampant unsustainable extraction of the few old growth, seed-producing trees left. Illegal harvest of rosewood continues in the Peruvian Amazon, to the species’ great detriment. Reforestation efforts are needed but are extremely few and far between.
Which, at the same time, represents an opportunity. The same markets driving illegal extraction can also be seen as incentivizing regeneration of the species. As we’ve described before in these reports, it’s an example of the adage popularized by permaculture, that “the problem is the solution.” Because there is demand for rosewood oil still (and thanks to the simple fact that you can produce the essential oil from the sustainably harvested branches just as surely as you can produce it from the tree trunk), rosewood can therefore be reforested profitably, to the benefit of those who plant it.
Back in 2012 when planting rosewood was just a seed of an idea, a glimmer in our eye, it actually wasn’t the case that CACE and CV sat down and picked the first community with whom to plant rosewood. Rather, the reason we got to planting rosewood at all was because the community itself approached us about reforesting rosewood, wondered at its viability as an economic activity, remembered its exploitation in the past, reaffirmed in the present its symbolic importance in certain ceremonies, proudly stated the name for the tree in their own language. The decision to plant rosewood came from the community. CV and CACE simply acted as squirrels, seeking out seeds to disperse to new forests.
Growing Back Forests
We were lucky to find the first seeds the following year, thanks to the Research Institute of the Peruvian Amazon (or IIAP, its initials in Spanish), and our first 500 or so trees were planted in the community in 2013. CV and CACE have continued to develop rosewood programs ever since, with growing community enthusiasm. Fast forwarding the following years of proof of concept, we hit some major a-ha moments and breakthroughs along the way:
And so it was, with the vocal support of the communities with whom we designed the project, that we proposed to the Flemish Fund for Tropical Forests to expand our rosewood planting in Loreto. The largest grant in CV history, FFBT agreed to contribute to our ambitious 2-year vision to truly take our rosewood proof of concept to the implementation stage.
With the ink still drying on our cooperation agreement with FFBT, I headed out to Loreto to interview and hire the first members of the emerging CV Loreto team. With Campbell and the great CACE crew I’ve known for years, we delivered the project’s first 8,000 seedlings to the first 2 communities participating. We got back to Iquitos, and before we got the muddy boots off our feet, Peru announced that the following day it was shutting down all flights, domestic and international, and initiating the state of emergency for Covid-19.
Adaptation
Carlos is a Spanish agronomist 11 years in the Amazon, who trains native community members to raise Amazonian stingless bees. Klaus is an animal rights activist working toward the creation of a rehabilitation center for rescued wild animals. Jacmen is a native community member who for the last 3 years has distilled essential oil with CACE and CV. This is the core team of CV Loreto, hired on just as the pandemic was hitting, stalled at the time in long distance trainings via whatsapp calls and audio messages. Now over a year later, the team is strong, confident, and responsible for reaching additional native communities, with whom CV is interacting for the first time. Last month they took a boat load of seedlings, literally, to 2 newly participating communities. The month before that it was an even larger boat, with a record breaking 18,000 seedlings delivered in one go.
Working in native communities of the Peruvian Amazon is demanding – the mosquitos, the heat, and the complex socio-economic realities of hardworking communities everywhere. And so we’re especially grateful that are team is led by Carlos, with his extensive experience in indigenous communities in the Loreto region and his in depth knowledge of Amazonian farming realities. Klaus and Jacmen are from the region and the latter was born in one of the communities where we work, and that embeddedness in the community is key to our success.
What Comes Next
Now back to the hard facts.
In Loreto in 2021-22, we’ll be planting another 30,000 trees, rounding out our efforts in the first 5 communities we work. By the way, we’ve planted over 40 species of trees in the highly diversified agroforestry systems that define our work. With that, the first 5 communities will have “complete” rosewood agroforestry parcels, able to generate income for families in 3 years’ time. Even as we continue to monitor tree growth in these communities, we will incorporate another 3 native communities into the cohort by the end of 2022.
With 6 families currently selling us rosewood branches, this number will reach 112 families when this year’s trees achieve harvestable age. As we have done with the first 6, we’ll assist each family to register their “forestry plantations” with the corresponding authority, allowing for full legal transparency of origin.
Our tree planting and harvest of tree-sourced products in Loreto is now being documented using CV’s very own RealTrees technology, an innovative approach allowing us to monitor growth of every single tree planted and later to give proof of origin for the harvest of branches from rosewood trees. Look for us to talk more about the new technology in our next report.
The last year has been bright and inspiring. The year to come will consolidate this progress into substantial change. We couldn’t do it without you. If you feel excited about anything you’ve read today, please consider donating to Camino Verde. We are grateful for your support.
Best regards from the Peruvian Amazon,
Links:
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