When Indigenous Knowledge Meets Technology: How a Two-Day Camp Is Changing Amazon Conservation

Most conservation efforts are designed about Indigenous communities. This one was designed with them — and that distinction makes all the difference. In early July 2025, the city of Iquitos, Peru became the gathering point for something genuinely hopeful: a Wildlife TechCamp that brought together scientific experts, civil society representatives, and Indigenous organizations from across the Western Amazon. The goal wasn't just to talk about protecting wildlife. It was to build real tools, real maps, and real alliances — grounded in the lived experience of the people who have stewarded these forests for centuries.

Why This Moment Matters

The Amazon is not an abstraction. It is home. For the Indigenous communities who live within it, wildlife is not simply a conservation category — it is, as Apu Jamer López Agustín, President of ORAU (one of the organizing Indigenous federations), powerfully put it, a means of livelihood and resistance. That framing matters enormously. It reminds us that protecting Amazonian biodiversity is inseparable from protecting Indigenous rights, cultures, and futures. When wildlife disappears — through illegal trafficking, unregulated extraction, or habitat destruction — it is Indigenous communities who feel that loss most acutely and most immediately. This is precisely why Rainforest Foundation US (RFUS), alongside Indigenous organizations ORPIO and ORAU, and with support from the U.S. Embassy in Peru and the World Resources Institute, designed the Wildlife TechCamp not as a top-down training event, but as a collaborative strategy session. The format, adapted from the U.S. State Department's TechCamp model, has been refined by RFUS since 2019 specifically for the unique challenges facing the Amazon — and it shows.

What Actually Happened in Those Two Days

Fifty-five participants, two days and a tangible set of outputs that could ripple outward for years. One of the most powerful outcomes was the creation of Wildlife Maps — collaborative tools that identify zones of animal extraction, collection, and illegal trafficking across the region. These aren't maps drawn by outsiders looking in. They are built from Indigenous knowledge, community observation, and on-the-ground expertise that no satellite image can fully capture. For conservation organizations and law enforcement agencies working to disrupt trafficking networks, this kind of intelligence is invaluable. Participants also engaged in what the camp called Transformation Communal Houses — an exchange of innovative, community-led practices for wildlife coexistence and anti-trafficking efforts. Think of it as a living library of solutions; what's working in one community, how it might be adapted in another, and how outside technological tools can support rather than replace those locally-rooted approaches. Beyond the mapping and knowledge exchange, the group tackled something harder but equally necessary: naming the institutional gaps that continue to undermine conservation efforts, and identifying concrete agreements and solutions to begin closing them. That kind of honest, structural conversation is rare. The fact that it happened across Indigenous federations, NGOs, scientific experts, and civil society organizations in the same room is itself a significant achievement.

The Strength Is in the Relationships

Gina Ruiz-Caro Rothgiesser, RFUS's Western Amazon Director, highlighted something that statistics alone can't capture — that the TechCamp deepened bonds between Indigenous communities, technology providers, and conservation organizations in ways designed to last well beyond the event itself. This is the quiet but essential work of durable conservation, not just the strategies and the maps, but the trust. The shared vocabulary. The understanding of what each partner brings to the table and what each partner needs in return. When those relationships are strong, communities are more resilient. When they're absent, even the best-resourced conservation programs tend to collapse. It's also worth noting that this Wildlife TechCamp was the first of two RFUS-organized TechCamps in Peru in 2025. The second, held in Pucallpa, centered specifically on Indigenous women leaders — a recognition that gender equity and women's leadership are not side conversations in conservation. They are central to it.

A Model Worth Paying Attention To

What RFUS and its Indigenous partners are building in Peru offers a meaningful blueprint for conservation work everywhere. If you focus and include the people who are most affected, invest in relationships as much as in tools, and trust that local knowledge paired with the right technology is more powerful than either alone. The Amazon holds approximately 10% of all species on Earth. It regulates rainfall patterns that feed hundreds of millions of people across South America. And it is under enormous, sustained pressure. The urgency is real. But so is the momentum being built — one TechCamp, one map, one community alliance at a time.

--- The Wildlife TechCamp is exactly the kind of Indigenous-led, community-centered conservation work that Rainforest Foundation US exists to support. If you believe that the people of the Amazon should have the tools, resources, and partnerships they need to protect their forests and their futures, consider making a donation today. Your support helps make gatherings like this possible — and helps ensure their impact endures long after the camp ends.‍ ‍[Support Rainforest Foundation US and Indigenous-led conservation →]

ABOUT ININ RABI

Inin Rabi is an indigenous and women-run non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the Shipibo Konibo community, an Indigenous group from the Peruvian Amazon. The organization focuses on co-creating opportunities that foster a better future for this community, emphasizing the empowerment of women and children.

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