Ecosystem Restoration Peru Project #55969

Regenerate the Amazon!

by Camino Verde

Project Report | Apr 27, 2026
20 Years Planting Trees in Peru - Thanks to You

By Robin Van Loon | Executive Director

Lean, CV Loreto, overseeing seedling distribution

CV Missive March 2026

Dear Camino Verde family,

Our first report for 2026 is first about celebration.

Twenty years ago this month, Camino Verde existed only as an idea — and a single stretch of forest along the Tambopata River.

Once upon a time, in March 2006, our founding director Robin Van Loon secured the land on the Tambopata River that would become Camino Verde’s original reforestation center in the Peruvian Amazon. That means that this year marks twenty years of tree planting on the plot of jungle our organization calls home. Yes, we’d like to use some exclamation points now! Hurray for these 20 years!

We’re celebrating in a unique way! Read on to find out more (and join us in New York City on May 1st, with some very special guests). What an incredible couple of decades they have been. Here’s to twenty more.

In this report, the main article is written by environmental journalist, Emma Schneck, who visited CV Baltimori last year. In her article, The Language of the Forest, she explores the connections between forests and people, following the Camino Verde team in our main reforestation center.

What’s Happening at Camino Verde

May 1st NYC Concert! (Camino Verde gets musical in the Big Apple)
Camino Verde and Regenerative Farms go to Kenya
Updates from the Field

Main Article: The Language of the Forest, by Environmental Journalist Emma Schnek

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1. May 1 Concert in NYC!

Camino Verde invites you to a night on the town! On May 1st, in NYC, we will host our very first benefit concert! Celebrating 20 years of Amazonian tree planting, we’re joining up with living legend keyboardist John Medeski, for an unforgettable night of music.

A longtime supporter and friend of Camino Verde, John Medeski will offer solo piano performance as well as group sessions with the Peruvian Cumbia group Los Abstraccioneros. The sights and sounds of the Peruvian Amazon will accompany.

The venue? The New York Society for Ethical Culture’s beautiful, historic Adler Hall, birthplace of the ACLU and an early haunting ground of the NAACP. (Central Park West, Manhattan.)

You’ve never seen Camino Verde quite like this before. More information here. Help us spread the word and fill the hall on May 1!

2. Camino Verde and Regenerative Farms go to Kenya

We are very honored to have formed part of a coming together this January of a dozen regenerative organizations from around the world.

In Makueni County, Kenya, we gathered as regenerative changemakers and entrepreneurs to talk shop. Alongside partners working across Africa, Latin America, and beyond, this round table was all about sharing tools among leaders of groups with a similar focus: building regenerative economies from the grassroots, joining economic wellbeing for traditional and Indigenous communities with opportunities for conservation and restoration.

Some of the topics covered included community reforestation strategies, innovative ways to add value to local native species, and the fundamental importance of culture and social considerations to the success of any productive initiative that seeks to go beyond what is merely "sustainable."

Thanks to Regenerative Farms for organizing, and to Drylands Natural Resources Centre for hosting so wonderfully.

At Drylands Natural Resources Centre in Kenya, CV’s Clemencia Pinasco and Robin Van Loon join founders and directors of a dozen organizations from around the wo

3. Updates from the Field

Camino Verde’s 2025 was a year of weathering storms that affected nonprofits globally, and environmental nonprofits disproportionately. For us, 2026 is a year of feeding our stability, seeking to fortify and consolidate rather than grow and take on more. Our strength is in our diversity, and that diversity includes… you.

As 2026 shapes up to be another year of challenges to the Amazon and our planet, please consider helping us through the year in the most tangible of ways: setting up a recurring donation to Camino Verde today. A monthly donation of as little as $20 makes a huge impact on our bottom line and our stability, month by month.

