Ongoing Projects

The Reforestation Center and Tree Nursery at La Joya

The center at La Joya (“the jewell”) sits on the outskirts of the rural community of the same name some five kilometers by road from the Madre de Dios region’s largest and only important urban and commercial hub, Puerto Maldonado.  This center takes advantage of the close proximity to the city to serve as the point of encounter with rural people throughout the region, for whom Puerto Maldonado is a frequent destination.  Far from being a virgin forest itself, the La Joya center’s 25 hectares (roughly 60 acres) have been almost entirely cleared for cattle farming and thus serve as a perfect living laboratory for experiments in rehabilitation and plantation-style reforestation.  Apart from the initial goal of restoring this clearcut landscape, the primary focus here is on the experimental propogation and production of species that have an immediate and significant economic value and/or have potential as sources of sustainable income for local farmers.  Here we assess each species for its usefulness, ease of production, market value, and thus its overall potential as a cash crop for local farmers.  La Joya will be the site of our most important plant nursery so that the most promising species can be made more widely available. 

Here we will also experiment with the processing of products through simple and natural means such as dehydration or distillation so that fruits and other perishable products may become more marketable, including internationally.  Looking for new products and new markets in this way is a necessary step to create an impulse, necessarily economic, for a change in lifestyle among farmers.  Only when tree crops are shown to have a greater potential for economic yield will these ecologically preferable crops draw attention away from the short-term solutions provided by fast-growing, hyper-productive, but ecologically disastrous products like corn, rice, and even cattle, all of which require the periodic destruction of even more virgin forests.  The broader goal is to bring attention and value to any and all products that can be grown and harvested naturally and sustainably, products that can allow families to live comfortably from the fruits of a few acres rather than annually invading new virgin forests for grain production and lumber extraction for the most minimal economic sustenance.  Finally, the La Joya center will also be a place to experiment in social sustainability, a center where a permanent population of workers, teachers, students, volunteers, and scientists will become established to create new models of shared living and ecologically-responsible community.  Look at our projects in the coming years to see more news about the development of living quarters and the growth of our new forests here.