Amazon Conservation Team

Awarded: 2005

Issue Areas: Arresting Deforestation · Early Childhood to Primary Education · Economic Opportunity · Environmental Sustainability · Health · Human Rights · Peace and Human Rights · Sustainable Markets · Water Management

Countries Served: Afghanistan · Albania · Algeria · Antigua and Barbuda · Brazil · Colombia

Web: amazonteam.org

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About the Organization

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The Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving South American rainforests. ACT occupies a unique niche among other environmental organizations working in the tropics: it works hand in hand with local indigenous communities to devise and implement its conservation strategies. ACT was founded in 1996 by ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin and conservationist Liliana Madrigal with the mission of working with indigenous groups in tropical America to protect biodiversity and strengthen indigenous culture and health. Since its founding, ACT has partnered with more than 30 groups throughout South America on numerous initiatives. ACT believes that indigenous peoples are the best stewards of the rainforest because they have a physical, medical, and spiritual tie to these lands. ACT conducts the vast majority of its biocultural conservation projects within the tropical forests of northern Amazonia. In each case, in-country conservation activities have been designed to address the most urgent needs of partners and have been adapted to operate most effectively within their respective contexts.
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The Amazon forests -- the lungs of the world -- are being destroyed at an alarming rate.

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ACT works with indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin to develop their capacity to protect their rainforest home.

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Tribal associations supported by ACT map and manage key territories and promote creation of protected areas.

Ambition for Change

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Tribes are empowered to remain on their land and use modern technology and methods, such as GPS units and satellite imagery, to protect and advocate for their forests while strengthening and preserving traditional culture.

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Path to Scale

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Build Capacity, Move On

ACT builds the capacity of tribal associations to take over programs and outreach, which allows the organization to then focus resources on moving into new areas.
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Skoll Awardee

Mark Plotkin

President, Amazon Conservation Team

LilianaCR Madrigal Test

Senior Director of Program Operations, Amazon Conservation Team

Mark Plotkin and Liliana Madrigal, a husband and wife team, have spent much of their lives preserving the Amazon rainforest and the knowledge and culture of its indigenous inhabitants. Liliana and Mark recognized that the loss of the forest and the destruction of tribal culture were inextricably linked and that one could not thrive without the other. Mark has led the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) as President and guided its vision since its inception. He is a renowned ethnobotanist who has spent almost three decades studying traditional plant use with traditional healers of tropical America. Mark, became “hooked on plants, hooked on Indians and hooked on the Amazon” through his mentor, the Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes. As Mark worked to learn about the rainforest and preserve the knowledge of the elderly shamans, he realized that both were disappearing and that the tribes’ cultural destruction was inextricably linked to the destruction of the rainforest. Liliana is a conservationist and passionate crusader for indigenous rights. Liliana oversees all ACT programmatic activities, traveling frequently to South America to meet directly and work with ACT's indigenous partners in the Amazon and serving as chief liaison to shamans and tribal leaders of the northwest Amazon. She learned from her conservation mentors the value of an expansive vision and a “feet in the mud” attitude when confronting challenges. She used this lesson in her work to co-found the national park system of Costa Rica and to ensure that traditional tribal knowledge and land management skills are passed on to younger generations. Together, Mark and Liliana formed ACT in 1996 to preserve the cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon and develop their capacity to provide enduring protection of their rainforest home.

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Impact & Accomplishments

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In partnership with local indigenous groups, completed ethnographic and land use mapping of more than 70 million acres of Amazon rainforest lands, laying the groundwork for forest management plans and improved protection, and improving monitoring on 38 million of those acres to date.
Trained more than 125 indigenous persons as park guards with technical and communications skills to enable their communities to work with state and national government in land management.
Facilitated national registration of 30 indigenous associations in three countries.
Worked with the government of Colombia to expand Chiribiquete National Park from 12,990 to 27,808 square kilometers, making it one of the biggest protected areas in the Amazon, including areas inhabited by two voluntarily isolated tribes potentially at risk from oil exploration and mining.
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