Straddling the watersheds of the Napo and Putumayo — two of the Peruvian Amazon’s largest rivers — a vast wilderness harbors the full array of western Amazonia’s megadiversity. It serves as a vital source of biological resources for the Maijuna people, one of the smallest and most vulnerable ethnic groups in Peru.

The fate of this forest and of the Maijuna are strongly linked. To ensure long-term protection of biological diversity and their own cultural traditions, the Maijuna people proposed the creation of a Regional Conservation Area (RCA). A proven model for successful land conservation in the Peruvian state of Loreto, this method of protection emphasizes participatory management, conservation-compatible economic uses, and adaptive management.

Following its official declaration on February 4, 2012, this new conservation area protects a true jewel: a complex of Amazonian high terraces — a habitat unknown until recent biological inventories — that shelters a flora and fauna with a number of new, rare, and specialized species. These terraces and the adjacent lowland forests are underlain by diverse soil types and give rise to seven local drainages, whose waters support the flora and fauna of the area, as well as its human residents.

There is rapidly mounting pressure on the natural resources of the Amazon that is fueled by the region’s growing population and on economic activity that is based on the over-exploitation of natural resources for short-term revenues. Current logging practices are not sustainable, and deforestation for agriculture and oil palm plantations creates virtually irreversible destruction.

As a result, our work to assure the ongoing protection of the Maijuna Reserve is critical.

These 970,000 acres of primary rainforest are the first protected area in Loreto, Peru designated to conserve both biological and cultural diversity. Nature and Culture International, San Diego Zoo Global and PROCREL have collaborated with the Maijuna communities for a number of years, conducting natural resource assessments, supporting creation of the community groups essential to the establishment of an RCA, and conducting ecological and socioeconomic evaluation of key natural resources.

As part of our continuing efforts, we are providing the technical support and equipment needed to train those who directly participate in the management of the reserve, and we will continue to work with the Maijuna to define community processes for sustainably managing key natural resources.