Conserving the
Amazon Rainforest...
Our Mission
The Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon is a nonprofit working to conserve biodiversity and other natural resources in the Peruvian Amazon, for the benefit of all those who live in and depend on the rainforest.
Why Fight for the Amazon?
The Amazon rainforest is an incredible ecosystem, but why exactly is it so important? Watch the following short video by ASA contributor William Persson to learn from our President Dr. Geoff Gallice why we fight for this amazing natural treasure:
News from the Amazon
Gold price surges, threatening the Amazon with more illegal & unsustainable mining
March 31, 2025
Global economic uncertainty, driven largely by the trade conflict and tariffs pushed by the U.S. president over the past several months, has driven the price of gold to more than $3,100 per ounce, the highest it's been since 1986. Gold is typically viewed as a safe investment by both private investors and central banks, especially in times of crisis, and when the commodity's demand increases, its price increases apace. This is bad news for the Amazon, a major source of the world's gold supply. The problem is that, per unit area, there is actually not that much of the precious metal here; to get at it, miners turn over massive amounts of alluvial sediments, destroying large areas of pristine rainforest in the process. The damage is essentially permanent – what's left behind after most mining operations in the Amazon is a barren landscape that may never recover. To make matters worse, most small-scale mining operations use mercury to bind tiny gold particles for extraction, leading to an acute public health crisis across huge swaths of the region. This ongoing story highlights the interconnectedness of global events and the conservation of the Amazon, including here in souhteastern Peru, which is heavily impacted by widespread small-scale gold mining.
Read Reuter's coverage of the spike in gold prices here, or Mongabay's coverage of one of many victims here
Isolated group makes contact with local indigenous community in the Peruvian Amazon
July 17, 2024
Images taken recently in southern Peru show members of the Mascho Piro, a group comprising hundreds of people who live in voluntary isolation deep in the Amazon rainforest, on a beach exposed by low water during the region's dry season. The Mascho Piro have mostly shunned contact with outsiders since their ancestors were persecuted by the mercenary army of the Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald at the turn of the twentieth century, but in recent decades contact – and conflict – have been on the rise as loggers, gold miners, and others have steadily encroached on their territory. This most recent sighting at an isolated indigenous Yine village is believed to be related to logging activities in a nearby concession that was granted decades ago to a private company and which overlaps with their ancestral lands. Despite being FSC certified, the concession's hundreds of kilometers of logging tracks, as well as the widespread felling of trees and other activities associated with large-scale resource extraction, are highly disruptive and create a hard barrier to the group's historical movement patterns. While indigenous rights advocates in Peru have been working for years to strengthen the protection of their land, the concession was granted legally and a favorable deal for the Mashco Piro remains elusive.
Read Mongabay's excellent coverage of this ongoing situation here.
Study shows that biological field stations provide high return on investment for conservation
March 4, 2024
A new study has shown that biological field stations provide a wide range of benefits to local biodiversity in the tropics. Among these are reduced hunting and deforestation, two of the most important drivers of biodiversity loss in the world's tropical rainforests. The study also showed that these benefits come at a bargain – the field stations included in the study acheived these successes with relatively little investment compared to state-managed protected areas, further highlighting their significance. Finca Las Piedras, the ASA's research and education center located in SE Peru, exists por precisely this reason – by working with our local communities, we too are making progress towards sustainable economies while improving the biodiversity value and ecosystem services of the rainforest that surrounds us.
Read more about the study's findings here.
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Updates from ASA in Peru
A new species of firefly described from Finca Las Piedras
Fireflies, which are actually beetles, are one of the few groups of organisms that produce their own light via a chemical reaction known as "bioluminescence". Fireflies use the light produced either as an aposematic signal—a warning to potential predators that they pack a toxic or distasteful punch—or as a means of attracting a mate. A new study by Jéssica Herzog Viana and colleagues has just described a new group of fireflies, the genus Saguassu, including a previously undescribed species from Finca Las Piedras. The new species is called Saguassu acutum, which comes from the Latin word for sharp, a reference to the species' reproductive morphology; naming new species after such characters is common practice among taxonomists. So far this new species is only known from two locations, Finca Las Piedras and a neighboring concession for the harvest of Brazil nuts. This study is significant as it highlights how much is unknown about even very charismatic groups of insects such as fireflies, and is an important contribution to our knowledge of biodiversity in the Amazon. Congratulations Jéssica et al.!
You can read more about Saguassu acutum, as well as the six other newly-described species, here.
Finca Las Piedras highlighted in popular new nature documentary
Finca Las Piedras, the ASA's research and education center in the Peruvian Amazon, is one of the stars of a brand new documentary on Netflix! The series is called ‘Our Living World’, and it explores the interconnectedness of life all across planet Earth. FLP features in Episode 1, which describes the connections between diverse, and sometimes unexpected, species in a variety of different ecosystems. One segment filmed at the site shows how one of our biggest Brazil nut trees interacts with its orchid bee pollinators, the orchids the bees rely on, and the agoutis that stash the nuts, helping the Brazil nut to reproduce. Another large tree at FLP—our largest, in fact—is also featured, a stately, centuries old fig tree. Here on site we know this individual as the Hero Tree, and the documentary segment shows this and other diverse organisms in the rainforest are interconnected via the so-called ‘Wood Wide Web’.
