ACT Today For A Better Tomorrow
ACT wants to help protect and preserve a world as rich and as diverse as the one into which we were born. Your contribution to ACT enables us to help achieve that goal for us, for our children, and for our grandchildren.
Who We Are
The Amazon Conservation Team (ACT), an efficient and effective interdisciplinary team of conservation professionals, was founded in 1996 by ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin and conservationist Liliana Madrigal – 2008 co-recipients of the Skoll Foundation’s Award for Social Entrepreneurship. ACT is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization supported by individuals, private foundations, and government grants.
How We Work
ACT achieves its conservation successes by working in true partnership with indigenous peoples of the Amazon to protect both their cultures and their ancestral lands—some of the largest tracts of both pristine and sustainably managed rainforest on the planet. Our work begins in the forest - with the people who actually live there - and then expands to the state, national, regional and international level.
Why Work With Indigenous Peoples?
- A significant portion of the remaining Amazon rainforest is on indigenous lands
- Indigenous lands are often protected as well – or better – than national parks
- Sustainable indigenous communities protect vital headwaters and other natural resources
- Indigenous peoples have extensive local geographical and ecological knowledge
Why Now?
Our name and its acronym – ACT – convey both our focus and our principle mode of operation. There will be no second chances to save the rainforest. ACT is in a race against time because:
- Primary rainforest cannot be re-grown or re-created
- Rainforest destruction is a major cause of climate change and is happening faster than ever before
- Rainforest cultures know how best to use local species – but these cultures are disappearing faster than the forest itself
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