We all know the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed. Right? – I mean, we do know that. But why is it being destroyed? How is this happening – right before the world’s eyes? When we knew we should do something to protect this unique biological treasure.
Read MoreIf you're reading this you probably know that Camino Verde is a grassroots reforestation organization based in the Peruvian Amazon region of Madre de Dios. This departmento of Peru is roughly the size of South Carolina and is considered by some to be the largest remaining region of intact tropical forest left in the world.
Read More“Smell this.” Farmer and forest savant Javier Huinga hands me a piece of bark he carefully slashed from the dark brown column of a forest giant. He smiles and nods knowingly as my face lights up from the scent – somewhere in the same aromatic solar system as cinnamon, spicy-sweet and pleasant
Read MoreThe canoe glides among lianas like mythic serpents and under gray-trunked giants. Insects stare back at us from seasonal perches on branches backdropped with multicolored lichens, their homes when the Amazon's waters run its banks. A white hot sun filters through the canopy and I watch the flashing progressions of light and dark on my companions’ faces,
Read MoreLike millions of other Peruvians, my friend Juan left his homeland in the Andes to escape the violence that erupted there like wildfires in the 1980’s and 90’s. The militants of Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path took guidance from Mao Zedong in their pursuit of power by the barrel of a gun. The wave of killings and skirmishes that lit up the Andes of southern Peru were of unprecedented brutality.
Read MoreFor the June solstice of 2014, the Southern Hemisphere's winter solstice, I had the pleasure of finding myself in Iquitos, Peru, the largest city in the Peruvian Amazon and the largest city in the world not connected by road. In place of a road – the Amazon River, the earth's greatest river system and one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World according to a 2012 global vote.
Read MoreThe history of the Amazon could easily be written as a chronological inventory of products discovered—and then over-exploited—in the world´s richest forest. Quinine, rubber, mahogany, animal skins, oil, gold: each chapter would tell of how another useful wonder of nature was found and, almost without exception, driven to the verge of extinction
Read MoreEvery week in the bustling cities of Iquitos, Pucallpa, and Puerto Maldonado in the Peruvian Amazon, thousands of pounds of an exotic looking fruit arrive to town in buckets and sacks to be hefted off of precariously balanced motorcycles, unloaded from heavily-laden wooden canoes or carefully lowered off of sweaty backs. The fruit has over a dozen names in different regional dialects and no name in English.
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