Simalaha is Zambia’s first community-led conservancy. Peace Parks Foundation empowers the Lozi people to protect a part of the biggest terrestrial cross-border conservation system in the world. Their protection entails rewilding, anti-poaching, sustainable fishing, reforestation and conservation of agriculture. By responsibly managing and protecting natural resources and wildlife, they have better access to water, food, health, education and livelihood opportunities.

2021 Highlights
As part of their plan to restore biodiversity 330 new animals were brought into the wildlife sanctuary, including puku, buffalo and red lechwe. Peace Parks helped the local children plant 10,000 native trees, important in the ecosystem for their fruits and nuts, and install beehives to support honey production. They also distributed over 9,000 cookstoves to families in Simalaha to reduce their consumption of charcoal and wood.

The Nicoya Peninsula is teeming with life again, including pumas, hummingbirds and orchids. ASEPALECO has been working for decades to convert the once dry and deforested pasture lands back into a humid and vivid ecosystem. The many birds, bats and other wildlife now in the reserve are natural seed dispersers allowing many endangered and important tree varieties to thrive. Underground springs and sparkling blue waterfalls tumble down on all sides of the peninsula, providing pure water to five large communities.

2021 Highlights
This project only joined EarthToday at the end of 2021. Stay tuned for updates!

Deep in the Amazonian rainforest, in the Acre state of Brazil, the indigenous Yawanawá community protects their homeland of 2000km². The Yawanawá have a nature-based, spiritual culture where biodiversity and wilderness are worshiped and celebrated through rituals, art, and music. Apart from territorial expansion, protection and environmental management, they focus on agroforestry, women empowerment, ethno- and eco-tourism, as well as managing traditional medicinal plants.

2021 Highlights
The main transportation route for the Yawanawá is the river. WILD Foundation helped the community build boats to patrol the river and observation towers for monitoring and communication. This is the first step in rolling out their Territorial Protection Plan to safeguard their rainforest from illegal poaching, fishing, mining and logging that is endangering water sources and biodiversity.

Saving their culture and language from near extinction is also high on their agenda. With the funds collected, Chief Tashka Yawanawá and his wife Laura Yawanawá helped establish a non-profit organization to implement the Yawanawá Life Plan. Devoted to sustaining the tradition and wellbeing of the community.

A route connecting the grasslands of Amboseli National Park to Mount Kilimanjaro has been favored by elephants for millenia. Over 2,000 elephants, 40,000 other wildlife, including cheetah, leopards, lions, buffaloes and giraffes, and about 400 bird species live here. IFAW works with the rangers of the local Masaai community, including the first all-woman ranger unit Team Lioness, to protect this critical wildlife migratory route of over 100km² from poachers.

2021 Highlights
Team Lioness, one of the Olgulului Community Wildlife Rangers (OCWR), recruited eight new female rangers, bringing their unit to a total of 16. Eunice Peneti (29), became the first-ever and currently only female community wildlife ranger in the Amboseli ecosystem to learn how to drive. The Masaai women have insider knowledge of their communities and land and unique perspectives to offer male ranger units.

Iberá Wetland is the largest natural park in Argentina, rich with over 4000 species of plants and animals. Many of these, including the jaguar and the giant river, were once extinct in the area and are now being reintroduced to the wilderness. Rewilding Argentina is sustaining a vibrant and protected ecosystem which benefits the local communities and absorbs about a million metric tons of carbon.

2021 Highlights
18 peccaries, 7 red-and-green macaws, 7 bare-faced curassows and 2 giant anteaters were released back into the wild from their pre-release enclosures in Yerbalito. There was a small baby boom of the bare-faced curassows – 7 chicks born in the last reproductive season! The Province of Corrientes also extended Iberá Park by over 400km², bringing the total to over 6000km² of wetlands, grasslands and forests under the protection of Rewilding Argentina.