Southwest Amazon Conservation with WWF

Covering 210 million hectares of northern Bolivia, southeastern Peru, and western and central Brazil, the Southwestern Amazon forests encompass some of the richest forest communities on Earth. It is home to numerous indigenous communities whose culture and identity depends on the natural resources. In 2003, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) launched the Amazon Headwaters Initiative with the  goal of safeguarding this region by preserving large interconnected blocks of critical forest habitat. Since 2005 FOS has trained WWF team members in strategic planning and monitoring, using an adaptive management approach. This has included ongoing coaching and facilitation to help teams in different regions within the Southwest Amazon learn about the conditions under which certain strategies are effective or not. The teams are developing initial lessons learned supported by monitoring data. Though results are not always what the teams anticipated from the start, this learning process is helping them identify how to invest their limited resources most effectively.