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Mark Plotkin and Liliana Madrigal with shaman.
Amazon Conservation Team
Proud Recipient of the Skoll Award
3/12/08 – Arlington, VA
The Amazon Conservation Team is pleased to announce that the Skoll Foundation has recognized ACT co-founders Mark Plotkin and Liliana Madrigal with its 2008 "Social Entrepreneurs Award", a one million dollar prize. pACT joins a prestigious global network of Skoll entrepreneurs, now numbering 59, who are working around the world on issues including tolerance and human rights, health, economic and social equity, peace and security, institutional responsibility, and environmental sustainability.
"The Amazon Conservation Team" is a tremendous addition to the community of Skoll social entrepreneurs who have demonstrated, through their inspiration and creativity, courage and fortitude, that solutions do exist for some of the world's most intractable problems," said Sally Osberg, President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation. "Like all the organizations in our portfolio, ACT is successfully tackling complex social issues with a sustainable, scalable solution. We believe their work has the potential for transformational benefit to indigenous cultures and forests of the Amazon and we're honored to support their continued commitment to systemic change at the grassroots level."
Mark Plotkin and Liliana Madrigalwill be presented the award by Skoll Foundation Chairman Jeff Skoll, Skoll Foundation President and CEO, Sally Osberg and special guest former President Jimmy Carter, at a special ceremony on March 27 at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University. They will be participating in the three-day World Forum along with over 700 attendees from the global social entrepreneurship community.
For more information about the Skoll Foundation please click here
Mark Plotkin with Waura shaman, Eastern Amazon.
Amazon Conservation Team
Featured in Mariri Magazine Article
1/07/08 - Saving the Amazon with Google Earth and GPS Mapping.
Besieged by rapid encroachment from all directions, the Indians of the Amazon rainforest have armed themselves with the latest technologies to defend the boundaries of their vanishing ancestral lands - satellite-based Global Positioning System (GPS) mapping and Google Earth.
Their ally in this endeavor is the Amazon Conservation Team, which provides the Indian tribes the funding and the training on how to use GPS and the Internet to better manage and protect their ancestral territories. Through GPS-enabled ethnographic mapping, ACT has helped indigenous tribes in Suriname, Brazil and Colombia catalogue their deep knowledge of the rainforest ecosystem and document their cultural history. Most importantly, the mapping project helps the tribes politically substantiate the boundaries of their land claims against competing interests from gold miners, loggers and cattle ranchers.
Using Google Earth, the Indians are able to monitor deforestation and gold-mining activities, as well as locate the latest invasions on their land. To accomplish these initiatives, ACT partners with local governments and NGOS, so that the end-result is a cross-cultural collaboration, in the name of rainforest conservation.
So far ACT has helped tribes in Suriname, Brazil and Colombia map millions of acres of ancestral rainforests, working with 26 different tribes, such as the Apalai, Wayana, Tirio and Kaxuyana, in the northern, southern, eastern, and western Amazon.
Waura chief on the radio, Eastern Amazon.
A member of the Ikpeng Tribe in the Xingu territory of Brazil holds a map.
Click here for the full articleClick here for Mark Plotkin, The Shaman's Apprentice, on Indigenous Healing and Western Medicine, Mariri Magazine Article 1/28/08
ACT is proud to endorse two children’s book authors who are penning eco-friendly literature works while simultaneously “making a differenceâ€. Their efforts bring awareness to our ecosystem, the strengthening of cultural ties between indigenous youths and their rites of passage, and all of the diversity the Amazon supports. Please be sure to add these to your home libraries!
Click here to visit Send Me The Soap
Click here to visit Gretchen’s JacketFlap.com Profile
The vivid imagination of author Gretchen Schlesinger takes readers on a genuine adventure into the Amazon rainforest. The second book in the series, Send Me the Soap #2: The Amazon Adventure highlights the inextricable link between the forest and the survival of the local forest culture through the eyes of a young girl. Wonderfully illustrated, a marvelous series for young (or young at heart); children will eagerly read the latest adventure of Katie and her eco-friendly magic soap.
