Amazon Rainforest

Protecting the forest by protecting the people who live in it

The Amazon is the largest tropical rainforest on Earth. It generates rainfall across South America, stores vast amounts of carbon and helps regulate the climate far beyond its borders. Roughly 14 to 17 per cent of it has already been cleared, and much more has been degraded by fire, drought and logging. Scientists warn that the forest is approaching a tipping point, beyond which large areas could shift to a drier, savannah-like state.1

Why we work here

Our founder, Dr. Kerry Bowman, has made repeated expeditions into remote protected Indigenous territory in the western Amazon along the Brazil–Peru border, interviewing Indigenous communities, officials, miners and loggers, and finding the ecosystems inside protected reserves largely intact.2 It is the same lesson we have learned in eastern Congo: forests endure when the people who depend on them have the rights, security and resources to care for them.

Indigenous stewardship works

Indigenous territories are among the least disturbed ecosystems on the planet, and legal recognition of Indigenous land rights has been linked to sharp reductions in deforestation. Some of the most intact forest is home to peoples living in voluntary isolation, such as the Mashco Piro of Peru’s Madre de Dios region. Dr. Bowman argues that respecting their choice to remain isolated is both a human-rights obligation and one of the most effective ways to protect biodiversity.3 A 2026 study found that Indigenous territories keep the Amazon forested as effectively as formal protected areas.4

The threats

Cattle ranching and agriculture are no longer the only pressures. Organized criminal networks now exert growing control over parts of the Amazon through illegal gold mining, logging, land grabbing and wildlife trafficking, in some areas standing in for weak state institutions. Environmental damage creates openings for crime, and criminal control in turn accelerates the destruction. Indigenous communities are affected first and hardest.1

What we’re doing

Building on more than two decades of community-led conservation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including the Kahuzi-Biega Environmental School and the Great Ape Habitat Connectivity Project, the Forest Health Alliance is working with Indigenous and local communities in the western Amazon as they establish stewardship over their forests.

Community radio in the Javari Valley

In Atalaia do Norte, the gateway to Brazil’s Javari Valley, the community association ACUATAN (Associação das Comunidades Unidas de Atalaia do Norte) is building Rádio Javari FM, a radio station for Indigenous and local communities across the region. In remote river communities, radio reaches places that phone and internet networks do not, carrying news, health information and local voices. Learn more about ACUATAN →

How you can help

  • Support Rádio Javari FM: give directly to ACUATAN’s Indigenous community radio.
  • Donate to support Indigenous-led forest protection.
  • Choose carefully: ask where the gold, timber and beef you buy come from.
  • Speak up for Canadian and international action against money laundering and illegally sourced imports. See more ways to get involved.

Dr. Kerry Bowman on the Amazon

Sources

1. Kerry Bowman, “The Amazon is not just under environmental assault…”, The Globe and Mail, July 2, 2026.
2. “U of T’s Kerry Bowman: Should we contact the uncontacted?”, University of Toronto News, September 15, 2017.
3. Kerry Bowman, “Respecting uncontacted peoples can protect biodiversity and our humanity”, Mongabay, December 3, 2025.
4. “Indigenous territories maintain Amazon forest just as well as protected areas, study finds”, Mongabay, September 2026.
Header photo: Neil Palmer/CIAT, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.