I am pleased to write an update on the activities and conservation initiatives that I have been working on after attending Conservation Strategy Fund’s 2012 course, Economic Tools for Conservation, in Stanford, CA.

Under the second phase of the Initiative for Conservation in the Andean Amazon (ICAA) of the United States Agency for International Development and in collaboration with Wildlife Conservation Society, CSF is moving forward with the creation of three sustainable business plans for the indigenous Tacana community. The community, located in Bolivia's Amazon region north of La Paz, is home to approximately 5,000 people. Their land is known in Spanish as a Tierra Comunitaria de Origen, and is similar to a Native American reserve in the U.S., designated as a permanent home for the Tacanas to continue their traditions. It is located on the banks of the Beni River in the village of San Miguel del Bala.

In October 2012 CSF completed and delivered business plans for Tourism in Indigenous lands (the Paiter-Surui and Parintintin). The plans were part of the Garah Itxa project on Ethnoenvironmental Corridors in the Brazilian Amazon. At the project's closing event, CSF launched a publication with the compilation of the main results of the project. To obtain this publication and learn more about business plans visit our Projects page.

In April, CSF held the third workshop of the CSF Project for Tourism in Indigenous Peoples' Lands Paiter-Surui and Parintintin. We discussed the final details of tours and infrastructure, the market study data, and the financial viability of the businesses.

CSF's Irene Burgués and John Reid traveled to Uganda in November to establish our first long-term program in Africa. The program's initial focus will be on conserving ecosystems in the context of major infrastructure development in the Albertine Rift region shared by Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania. The region is home to cloud forests, lowland rain forests and savannas, along with active volcanoes and endangered wildlife such as the mountain gorillas.