- Amazon Conservation Team
Click here to visit Nina Nelson Books
Click here to visit Nina Nelson MySpace Page
*In researching my novel, there was one book that I kept returning to for information and inspiration. It was Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Amazon Rain Forest
written by Mark J. Plotkin. Through Dr. Plotkin I found ACT, whose mission is to work in partnership with indigenous people in conserving biodiversity, health, and culture in tropical America.
This is a mission I knew I wanted to support. – N. A. Nelson
Amazon Conservation Team
2007 recipient of
mongabay.com's inaugural "Innovation in Conservation Award"
12/11/07 - Amazon Conservation Team wins "Innovation in Conservation Award" for path-breaking work with Amazon tribes - enabling indigenous Amazonians to maintain ties to their history and cultural traditions while protecting their rainforest home from illegal loggers and miners.
“ACT is very pleased to win this award," said Dr. Mark Plotkin, a renowned ethnobotanist, author, and founder of the Amazon Conservation Team. "It's our strong belief that the people who best know, use, and protect biodiversity are the indigenous people who live in these forests. The best way to protect ancestral rainforests is to help the Indians hold on to their culture, and the best way to help them hold onto their culture is to help them protect the rainforest.
And, the fact that it comes from Mongabay — which is employing 21st century technology to spread this story far and wide, and increasingly recognized as the 'go-to' rainforest site on the web — makes it all the more meaningful.â€
Click here to read the article
WIRED MAGAZINE: ISSUE 15.11
With the Help of GPS, Amazonian Tribes Reclaim the Rain Forest
Illustration by Evah Fan
Wuta is practically naked, except for the red cotton breechcloth strung around his waist and the yellow beaded necklaces that drape his muscular torso. In his hands, though, he's holding something that places him firmly in the 21st century: a new gray Garmin GPS device.
Click here to read the article
MARCH 2007 SURINAME SHAMANS GATHERING
Dr. Mark Plotkin
2007 recipient of the
Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden’s Wildlife Conservation Award.
CINCINNATI – The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden is pleased to announce the 2007 recipient of the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden’s Wildlife Conservation Award, Dr. Mark Plotkin.
Dr. Plotkin is a world-renowned ethnobotanist and the current President of the Amazon Conservation Team, an organization dedicated to protecting the biological and cultural diversity of the tropical rain forest.
“Each year the Cincinnati Zoo recognizes a leader in the field of wildlife conservation,†said Thane Maynard, Interim Director, of the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. “This year’s selection of Dr. Mark Plotkin recognizes his nearly 3 decades of work in the New World tropics, particularly the Amazon basin. No one has worked more closely with native South American Indians, both in the protection of tribal lands, as well as in the field of ethnobotanical study. What he has learned has changed the face of global conservation.â€
Dr. Plotkin is the author of numerous scientific papers and reports and recently received the Roy Chapman Andrews Distinguished Explorer award. In addition, he has been working with the elder shamans of Central and South America to learn more about healing plants for much of the last 20 years. “It is an honor and a pleasure to receive such a prestigious award from an extraordinary institution like the Cincinnati Zoo,†said Dr. Plotkin. “And, under the leadership of Thane Maynard and his colleagues, we look forward to our organizations working even closer to protect our planet’s biocultural diversity.â€
There is no greater legacy to leave than to inspire future generations to continue the preservation and conservation of the plants and animals with which we share this planet.
ACT Receives Sustainability Award from The Global Fund For Children
Eight outstanding grassroots organizations received the 2007 Sustainability Awards of $25,000 each from The Global Fund for Children.
The award recognizes grantee partners that not only have succeeded in greatly improving the lives of vulnerable children but also are at a stage of development where they can sustain higher levels of financial and program growth.
Amazon Conservation Team Suriname (ACT), Kwamalasamutu, Suriname. The Shamans and Apprentices Program, which reaches three villages deep in the Amazon forests, teaches indigenous children traditional medicine.
