About Amazon Ecology
About Amazon Ecology
How it Started
The Center for Amazon Community Ecology was founded as a non-profit organization in 2006. Our programs have focused on helping people from traditional communities to sustainably harvest and market value-added non-timber forest products like handicrafts and essential oils so they can make a living without damaging the forest.
We now work with over 200 artisans from 16 native and campesino communities in the northern Peruvian Amazon. We sell some of our partners products through our online store, retail stores and special events and reinvest part of our sales to support health, education and reforestation in our partner communities. During the peak of the pandemic, we provided medicine and food aid to almost 600 families.
Our Mission
Amazon Ecology promotes the well-being of the Amazon ecosystem by supporting its people to create sustainable livelihoods, vibrant cultures, healthy and empowered communities, and resilient forests.
Our Values
We envision an Amazonia where people create sustainable livelihoods, strengthen traditional communities, and conserve the world’s largest rainforest.
Become a Volunteer
Amazon Ecology welcomes help from people with many skills to support our work in the U.S and Peru
Our Partners and Organizations
A list of funders & communities that help support Amazon Ecology
Amazon Ecology Peru
Amazon Ecology promotes the well-being of the Amazon ecosystem by supporting its people to create sustainable livelihoods, vibrant cultures, healthy and empowered communities, and resilient forests.
Garza Vica
Garza Viva is a company established in Peru in 2019 to buy crafts and sell crafts from our artisan partners. It manages a store in Iquitos, seeks to expand craft sales to other businesses in Peru and exports crafts to the US and other countries.
Ampiyacu River
We support artisan development in nine Bora, Huitoto, Ocaina and Yagua native communities in the Ampiyacu watershed in cooperation with the FECONA native federation. They make the widest diversity of crafts of all of our partners. Our project base in the area since 2009 has been the Bora village of Brillo Nuevo where we also did sustainable harvest studies on copal resin and cooperated with our NGO partner Camino Verde to plant, harvest and transform rosewood leaves and branches into essential oil.
Ucayali River
We studied the ecology and sustainable harvest of copal resin at the Jenaro Herrera field station operated by Institute for Investigations of the Peruvian Amazon (IIAP) from 2006 to 2018. Since 2007, we have also worked with a small but very talented group of artisans who have perfected their woven butterfly and other insect ornaments. Their leader helps us train other artisans in many other communities.
Tahuayo River
We have worked with artisans in the campesino village of Chino on the Tahuayo River since 2008. These artisans have led the way forming an effective association, sustainably managing their chambira palm resources, and selling their baskets and and other crafts to tourists and wholesale buyers. We began working with veteran artisans from Chino's neighbors Esperanza and Santa Cruz in 2023.
Marañon and Yarapa Rivers
We began working with artisans from the campesino and Kukama villages of Amazonas, San Francisco, and Puerto Miguel in 2015. They excel at making a wide variety of woven birds and other animal ornaments. We regularly host artisan and communication workshops near Nauta with our NGO partner Minga Peru.
Napo River
We have worked with three Maijuna native communities in the region on an intermittent basis since 2009 to explore the commercial feasibility of copal resin harvest. We are now focused on building Maijuna artisan capacity to make woven animal ornaments in cooperation with our NGO partner OnePlanet and native federation FECONAMAI.
Project Funders