Our Biggest Plant Distribution Yet

The Loreto team kicked off the year with our biggest plant distribution to date: over 20,000 seedlings delivered to more than 150 families to establish in diverse agroforestry systems. Many of these plants came straight from the community nursery in Boras de Pucaurquillo, a milestone that reflects growing local capacity to produce and manage diverse agroforestry species.

CV Community Coordinator Beto Churay distributing seedlings of 30 tree species in an Indigenous community in Loreto, Peru where Camino Verde has planted trees since 2013.

Putumayo meliponiculture work

Our continued partnership with Conservation International Peru and Yaguas National Park is helping expand and strengthen community-led meliponiculture in Putumayo. Together, we’re training local promotores and supporting meliponiculturists across six Indigenous communities in native stingless bee management, building sustainable livelihoods while supporting pollination and forest health.

Tree planting in La Joya

With the rains starting to slow, tree planting at La Joya is wrapping up for the season. The team has been busy planting young native fruit and medicinal species that thrive in the shade, giving them a strong start before the dry months ahead.

Harvest Season in Madre de Dios

It’s been a productive harvest season in Camino Verde Baltimori, with plenty of copoazú and palm fruits coming in - allowing us to process fruits in our workshop in Puerto Maldonado to produce various fruit pulps. Our freezers are now stocked to the brim of fruit pulps, ready for the next stage of processing and use.

The cacao harvest is keeping us busy at Baltimori. With our newly inaugurated drying area now in use, harvested cacao will soon be transformed into a fresh batch of our delicious Moena chocolate .

For tree seedlings to arrive home to the farms and hands of Amazonian farmers, we go by barge, by canoe, and by motorized wagon, over land and over river. Some seedlings must travel for days to reach their final destination.

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The Language of the Forest

text and photos by Emma Schneck

Don Juan walks into the forest.

Sunlight filters through the towering canopies, casting shadows on the forest floor. Walls of gnarled vines and tangled brush seem to envelop me and my guide as we make our way deeper into the rainforest. I’m on my first walk through the jungle of Tambopata with Don Juan, the nursery manager at Camino Verde, as he searches for wild seeds to collect.

He is quiet, focused on the world around us. He navigates the dense foliage with ease and a quick swing of his machete. I follow him closely behind, my rubber boots squishing loudly on the muddy ground, intermixing with the chirps and squawks of the jungle echoing through the trees.

All around me, the rainforest is speaking a language I cannot comprehend. My foreign ears are not yet attuned; I am not privy to the conversations above my head and deep below my feet: the chatter of soil biomes, the social buzz of mycelium networks. I cannot quite grasp how this forest—this living system—comes to be, how these all work together, and what they all need to survive, to flourish.

He reads the leaves quickly; his eyes do not linger but rather actively scan the dense foliage for the species he seeks. He knows the shape of the cacao, the texture of tobacco, and the feel of cacahuillo between his fingers. More crucially, he knows how they all fit together: which plants create the best conditions for others to grow, and what each species needs to survive.

Don Juan isn’t from the Amazon. He comes from a small village in the Andes mountains, an ecosystem quite unlike this tropical, dense forest of Tambopata. While as a young teenager, Don Juan came to Madre de Dios to work in the lucrative gold mining industry, and his love of nature brought him to farming and cultivation. Through decades of experimenting, he’s learned the language of the rainforest and in turn has come to care for it.

“I love the jungle because it is our lungs,” he tells me on our walk. “Taking care of the plants now protects them for our children and future generations.”

Working with Camino Verde, he says, has given him the opportunity to work with the forest while also cultivating his own farmland nearby. Having access to employment in conservation allows him to do what he loves full-time in this beautiful and remote area.

In many ways, there would be no Camino Verde without Don Juan. In addition to the deep environmental knowledge he shares with the team, he’s also the beating heart of the Camino Verde family. His teammates lovingly refer to him as “Juancito,” or “Papito” and listen attentively to him while helping him plant out in the field. He shares knowledge and love for the plants and by his example teaches the team how to listen to the natural world around them.

