Protecting land is only the beginning. Across our partners, this work means rebuilding the ecological relationships that hold a forest together: restoring native pollinators, replanting native and fruit-bearing species, and establishing wildlife corridors that reconnect fragmented habitat, so intact forest doesn't just survive but functions as a living system again.

Flagship initiative: The Passiflora Initiative. This multi-year effort is securing, rewilding, and permanently protecting Amazonian forest in northern La Paz, adjacent to Madidi National Park, one of the most biodiverse protected areas on Earth. What began as a 104-acre site is on track to reach 1,000 hectares of permanently protected forest by 2028.

Healthy forest is inseparable from the species that depend on it, and across the region, our partners combine direct rescue and rehabilitation with the training and equipment frontline responders need when disaster strikes. This has meant equipping park rangers and veterinarians across Bolivia's protected areas to respond to wildfires, and running year-round jaguar rescue and anti-trafficking response. We are also expanding into conflict prevention, supporting community-based approaches, like reinforced livestock enclosures and deterrent tools, alongside alternative livelihoods, that reduce conflict between farming communities and wild cats before it starts. In Colombia, this work included supporting a dedicated wildlife refuge caring for animals rescued from the illegal pet trade and trafficking, including a critically endangered troop of spider monkeys who could not be released back into the wild.

Across the bioregion, our partners work with communities as the long-term stewards of the forests and species they live alongside, rather than treating conservation as something done to a place from the outside. That looks different in every community, but the throughline is the same: give people the tools and the stake to protect what's theirs. Native beekeeping programs give families, largely women, a source of income tied directly to forest recovery. Leadership and rewilding workshops build conservation capacity among Indigenous women. Community fire brigades are trained to protect their own territory year-round. And youth-led climate education, born out of Bolivia's 2019 Amazon fires, is building the next generation of forest stewards.

The same principle holds for livelihoods: when protecting the forest also pays, protection lasts. We have supported women-led entrepreneurial associations in Bolivia's Monte Verde territory in building market access and business skills around sustainably harvested native oils, and we are working with other communities to turn sustainable harvesting of palm fruits into lasting income, so that earning a living and protecting the forest become the same goal rather than competing ones.