Rainforest Rescue Coalition

Thank you for visiting the Rainforest Rescue Coalition (RRC) homepage. Our mission is to conserve and protect rainforest land around the world and to support sustainable relationships between humans and nature. We work with the Rainforest Conservation Fund (RCF), a 501 (c)(3) organization which has been working on grassroots conservation initiatives in Peru for 26 years, and has has been influential in the creation and management of two communal forest reserves which cover over 2 million acres, or 3,125 square miles.

–Please support the RCF Aguaje climber project http://www.rainforestconservation.org/new-rcf-campaign-for-the-amazon-funding-climbing-harnesses-to-end-the-destruction-of-the-tree-of-life/

-Also, sign up for the search engine goodsearch.com and choose Rainforest Conservation Fund as your organization. Each time you search a donation is made to the organization of your choice.

Maijuna leader climbing an Aguaje palm to pick fruit using one of the climbing devices.

Rawa Kuno Legacy Forest Project:

The forests on the island of Borneo are around 130 million years old (70 million years older than the Amazon)! Within the last few decades much of the forest has been reduced to plywood, and is now replaced by monoculture palm oil plantations. Orangutan populations have dropped by up to 97% during the 20th century, and just within the last ten years, the remaining populations have decreased by 50% due to forest loss and hunting. 90% of the remaining Orangutans on Earth live on the island of Borneo, and if we don’t act NOW, almost all of the forest could be gone within the next ten years…

We helped Orangutan Foundation International to purchase and conserve the 6,400 acre Rawa Kuno Legacy Forest, which is a refuge for hundreds of endangered Orangutans, and other amazing animals like Sun Bears and Clouded Leopards. Please continue to support Orangutan Foundation International’s work to save the Orangutan from extinction.

Here is a video of the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve, which is adjacent to the Rawa Kuno Legacy Forest. This will give you an idea of what Rawa Kuno is like.

 -Bornean Orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) endangered

Clouded Leopard (Neofelis nebulosa) vulnerable

Sun Bear- (Ursus malayanus) vulnerable

Sustainable Agroforestry Project:

The agroforestry project in the 1 million acre Área de Conservación Regional Comunal Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo (ACRCTT) is extremely important, because it is helping to show that communal reserves in the Amazon can be productive AND sustainable. This will ensure the future of present reserves, and will influence the likelihood of creating new communal reserves for native and indigenous peoples in Peru. Giving forest communities legal rights to land is one of the best ways to conserve the rainforest. This can prevent further settlement and destructive development of the area and can give communities the power to develop their land in a sustainable way while conserving their resources and forest. These forest communities rely on the rainforest for many subsistence needs and know the value of conserving the land, not just for biodiversity’s sake, but also for their own. Today, in the presence of encroaching industry and the demand for resources from the nearby city of Iquitos, local villagers and ‘ribereños’ (river people) can no longer live entirely off the forest, so they need an income for trading and purchasing essential goods. In order to make money, many people in the region resort to the ecologically damaging practices of logging, contract hunting and unsustainable resource extraction because they have no other options. This is where sustainable agroforestry comes in. Palm trees (such as the aguaje palm) are extremely useful to people and provide products such as fruits that can be made into juice or ice cream, oil, thatching, fibers and threads for making crafts, and other building materials. Many animals also rely on these palms such as tapirs, peccary, deer, and monkeys who eat the fruits, and macaws who nest in the dead tree trunks. A big problem is that people often go into the forest and cut down palms to harvest the fruit, destroying an important resource for many animals and making harvesting completely unsustainable (when you cut down the palm you only get one fruit crop and the palm dies and is not allowed to produce fruit for its entire life cycle). By planting palms in the forest buffer zone near the villages and by using sustainable harvesting techniques (where fruit is harvested by climbing the trees instead of cutting them down), the agroforestry project provides crucial and sustainable income source for communities, minimizes human impact on the forest, and promotes a harmonious relationship between the people, plants, and animals living in this amazing region of the Peruvian Amazon. The Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo Conservation Area is in a region with the highest primate diversity in the world and in one or two hectares you can find more species of trees than in all of North America. Also, it is located between two of Peru/Brazil’s largest protected areas: the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve in Peru, and the Vale do Javari Indigenous Territory (the largest indigenous peoples’ reserve in the world) just across the border in Brazil. These three areas combined have some of the greatest biodiversity on planet Earth

Check out a nice view of the ACRCTT, and the Peruvian Amazon rainforest

-Giant Otter cubs (Pteronura brasiliensis) endangered

Jaguar (Panthera onca) vulnerable

-Amazonian Manatee (Trichechus inunguis) vulnerable

Bald Uakari (cacajao calvus) vulnerable

South American Tapir (Tapirus terrestris) vulnerable

-Three Toed Sloth (Bradypus variegatus)

 -Tucuxi Dolphin (Sotalia fluviatilis)

Feel free to contact us by sending an email to abg@rainforestrescuecoalition.org