By Geoff Gallice | Project leader
Greetings from the Amazon! It’s the peak of the dry season here at Finca Las Piedras, our base of operations in Peru’s Madre de Dios region, and that means lots of interesting things are happening in the rainforest. The dry season brings lots of changes—many plants, for instance, are flowering, getting ready to later produce fruit as heavy rains return in a few months. The timing of fruiting and flowering is called ‘phenology’, and we have just finished setting up a permanent 1 hectare plot in which we will monitor this for nearly 200 species of Amazonian trees. Data gathered from the plot will also allow us to monitor how the rainforest’s carbon storage changes over time, and how climate change is impacting tree mortality and recruitment. We have also recently completed our first full year’s sampling of butterflies in our permanent monthly trapping study, and ASA staff are now busy trying to tease patterns from the mountains of data the study has already generated. Just like for plants, we are interested in the impacts of climate change and other human disturbances on butterfly populations in our part of the Amazon. These are just a couple of the many things our team of researchers is busy with at the moment, all of which are laying an important foundation for understanding how the Amazon works, how it is changing, and how we can best protect and restore it.
On the education front, after a tough couple of years of restrictions due to Covid-19, schools will soon be resuming in-person classes and we are thrilled to soon get back into the field with our local children! One thing that we’re particularly excited about is a new project we’re launching that will bring more than 80 local students from 10 rural schools in the local school district to Finca Las Piedras. We’ll work with the kids to teach them about the rainforest, its plants and animals, and how they all work together to keep the Amazon healthy. This will be an important experience for children who have few other opportunities for hands-on learning, and we expect to make significant progress in helping to shape their environmental identities. Our hope is that strong environmental identities will translate to more sustainable actions among the next generation of rainforest stewards, ensuring both a healthy environment and local livelihoods long into the future.
As always, thank you for your support—together we are continuing to have a huge impact in the Amazon, just when the rainforest and the people who live here need it the most. We are all so grateful to have you on our side.
Sincerely,
Geoff and Johana
By Geoff Gallice | President of the Board
By Geoff Gallice | Project leader
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