In our own ways, for different reasons, we’ve all come to CV Baltimori to learn the language of the forest and understand forest systems on a deeper level.

Alejandro teaching volunteers to recognize a plant species.

On my second jungle outing, I’m led by Alejandro—the farm coordinator at Camino Verde Baltimori—as he guides a group of visitors through the trees. Despite his Lima upbringing, Alejo feels like a natural teacher in the forest. On our journey, he stops carefully at each plant to lecture us on its name, its relatives, and its main uses. He quizzes us on leaves and tree bark. He points out fascinating bugs and shows us how to read our surroundings for traces of wildlife.

Teaching in the forest, he tells me, is his favorite part of the job. Living and working at the research station in Baltimori has given him the opportunity to learn more about rainforest systems and share this knowledge with visitor groups.

Camino Verde might not be a classroom in the traditional sense, but it is a living lab for all kinds of experiments. CV uses their two field stations in Tambopata to test which plant species flourish in these jungle environments. They work with local communities in the north of Peru, in Loreto, with plants that can be cultivated and sold as products to benefit both people and nature. Because of these experiences, local and Indigenous communities have begun cultivating various endangered species in their fields and in turn protect the Amazon from further deforestation.

The primary forest at Camino Verde Baltimori.

Camino Verde’s newest and youngest staff member, Neftalí, comes from one of the families that CV works with in Northern Peru. He hails from a small community about eight hours by boat from the isolated city of Iquitos, where his mother cultivates rosewood and cacao.

While Neftalí was already familiar with many of the ins and outs of cultivating in the jungle, he says he has learned and grown a lot in the four months he’s been working at Camino Verde. In his spare time, he enjoys working out in the makeshift gym on site and patiently tutoring foreign volunteers in Spanish. While he doesn’t know exactly what he wants to do career-wise, he knows he will continue to work in the jungle and help his family with their cultivation.

Sharing these conversations with the team, I realize what makes Camino Verse special is not the sheer number of trees planted or species propagated (though this number is impressive too), rather it’s in the connection that people share, both with each other and the forest system around them. To them, conservation is a practice: a living experiment. It’s something aerobic and alive that requires collaboration, learning, and experimentation.

Meeting these knowledge keepers, I recognize how integral humans are in protecting the Amazon. As the forest grows, so too does that knowledge as it is shared and taught to future stewards of the land. Perhaps the most impactful thing we can do for the rainforest is to learn how to listen.

A diversity of cacao varieties are grown at Camino Verde Baltimori.

Emma Schneck is an environmental journalist, photographer, and editor specializing in sustainable tourism and environmental activism. She has an MSc in Environmental Governance at the University of Oxford. “I tell visually-engaging stories that bridge the nexus between environment, global travel, climate solutions and more.” She visited Camino Verde in 2025.

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Dec 29, 2025
Year End Hope Taking Root in the Amazon

By Robin Van Loon and Alejandro Zevallos | Camino Verde Team

Community Distillation Center Inauguration

Did you know?

30% of all known species on Earth are found in the Amazon.

And did you also know?

Camino Verde is one of the very few organizations actively planting to preserve and restore this unparalleled biodiversity.

Help us keep the diversity of life alive and thriving — donate to Camino Verde today.

Rosewood grower Mélida, one of the most skillful of the 180 farmer families now working with CV to reforest this valuable endangered species

Our Appeal

Many worthy organizations make a year-end appeal to your heartstrings and pocketbooks. We know you have many choices.

But it’s no exaggeration to say that we can’t do this without you. Over a third of CV’s annual budget comes from donations from people like you.

Here are the most meaningful ways you can support our work:

• Make a donation today.

• Tell others why you care. Share our work on social media – or, even better, spread the word in person.

• Come visit us and see restoration in action. You are invited!

We’re so grateful to all who answered the call for support in the last Missive, but we’re not out of the woods yet. We hope you will be inspired to include Camino Verde in your year end giving.

