[ STORY 02 ] [ STORY 02 ] SAVING
THE AMAZON
ON
MULTIPLE LEVELS SAVING
THE AMAZON
ON
MULTIPLE LEVELS

Enrique Ortiz is about to lead us on what he calls a “crazy trip” through the Peruvian Amazon. Starting at an altitude of 4,500 meters high up in the Andes, we are going to make our way down through a series of interlinked national parks and protected areas to the lowland rainforests at 300 meters. Our itinerary will showcase two things: first, how climate change is affecting the mountain cloud forests (which are particularly fragile); and second, how important continuous forests are to avert massive extinctions.

Enrique is the ideal guide because he has directly helped conserve these forests through the NGOs he founded. So what first triggered his interest in conservation? A trained tropical ecologist, he felt inspired to act when he began to see places where he had done field research being wiped out. “That’s when I said: ‘It's not enough just to be studying ticks or spiders. You have to come up with solutions to understand what is happening and to protect these critical, fragile forests,’” he says. That led to him and natural historian Adrian Forsyth co-founding Amazon Conservation (Conservación Amazónica) in Peru, an NGO committed to “uniting science, innovation and people to protect the Amazon.”

Our second stop is Manu Biological Station in the Manu Biosphere Reserve in Southern Peru. At an altitude of 600 metres, it is surrounded by mature and riparian forests and wetlands. Programme director Alejandro Lopera is an entomologist. He explains that, as a rich source of protein, insects are linked to every other organism through the food web. Because of this interconnectedness, modelling insects’ response to the warming climate is a great way to create a general model of how the ecosystem in its entirety will itself change. “Insects will have to move to colder places. We want to understand how far they can go. If an insect like an orchid bee, for example, which pollinates a specific orchid, has to move up, but the orchid cannot move with it, what will happen to that orchid?” he asks.

This is when Enrique points out that Manu Biological Station is special not just for its biodiversity but also for its rich cultural diversity. He arranges for us to meet one of the Huacaria elders, Sergio Pacheco, who explains the delicate balancing act required to secure some of the benefits of “civilisation” (such as schools), while maintaining aspects of Huacaria culture such as healing songs and traditional dances. For his part, Enrique is particularly keen that indigenous peoples’ knowledge of medicinal plants and forest management should be preserved for future generations.

Amazon Conservation promotes sustainable agroforestry solutions that provide a livelihood for local people and also conserve forests. Brazil nut tree management is very much the mainstay of this initiative. Why? Because unlike other tropical forest fruits such as acai berries which are almost all grown in man-made plantations that replace forests, Brazil nuts can only grow in pristine forests. (Brazil nut trees—50 meters tall and living as long as 1,400 years—die within just 15 years if the forest around them is cut down.) “By consuming Brazil nuts, you are saving a tropical forest. It’s our responsibility to consume products that come from forests managed by community-based enterprises,” says Enrique, pointing out that the local community downriver gets fully one-third of its income from Brazil nuts.