Amazon Conservation Association

Founded in 1999, Amazon Conservation works to unite science, innovation, and people to protect the Amazon – the greatest wild forest on Earth. We envision a thriving Amazon that sustains the full diversity of life. For more than 20 years, Amazon Conservation has been at the forefront of conservation, working on the ground at the headwaters of the Amazon in Peru and Bolivia. Our focus on protecting wild places, empowering local people and putting science and technology to work has been shaped by the people and land where we began.

To achieve a thriving Amazon that supports the full diversity of life.

Goal One: Protect Wild Places: Protect critical ecosystems and biodiversity by creating and strengthening protected areas, ensuring landscape connectivity for species survival, and directly addressing threats.

Goal Two: Empower People: Build sustainable and resilient livelihoods that protect standing forests Strengthen environmental governance that improves protection and management of natural resources.

Goal Three: Put Science and Technology to Work: At our Amazon research stations, we carry out and host robust scientific research, develop cutting-edge technologies, and support the next generation of scientists.

Amazon Conservation provides professional growth opportunities for its staff in DC through a budget for staff development for both leadership and junior positions to ensure that staff are well-equipped to do their jobs and are able to improve their skills. With the COVID-19 pandemic, staff took the opportunity to participate in multiple free and paid virtual events training sessions, webinars, and workshops to build their capacity. Amazon Conservation encourages staff to use work time to attend such trainings and bring new ideas into the organization.

In 2020, we had to temporarily close all of our biological stations and ecolodges while the COVID-19 pandemic raged, halting and delaying innumerable quantities of innovative scientific and technological research. The lockdowns wreaked havoc on local Amazonian economies, impacting the lives of people with whom we work closely every day, and we shifted our approach to emphasize sustainable local economies based on productive forests that empower local people to adapt to the ongoing threats of climate change. Being a lean organization also meant that we had to seriously consider how we could weather this unprecedented global emergency ourselves while redirecting funds to support our local community partners. We harnessed the growing power of technology to expand the reach and accuracy of our Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project so that our real-time monitoring of deforestation events and fires can capture high-resolution satellite images with high precision across the entire Amazon basin. With the help of virtual workshops and the need for local support on the ground, we also grew our partnerships with local communities, governments and nonprofits to aid in verifying and taking action on deforestation and fires. We further took advantage of the new world we found ourselves in and shifted our workshops and annual AmazonTEC conference to all virtual events, expanding participation by the thousands. The pandemic has made clear the connections between the environment’s health, human health, social justice, and economic security. Our mission has never felt more urgent, and we took time for some serious reflection on the state of the world and the environment and our role in it. A key product of this introspection, in 2020 we launched our 2020-2030 strategic plan with our new holistic approach that addresses the major needs for maintaining a healthy Amazon, today and in the future: protecting wild places, empowering people, and putting science and technology to work.