Together, we are building a stronger, more resilient Amazon – and in doing so, helping sustain life on Earth. Thank you for being part of this movement.

What your donation makes possible

• Our Living Seed Bank: 2 reforestation centers in the Peruvian Amazon, home to over 700 documented useful species of Amazonian plants.

• Indigenous farmers cultivating diverse farms: close to 200 families in 12 communities planting with Camino Verde to restore endangered species and build regenerative livelihoods.

• Seed Centers: 3 tree nurseries producing 100+ native tree species annually, with a combined capacity of 200,000 seedlings a year.

• Enterprising Rare Botanicals: Products developed from dozens of underutilized Amazonian tree species. Camino Verde now produces chocolate, essential oils, and honey from over a dozen species of native bees.

Recent highlights

• Inauguration of CV’s first Community Distillation Center — the first-ever native community-run rosewood essential oil distillery, creating new income streams and building technical capacity.

• Beekeeping consultations with Conservation International and Yaguas National Park: CV’s team visited five native communities on the remote Putumayo River to train them in sustainable management of native Amazonian bees.

• New collaboration agreement with the Tambopata National Reserve: strengthening joint work in restoration, nurseries, environmental education, and community-based conservation across Madre de Dios.

• ECOTOP agroforestry training for our Loreto team: Bolivian agroforestry experts ECOTOP provided advanced training in pruning, harvesting, soil recovery, and agroforestry design. Five members of our Rosewood Farmer Livelihood Program also participated, expanding grassroots expertise.

• Camino Verde’s 1st ever New York City fundraiser was a great success! Thanks to everyone who came out! And, if you’re in the NYC area, read below about the next chance to catch us in your neighborhood.

Melipona bees drinking of their own –highly medicinal– honey.

Coming next year

• Making Noise in New York City: Join us on May 1st for CV’s first-ever benefit concert for Amazonian restoration! Stay tuned. Details coming in our first Missive of 2026.

• Camino Verde in Kenya: As a Regenerative Farms member organization, CV will share our native-species restoration model and visit allies at the Global Landscapes Forum and CIFOR-ICRAF.

• Hiring our new Volunteer Coordinator: After a rigorous selection process, we’ll soon be announcing the newest member of the CV team!

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Report Main Course

In this quarter’s report, we are joined by Camino Verde’s own Alejandro Zevallos, coordinator of our primary reforestation center, Camino Verde Baltimori. In this dynamic, reflective post, Alejo shares how the center has transformed over his three-plus years of stewardship.

Camino Verde’s Loreto team with a gathering of rosewood farmers from a half dozen communities

Today I Noticed that Amasisa is a Beautiful Tree

by Alejandro Zevallos, Camino Verde Baltimori Coordinator

I remember the first time I arrived to the place called Filadelfia, a boat port on the Tambopata River. The midday sun shone brightly through cotton clouds. Don Juancito was waiting for us in his immortal canoe of catahua wood. Sliding through the mud, taking small, calculated jumps, we leaped into the nine-meter boat with its pekepeke motor, roofless and with a few leaks. I was completely covered head to toe, ready to protect myself from the relentless mosquitoes. The sound of the one cylinder pekepeke was loud, but louder still was the green color that separated the river from the sky. I remember arriving with Robin and finding Mauricio, Rosa with her son Jordi, and a large, empty house where future visitors would stay.

Thanks to the legacy of an old rubber-tapping camp, Baltimori is the name of the community that borders Camino Verde (since that old camp’s rubber was sent to Baltimore, USA). That is why the station is known as Camino Verde Baltimori. This is what Mauricio (a good friend from university with whom I studied agroforestry engineering and who was now the volunteer and research coordinator) explained to me. Years ago, we had finished university and each started working on different agro-industrial farms. These farms strove to produce export-quality fruit at the expense of people's wellbeing and the environment. That's another story, but it was thanks to a series of coincidences that I ended up in a place that was the complete opposite of the destructive regime of Peruvian agro-industry. I felt that the time had come to put my knowledge to work in service of something bigger – something not only non-extractive, but ideally reciprocal and fair.

