Rainforest Foundation US
Rainforest Foundation US (RFUS) partners with Indigenous peoples and local communities across the Amazon and Central America to protect rainforest ecosystems and address the climate crisis. For 35 years, we have supported rainforest communities and organizations throughout Latin America to secure their rights to their traditional lands and livelihoods. Our programming—backed by mounting scientific evidence—is guided by the core belief that Indigenous peoples are the best stewards of the rainforests, defending them better and more cost-effectively than conventional forest conservation entities like national parks.
A View from the Frontlines of Rainforest Protection
Betty Rubio Padilla’s daughter begged her to quit her job defending the Amazon rainforest.
“She told me, ‘They can kill you. They can kidnap you.’ I know that my work is dangerous,” says Rubio, 40 years old. “But I have committed myself to this responsibility, in order to show them that nothing is impossible. So if I have to die, then I have to die. But I will die defending the forest.”
Betty works as an Indigenous forest patroller, also known within the science community as a “community monitor”. She defends over 30 square miles (7,800 hectares) of Peruvian rainforest titled to Puerto Arica, a Kichwa community (population: 79) where she’s lived most of her life.
And despite her daughter’s protestations, she never neglects her family. The mother of six wakes up at 5:00 am every morning to prepare oatmeal and a Peruvian fish stew, chilcano.
“I have to cook breakfast before I go to work. For my children,” Rubio says. “I may not come back early, depending on where I’m going.”
Protecting the rainforest is a complex task. Rubio reads satellite-issued deforestation alerts from her smartphone, then machetes through dense brush and wades through swamps and rivers to the correspondent GPS coordinates, where she verifies and documents tree loss. Her job is the frontline of forest protection: Without these reports, Puerto Arica would be in the dark about the degradation of their land, and thus unable to respond properly.
The work is dangerous, Rubio explains, because she’s interfering with illegal operations driven by those seeking to destroy the forest for profit. In Puerto Arica, illegal logging has run rampant. The oldest cedar and lupuna trees of Padilla’s youth have disappeared, their breathtaking trunks no longer rising up along the river banks.
Between 2018 and 2020, Rainforest Foundation US helped train Rubio and more than 100 other indigenous forest patrollers in Rainforest Alert, the technologies they now employ to identify deforestation on their community’s collective lands. The trainings were conducted in partnership with the Indigenous Peoples’ Organization of the Eastern Amazon (ORPIO). The territorial monitoring program is predicated on extensive scientific research, which shows that indigenous peoples are the most effective stewards of the rainforest, and that the continued health of those rainforests is crucial in the fight against climate change.
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Programs
Equipped with Tech, Indigenous Forest Monitors Are Curbing Deforestation
Rainforest Alert, our flagship program, supports Indigenous communities to defend their territories using cutting-edge satellite technology combined with traditional forest knowledge. This community-led monitoring program equips Indigenous patrollers with remote sensing tools to detect and verify deforestation in real time. On-the-ground investigations follow digital alerts, allowing communities to act quickly and decisively against illegal activity.
A scientific impact study found that Indigenous communities using Rainforest Alert reduced deforestation by 52% in just the first year, compared to those without the program.
Expanding Rainforest Alert across the Amazon could reduce carbon dioxide emissions generated from deforestation—at a remarkably low cost of just $2 per acre per year.
A Landmark Victory: 20 Indigenous Communities in Peruvian Amazon Secure Land Titles
Lands titled to Indigenous communities experience less deforestation and protect more biodiversity than any other conservation model, including national parks. Land titles are one of the most effective tools for reducing deforestation in Indigenous territories, resulting in a 66% reduction in forest cover loss.
The longer Indigenous peoples are forced to wait for legal recognition of their land, the more vulnerable they remain to illegal loggers, miners, and ranchers who take advantage of the bureaucratic limbo to raze the forest for profit. Now, these 20 communities have the necessary legal recourse to remove any invaders encroaching on their land.
