Excitement rushes over me as I arrive in Puerto Maldonado, a small city in the state of Madre de Dios, Peru, and the gateway to the southern Peruvian Amazon. Before locating my hostel, I was already seeking adventure. Walking around the town’s plaza you will find numerous locals and small businesses ready to provide a … Read more
As a novice conservation ecologist I had the adventurous task of monitoring wildlife populations in the Peruvian Amazon. My perspiring students and I would walk in a straight line through pristine rainforest, holding a GPS, binoculars and a datasheet, to record any monkey, jaguar or rat that we encountered. We had research permits to do … Read more
The COVID-19 pandemic has had wide-ranging effects on Indigenous and rural communities, exacerbating challenges to goals of sustainability in the Amazon region. The people are facing a triple crisis: biodiversity loss, climate change and social inequality. The pandemic has shown us the structural injustices and the inevitable consequences of land degradation, extractivism and illegal activities … Read more
The COVID-19 pandemic caught the world by surprise, sweeping across countries in only weeks, leaving no part of the world safe. The news provides daily coverage of international COVID-19 statistics; however, it rarely mentions the people of indigenous communities and their perilous struggle with the pandemic. While COVID-19 has been a difficult adjustment for people … Read more