Now, talking about who I am is a longer story, but it's easier to explain what I do here as coordinator of the Camino Verde Baltimori station. My role involves an intense, beautiful mix of management, research, technical support, and community building. When I arrived, my goal was to strengthen the station as both a living space for agroforestry research and a platform for sustainable production, collective learning, and restoring the link between people and forest. This place allows me to teach and learn that farming in the rainforest does not have to be unsustainable.

To tell the truth, I never thought Mauricio and I would make such a good team. Since those first days, we have been through many incredible experiences. I think it was because we started with a lot of momentum to make progress and solve any problem that arose. We started with the basics – our lodgings, the rooms, the bathroom. We cleaned every corner, repaired tiles, put up a mirror, a curtain, some shelves, becoming plumbers and carpenters. Little by little, we discovered that the window screens were green, not black. We got rid of the termites that were eating away at the wood and artfully covered the walls. With each passing day, this jungle cabin house became a home.

After the house, we moved on to the communal kitchen. We bought new tools, fixed leaks, changed the drain, and assembled furniture. We adapted a room to serve as a storage space. We cleaned solar panels, screens, and rooms. We undertook the heroic task of moving all the wood under the house to a new space, dislodging a family of possums in the process, and created a carpentry workshop to store it all.

Dawn over the rainforest of Tambopata

We worked as a team. And with each improvement, our spirits grew: the place became more welcoming for everyone. We made a space to leave shoes, built additional beds, patched holes in the nets, and in the meantime, we welcomed our first volunteers and interns, who helped us with ideas, opinions, and suggestions. It didn't take us long to ask them:

What would you improve about this place?

The showers, they replied.

So we went into the showers: we fixed the drainage, laid tile, improved the showerheads, put screens on the open windows, installed sinks, hooks, shelves, doors, and locks. We improved the grounds outside so that people no longer had to stand in the mud, built a better space for hanging clothes, and pruned the trees to let in more light. We transformed some unused tables into raised beds for vegetables between the water tower and the kitchen. We planted aromatic herbs and chili peppers along the paths. And little by little, we filled the green areas with flowers and edible fruits.

One day, a red puma arrived and ate two chickens. The next day, it ate four, then eight. When we tried to protect them by keeping them inside their pen, the puma waited outside just ten meters away, among the banana trees.

That's why we moved the flock (ducks and chickens) to a new area, fenced in with a hedge that hides our beloved animals. It was one of the most memorable moments – moving the chickens from their old pen to the new animal space with the help of volunteers and the team. Today they live much happier and plumper lives.

The puma is gone, but we continue with our work: we built a bridge, four little cabins, a chicken coop, a duck house, a water trough, we expanded the nursery, we put a roof over the germination area, we built an eleven-meter wooden boat, and we also expanded the vegetable gardens.

And, of course, after each step we resumed with agroforestry activities, planting more than 100,000 trees in three years, and diversified experimental plots with native species. Today we walk through forests that years ago were just degraded grasslands and are now living, diversified, rapidly expanding systems that produce more than 50 types of fruits, resins, oils, medicines, and flowers. We have also established new agroforestry plots from scratch, with designs that combine native species of high ecological and economic value, such as rosewood, cacao, copoazú, moenas, copaiba, shihuahuaco, palm trees, and so many more. We have improved planting, spacing, and maintenance protocols and taken strides in monitoring the growth and productivity of agroforestry systems.

As we moved forward with improving the facilities and agroforestry systems, we gradually began to venture deeper into the forest, discovering things that changed our lives.

And so the planting continued: cassava, vegetables, chili peppers, sugar cane, papayas, coconas, cucumbers, tomatoes, passion fruit, aerial potatoes, sweet potatoes, hibiscus, squash, turmeric, ginger, and pineapples.

A few weeks ago, I was about to return to Lima for time off. While coordinating the taxi that was going to pick me up from Filadelfia and loading my suitcase, I noticed a tree over towards the boat port on the river. Its bark and shape set it apart from the rest of the plants we have been planting over the years. It was an amasisa tree, surely my contemporary. I realized that despite having walked there several times, I had never stopped to look at it. So much has happened in my three years here. Now I get on the boat, and as it pulls away, I realize how much everything has transformed in three years – and how little the larger trees have changed.

Alejandro (upper right) and the Camino Verde Baltimori team

Tambopata, one of Earth’s most biodiverse forests

Donate to Camino Verde here

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Nov 4, 2025
Reciprocity: How do we give back?

By Robin Van Loon | Executive Director

Photos from native community partners of CV

Dear friends of Camino Verde,

It’s been a few months since we last reached out, but it may feel like ages have gone by. We sincerely hope that you, the members of our dear community of Green Road Walkers across the globe, are staying safe, healthy, and well.

In this quarter’s report, we return to deep questions about how human beings can live in harmony and balance with the great web of life – questions that directly informed Camino Verde’s creation and strategies. Grounded in reciprocity we explore what it means to try to give back.

Afterward, we’ll dive in with a dynamic show-and-tell: a vibrant program update that comes as a countdown of special things you might not know about Camino Verde. Get ready for some epic reveals.

If anything you read here moves you, please donate to Camino Verde today. With ecosystems and native communities around the world under pressure and threat like never before, your contribution can truly help move the needle toward creating the kind of world we all want to live in.

We are grateful for your support.

In reciprocity,
Robin Van Loon

Reciprocity: How do we give back?

It’s one of the oldest questions humans have asked since time immemorial. Given that we receive so much, how do we give something back in a way that honors the gift?

How do we show, in our actions as in our thoughts and intentions, that the kindness and sustenance we receive are acknowledged adequately?

Can we at least attempt to remain in equilibrium with the generous sources of life and the abundance we experience? How can we hope to give something meaningful back, when what we receive is so very precious?

From honoring the bodily sacrifice of the plants and animals that feed us, to thanking the ancestors for paving the way, to making thoughtful offerings to the Earth in humble recognition of Her splendid provisioning – we humans have always looked for ways to take a step beyond just simple thanks. We have always yearned for balance and “right relationship” with the givers of life.

In Camino Verde’s home turf in Peru, since ancient times this searching question has been addressed in the concept of ayni or sacred reciprocity. From the Quechua, the principle of ayni is both spiritual and social in nature. Ayni says, “Today for you, tomorrow for me.” On some of the most ancient Peruvian temple walls, this principle is expressed in a symbol of crossed hands. To this day, communal work activities in many rural Andean and Amazonian communities are organized around the ayni system.

These values are as relevant now as they ever were. In our world today, under the weight of the challenges we face, sometimes it can be easy to ignore the gift, to fail to see and to acknowledge all we receive, let alone to ask how we can give something back.

And yet it’s still possible to do so. Rituals of reciprocity – and their simple daily practice – are still available to us, and they still feel good. They heal, in that they restore balance. It makes us more whole, to try to see all that we receive, and to make a sincere attempt to give back.

But how do we go about this? The ways are as diverse as we are; there is no one size fits all answer. We can still thank our ancestors for their sacrifices; we can still “say grace” over the food that feeds us. And we can all find ways to act selflessly for its own sake, to be of service not for a karmic kickback or satisfaction for ourselves, but because we recognize that, sometimes mysteriously, sometimes invisibly, we too have also been served.

