Climbing Instead of Felling: Keeping Amazon Peat Swamps Standing

The aguaje palm dominates Peru's Amazonian palm swamps — waterlogged peatlands in Loreto and Ucayali that store carbon in metres of undecomposed plant matter. Because only female palms fruit and the easiest way to harvest was to fell the tree, female palms were stripped out of accessible swamps: in parts of Pacaya-Samiria, female aguaje fell from 66 to 29 per hectare between 1995 and 2000. In the Maijuna-Kichwa Regional Conservation Area, a 391,000-hectare territory created in 2015 after prior consultation with the Maijuna and Kichwa and supported through eight years of work by Nature and Culture International, harvesters in communities such as Nueva Vida and Puerto Huamán now climb the palms with harnesses and sell through village aguaje committees. Researchers estimate that switching from felling to climbing across the region could raise total harvest by 51% while leaving the swamp — and its carbon — intact, in a fruit economy that supports over 20,000 families.