ACT Suriname will use its award to develop and implement a comprehensive fundraising strategy. Click here to read the article
ACT in March 2007
Smithsonian Magazine Article:
RAINFOREST REBEL
An Amazonian tribal chief receives death threats after introducing a mapmaking project to document his people's history and culture.
Click here to read the article
Kindly consider nominating us for a myspace impact award. Just click the image... CHECK US OUT AT MissionFish
MissionFish helps you support your favorite causes through trading on eBay! Since 2000, they've been providing technology, tools and support to thousands of organizations and donors, and raised millions of dollars through auctions.CLICK HERE TO VISIT ACT AT MissionFish
ACT is Recipient of 2006 Circle of Bridge-Makers Award:
Circle of Bridge-Makers honorees exemplars in preserving cultural heritage, environmental sustainability and intergenerational leadership.
Liliana Madrigal – Liliana Madrigal has devoted more than 20 years of her life emphasizing a grassroots approach to bio-cultural conservation management in Latin America that focuses on indigenous peoples. A committed leader and innovator in this field, she is currently the executive director of the Amazon Conservation Team, a group that works in partnership with indigenous people in conserving biodiversity, health and culture in tropical America . Madrigal is also a founding member of Conservation International in Washington , DC , an organization committed to conserving the earth’s living natural heritage and global biodiversity and to demonstrating that human societies are able to live harmoniously with nature. She was previously the director of the Nature Conservancy, a leading international, nonprofit agency dedicated to preserving the diversity of life on earth, where she worked on the consolidation of the Costa Rican state system of protected areas.
Amazon Conservation team is a Non-Profit 501(c)(3) organization that works primarily in the South American Amazon Basin...Tropical rainforests house hundreds of thousands of species of plants, many of which hold promise for their compounds which can be used to ward off pests and fight human disease. No one understands the secrets of these plants better than indigenous shamans -medicine men and women - who have developed boundless knowledge of this library of flora for curing everything from foot rot to diabetes. But like the forests themselves, the knowledge of these botanical wizards is fast-disappearing due to deforestation and profound cultural transformation among younger generations. The combined loss of this knowledge and these forests irreplaceably impoverishes the world of cultural and biological diversity.Dr. Mark Plotkin, President of the non-profit Amazon Conservation Team, is working to stop this fate. Plotkin, a renowned ethnobotanist and accomplished author was named one of Time Magazine's environmental "Heroes for the Planet," has spent parts of the past 25 years living and working with shamans in Latin America.Plotkin says the Amazon Conservation Team, working in true partnership with indigenous populations and leading western conservationists, has helped pioneer what it calls "biocultural conservation," a successful and cost-effective approach to protecting biodiversity, strengthening traditional health systems, and helping preserving culture in a holistic and synergistic way."It's our strong belief that the people who best know, use, and protect biodiversity are the indigenous people who live in these forests," said Plotkin. "Our projects are designed to address some of the major threats faced by indigenous groups: loss of indigenous biological wisdom, lack of healthcare, lack of economic opportunity, lack of territorial rights that would protect the rainforest from exploitation, and lack of legal representation. As our executive statement says, the Amazon Conservation Team, 'ACT helps the keepers of the forest keep the forest'
Learn more at www.amazonteam.org
THE FOREST HAS A VOICE...BUT IT NEEDS YOU TO BE HEARD.
Easy things you can do to help conserve, reduce, and protect our wonderful planet:
• Use and buy rechargeable batteries.
• Downsize your lifestyle for your budget and for the earth. Ask yourself “Do I really need this?†before buying the next item on clearance.
• Don’t run the faucet when brushing your teeth. Rinse and then shut the water off.
• Don’t use the toilet as a garbage disposal. Each flush wastes a lot of water.
• Telecommute one day a week if possible – save on gas and emissions.
• Walk or ride your bike if feasible. Carpool when possible..