Rainforest Trust Launches Urgent Campaign to Save Peruvian Rainforest

Here at One Green Planet, we’ve long been concerned about the ongoing devastation of the Amazon rainforest. Which is why, when we heard that Rainforest Trust, a nonprofit Conservation group, had launched an Amazon Earth Day campaign, we sat up and took note of it! The campaign, which began on March 28, 2014, invites the public to help conserve 100,000 acres of the Peruvian rainforest: home to jaguars, giant river otters, and other endangered species. The campaign runs until Earth Day on April 22.

Rainforest Trust is looking for donors to get involved with the campaign by giving just 50 cents for one acre of Peruvian rainforest. In an email to One Green Planet, Rainforest Trust, says, “Put another way, for the price of a $3 cup of coffee, you can save twelve acres of Amazon rainforest.”

The Trust is hoping to preserve 100,000 acres through this campaign, and thanks to “a generous matching donation,” all pledges will be doubled until that goal is reached.

All funds received by April 22 will be donated to a critical Conservation initiative called the Sierra del Divisor Project. This project is aimed at funding a dedicated National Park and a White Sands National Reserve, both centered around the Sierra Del Divisor Mountain Range, a 600-mile range that stretches along the Peruvian–Brazilian border in the heart of the Amazon Basin.

Rainforest Trust describes this area as “one of the Amazon’s last true wildernesses.” The area’s abundance of species, who are critically endangered elsewhere, in addition to its location in the the center of a ten-million acre multinational wildlife corridor, makes its Conservation critical.

The Sierra del Divisor Project will also secure ancestral land rights for indigenous inhabitants of the region.

Fast action is required, as a major highway is planned from Brazil into the Peruvian rainforest. Rainforest Trust says, “This road would be disastrous for Sierra del Divisor, sit would allow uncontrolled clear-cutting and lead to massive habitat destruction.”

Securing permanent protection for Sierra del Divisor would prevent the highway’s construction and prevent the release of more than one billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere – an amount greater than the average annual emission of all cars in the United States!

You can Donate to Support the project here, and check out the campaign video below:

Image Source: Mark Goble/Flickr