Candidly, Camino Verde was born from the intention to return something meaningful to the givers of timeless gifts. The direct experience of the Amazon’s wonders, the bounty and kindness of the forest and its ancient lifeforms, is what inspired us to try to do something on the forest’s behalf. We ask, if the plants that feed and shelter and heal us could speak, what would they request in return for the medicines and foods they render unto us so selflessly?

This is what initially set us on the path of planting in 2007: the desire to help the species, the life forms, that are so helpful to us. In our case, it was the great trees. These masters of generosity, who build soils, provide habitat and nutrition for fungi and animals like us, the ones who spin the very air we breathe. The intention –both selfless and selfish– to give something back to the trees is what got us started, and it’s what keeps us going.

As is life’s wont, reciprocity isn’t just a binary feedback loop. Across a diverse biosphere with a multitude of interacting organisms, reciprocity grows in concentric rings and chains, an interplay of ripples and echoes that influence each other in all directions. As a result, the seeds we sow over here may very well have an impact far beyond our own limited reach.

As we endeavor to honor the gift of the trees by returning something in kind, we at Camino Verde have been moved and touched by you, our friends and collaborators, contributors and supporters, who have told us over the years that for some of you, we are one of the vehicles by which you enact your reciprocity.

It gladdens us to be a conduit through which many of you seek to give back to Mother Earth. It humbles us and makes us want to honor the gifts that you give, your selfless and caring contributions, by doing the most meaningful and effective work we possibly can. The hundreds of thousands of trees Camino Verde planted? We’ve planted them together. It’s thanks to your giving back that we can give back.

CV works among the trees, and we work among the people in the trees, the Indigenous nations and communities who have kept the forests alive and healthy for thousands of years. This seems to be the best way, the most sensible way, for us to direct our impact today. If the original people of this landscape are on board with our initiatives, then we must be doing something right.

The nearly 200 families in 11 native communities with whom we plant trees and raise bees may be a drop in the ocean. But, for them as for us, what we’re doing is working, and that’s no small thing. The seed that we’ve nurtured and grown, now is a vibrant tree.

It saddens me to say that Camino Verde is in a lean time. 2025 has been a hard year for so many of us; we know CV is not unique in its struggle. Environmentalists, like Indigenous and marginalized people the world over, must get creative like never before, just to survive. In order to be resilient, we’re diversifying, we’re doubling our efforts – and we’re learning to take a risk and ask for support when we need it.

And so I’m reaching out to ask for your help.

If each person reading this report contributes a hundred dollars, Camino Verde will be able to see the year through and start 2026 on strong, steady footing – ready to deploy more seeds in new communities and grow the ripples of our reach. Of course, I know that we don’t all have a hundred dollars to give, but believe me that every single gift counts. And if you’re able to give more than a hundred, we appreciate it so very deeply.

If you are able, if you are called, donate to Camino Verde today. On the donation form, you’ll notice there’s a place to write us a comment; so, please, let us know what you’re reciprocating – in memory of whom, inspired by or in thanks to what, are you called to give something back. We can’t wait to hear from you.

A final, important question to add: what are you giving to, when you go to give something back? What world are you building, what are you helping to live?

Read on to learn more about the latest and greatest work of Camino Verde in the Peruvian Amazon and beyond. We’re sharing some incredible updates in the section below about all we’re able to do thanks to you. Please check it out, to know what you’re nurturing.

We are grateful for your support! Thank you for helping us give something back.

Top Ten things you might not know about CV

For this quarter’s updates, we’re structuring things as a countdown. Here are the Top Ten things you may not know –but we think you should– about Camino Verde’s mission and programs. We hope you’ll learn something new about the impact you’re helping us make.

And please, let us know what it is! We always love to hear from you, and we’re excited to find out what you hadn’t known about us before checking this out. Make sure to read to the end; like all Top Tens, this one gets better and better as you count down!

10. Seed Fair XXI
Coming this weekend, Camino Verde is proud to participate in the 21st Annual Fair for the Exchange of Seeds and Knowledge, held by local partner org, Association for Ecological Agriculture. Each year we show up in a big way for native biodiversity with seeds and seedlings of dozens of native tree species.

9. Indigenous Representation in the CV Team

Did you know? Of the 15 staff members who make up our agroforestry field teams in Madre de Dios and Loreto, we are proud that over half (8) are from native communities. That means representatives of the Shipibo and Bora nations make up over a third of CV’s total staff (currently consisting of 23 members). This is in addition to the 180 families in 11 native communities who are our partners in tree planting and beekeeping programs.

8. Yearlong Volunteers

Since the very beginning, CV has hosted volunteers and interns at our reforestation centers. But in these nearly 18 years, we had never once had a volunteer for a full year – until now! In 2025, we have two of them. We are thrilled to welcome Luca and Jarven, from the German volunteer placement program of the NGO ADRA.

7. CV Tree Nursery Workshops
In 2024 and 2025, CV has provided tree nursery trainings to hundreds of participants in the Madre de Dios and Loreto regions. At our La Joya Center and at local schools, our workshops focus on training local and Indigenous women to raise tree seedlings.

6. Rosewood In Vitro Propagation

Our ambitious planting of the highly endangered rosewood tree continues! With seed sources scarce and dwindling in the wild, CV turned to vegetative and in vitro propagation to break the seed bottleneck. After years of trying, we are finally seeing exciting results in both the in vitro lab and the vegetative propagation beds. Patience is paying off!

5. Team Evolutions

Everyone who has visited CV in the past 4 years will be sad to learn that beloved Volunteer Coordinator Mauricio Arhuire has moved on to his next great professional chapter. He will be missed! We wish Mauri well as he pursues a new and exciting career path – and look forward to welcoming in our next Caminante Verde teammate. Stay tuned!

4. CV’s First Tree Nursery in a Native Community Turns One
After years of developing tree planting agroforestry programs in the native communities of the Ampiyacu basin, we are thrilled to celebrate the first year of operation of our first-ever community tree nursery. The “Communal Nursery” has already produced thousands of seedlings of dozens of species – and hosted paid internships for three women community members learning the A to Z of tree nursery management. This makes two nurseries in two regions where CV offers paid internships to Indigenous women, helping grow the next generation of local tree nurserywomen in the Peruvian Amazon.

3. Camino Verde in Kenya

We’re going back to East Africa! As a member of Regenerative Farms, Camino Verde will present our replicable models of community-based native species agroforestry for the production of non-timber forest products in Kenya. You may recall that last year, Programs & Strategies Manager Clemencia Pinasco represented CV at the Global Landscapes Forum in Nairobi. Now, in January 2026, she and ED Robin Van Loon will return to share our experience at the Drylands Natural Resource Centre.

2. 2nd National Melipona Bees Congress

Last month, Puerto Maldonado’s UNAMAD University hosted Peru’s 2nd National Congress for stingless Melipona bees. CV was a member of the planning committee, and our Loreto Regional Coordinator Carlos García led our team’s participation in seminars, plenaries, and practicums. CV’s reforestation centers are home to over 40 hives representing a dozen native species of medicinal honey-producing stingless bees. But this is nothing compared to our partners from 11 native communities, whose hives number in the hundreds! Coming soon: a Melipona Beekeeping Manual produced for community members by CV and ally NGOs the Chaikuni Institute and One Planet.

1. Distillation in the Communities!

Drumroll please… Over 12 years since we first planted rosewood trees in a native community, CV is now establishing a distillation plant for the production of rosewood essential oil in one of our partner communities. In close collaboration with Conservation International and Yaguas National Park (one of Peru’s few natural protected areas with an Indigenous director), the distillation plant will allow rosewood farmers to retain more added value and build new technical skills locally.

There you have it – our Top Ten news items. Thanks for reading! Look forward to more, in our next report before year’s end.

Carlos Garcia presenting in the congress

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