The documentary is currently streaming on Netflix, and we highly recommend it! It's beautifully shot and you’ll learn a lot about how our amazing, biodiverse world is interconnected—and why it’s important to continue to fight for it.
Maculambrysus gallicei, a new species of aquatic bug described from Finca Las Piedras
Our main goal with everything we do is to protect biodiversity in southeastern Peru, and a key way we're working towards that is to study the organisms that surround us at Finca Las Piedras. Oftentimes this means documenting species at the site, or monitoring the impacts of human activities on their population trends. But sometimes, we document something that was previously completely unknown to science; we call these 'new' species. When this happens, it's important to describe the new species, since without a name there can't even be a legal framework for protection, let alone coordinated action should the new species turn out to be threatened upon further examination. Robert Sites, a taxonomist and one of our research partners, has just described a new species of aquatic saucer bug, Maculambrysus gallicei, from a stream at FLP. As Robert notes in his study, the species was not found in surveys of neighboring streams, and so it is currently only known from our property. This highlights not only how much is left to study in the region, but the importance of our work to protect the rainforest, even small parts of which may harbor unique biodiversity.
We're thrilled to start the new year with this amazing discovery! Click here to learn more about this new aquatic insect from FLP.
The Amazon Lab – An exciting new effort to promote science and education in the Peruvian rainforest
Johana Reyes, director of the Alianza Para Una Amazonía Sostenible Perú – the ASA's sister organization in Peru – has just launched the Amazon Lab, an experience that aims to spark curiosity, promote experimentation, enhance collaboration, and advance science in the southeastern Peruvian Amazon. This will be achieved by engaging young people – students ranging from elementary through high school and university – in hands-on activities in the rainforest and under the guidance of researchers working in a variety of scientific disciplines spanning biology, biomechanics and robotics, and environmental engineering. In a region of such incredible biodiversity and endless opportunities for research and education, the Amazon Lab is sure to have a huge impact on the rainforest's future scientists and leaders. Stay tuned for updates as the project gets underway!
The Jungle Biomechanics Lab is coming to Finca Las Piedras
We're excited to announce the launch of the Jungle Biomechanics Lab at our research and education center in Madre de Dios this summer! The JBL is a collaboration between the ASA and the Bhamla Lab at Georgia Tech, with funding from the National Science Foundation, that will bring undergraduate and graduate students from Peru and the USA to the Amazon, where they will learn field biology, biomechanics and robotics in the world's most biodiverse rainforest. The Amazon offers a limitless supply of ideas and potential research topics inspired by millions of years of evolution, and important discoveries are all but guaranteed. The only question is what, exactly, will we discover?
Read more about the Jungle Biomechanics Lab and the Bhamla lab's research here.
New Book Published: '¡Quién Anda Ahí!'
The Red de Aprendizaje y Conservación (Learning and Conservation Network) has just published an extraordinary new book, '¡Quién Anda Ahí!' (Who Goes There!). The book is the result of a year-long project studying wildlife in the rainforest of Madre de Dios, in southeastern Peru, with the help of local students from elementary and high schools from throughout the region. In it, you can learn all about how camera traps can be used to study elusive wildlife and boost their protection, and, of course, all about the incredible rainforest animals that are otherwise very difficult to observe. Thousands of copies will soon be distributed to schools in the Peruvian Amazon, starting with some of the most remote communities on Earth in Peru's world-famous Manu National Park, where they will be used as a tool to train the next generation of biologists, conservationists, and engaged citizens in the Amazon. Camera trapping for the project was conducted at Finca Las Piedras, the ASA's research and education center in Madre de Dios, and K'erenda Homet, a local reserve near the regional capital of Puerto Maldonado. Congratulations to the authors, Carmen Chávez and Daniela Cafaggi, and all the hundreds of others whose hard work made this amazing new book possible - learn more about the project and download the book for free here!
New butterflies described from SE Peru
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ASA collaborator Shinichi Nakahara, along with several ASA researchers and other collaborators from Peru and around the world, have just described a new genus of butterflies from southeastern Peru! The new genus is called Cisandina and contains seven species, two of which were previously completely unknown to science—the other five were known but had their names changed, which happens frequently when new information becomes available about poorly-known species, especially in the hyper-diverse Amazon. The researchers gave one of these two new butterflies the name Cisandina castanya, due to the fact that its range largely overlaps with the Brazil nut ('castaña') corridor in SE Peru. The life history (eggs, caterpillars, and pupae) and host plant of C. castanya, as well as that of the other new species described in the study, Cisandina philippa, are also described for the first time based on work conducted by the ASA at Finca Las Piedras, our research and education center in SE Peru. Read the full study here.
Stay Updated on Our Work
Our Partners
Saving the Amazon is a team effort. These are our institutional partners in the fight for the rainforest:
