Caura Futures

In 2019, Caura Futures continued to expand its wild palm tree conservation (palm climbing) project in the Department of Loreto, Peru. We conducted additional climbing workshops throughout the year with a total estimated direct participation of 300 people, not including observers and meeting participants. We censused two species of wild palm trees for fruit production and continued large scale tests with palm fruit pulp processing for market feasibility studies. We sold and distributed more than 85 sets of climbing gear in Peru and did several large public demonstrations of our harvesting methods, in addition to workshops.

In 2019, Caura Futures continued to help native people of the Caura River Basin to develop their capacity for detection and treatment of malaria. Chronic illness hurts communities and diminishes forest stewardship. Malaria detection and treatment is carried out by two Ye'kwana technicians trained in microscopy and supplied by the Venezuelan government CAICET (Amazonian Center for Research and Control of Tropical Diseases). 2019 was a low incidence year for malaria, reflected in spending.

Caura Futures supported community access to cultural library archives in the Caura Basin in 2019. We funded travel and meetings aimed at increasing community usage of the cultural library. We significantly expanded our development of a mobile application for community access to library archives. We continued to fund the expansion and maintenance of building infrastructure and equipment that makes these activities possible. As Caura Futures has done for over 13 years, it continued to provide a stipend for the principal archivist and support for other occasional indigenous collaborators in the Caura Basin. We also supported collaborators in Ecuador who are developing community-accessible indigenous knowledge libraries there, centered on knowledge of rain forest animal natural history. We significantly expanded our testing and use of the mobile application for community access to library archives in Ecuador and are now working with members of 5 indigenous groups there to facilitate efficient access to language archives that they have been building for over two decades