Discover conservation projects in the Amazon that make a difference for the flora, fauna, and its people
The Amazon covers 6.74 million km² across nine countries and holds roughly a fifth of the planet’s fresh water. About 4.2 million km² of it sits inside Brazil, an area larger than India. Whatever happens in that stretch of forest sets the pace for the entire biome, which is why every deforestation figure released in Brasília is promptly analyzed worldwide.
Deforestation in the Amazon reached its lowest annual level since 2014, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE). Over the past two years, the region recorded its most encouraging figures in more than a decade, including a 45% reduction in burned area.
Behind those figures sits a long list of organizations that were already working when nobody was watching. Want to know what is being done to protect the Amazon Rainforest once the news cycle moves on?
PlanetaEXO, an ecotourism platform specializing in Amazon rainforest tours in Brazil, has put together a list of eight organizations doing that work on the ground, with the numbers to show for it. Check it out below!
1. Amazon Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Business Program (Pensa)
Rare ingredients that grow nowhere else, a landscape that draws travelers from every continent, and communities that want to build businesses rather than sell timber, the Amazon has the raw material for an economy that leaves the forest standing. What it usually lacks is capital and training.
The Sustainable Amazon Foundation (FAS) built Pensa to close that gap, on the premise that Amazon conservation fails wherever it asks families to be poorer than the alternative. The program runs a distance-learning business incubator across 583 communities in 16 Conservation Units, training entrepreneurs in management, pricing, and sales. Most of the ventures in the deep forest interior are run by women.
FAS published its 2024 results in full: 11.3 million hectares under protection, 21,900 families reached across 902 communities and villages in 166 municipalities, R$ 8.6 million in gross revenue generated in the tourism chain, and 17.2 million tons of CO₂ emissions avoided. Across the 2008 to 2024 period, average family income in the areas it serves rose 202%, while deforestation in those same areas fell 40%.
How to support: donate through fas-amazonia.org, where the annual activity reports are also published in full.
👉 Read more: How to Get to the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil?
2. Almerinda Malaquias Foundation (FAM)
Some Amazon Rainforest conservation efforts start in a workshop rather than a laboratory. FAM is a nonprofit in Novo Airão, Amazonas, running for 25 years on a simple premise: a young person with a trade does not need to cut down a tree to eat. It began when Miguel Rocha, a local craftsman, started teaching woodworking to teenagers using offcuts discarded by the town’s boat builders.
The foundation works on three fronts:
- Income generation: professional training in carpentry, marquetry, recycled-paper craft, and artisanal soap production.
- Environmental education: workshops for local children and teens on the forest they live in and the economic alternatives it offers.
- Ecotourism: travel as a tool that funds both the school and the workshop.
Roughly 1,000 people have been trained in carpentry and marquetry at FAM since it opened. A current program backed by FAS and the Amazon Fund/BNDES is set to reach 45 more families and scale up the local handicraft supply chain.
Two ecotourism operators sponsor the foundation directly: Mirante do Gavião Amazon Lodge and Expedição Katerre. Both work in and around Anavilhanas National Park, a few minutes by boat from the workshop itself.
How to support: buy the handmade products or donate at fundacaoalmerindamalaquias.org.
3. Mamirauá Institute
The Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development (IDSM) was created in April 1999 and is the only federal research center of its kind based in the Amazon interior, headquartered in Tefé, Amazonas, under Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation.
It manages research and community programs across the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve, 1,124,000 hectares of flooded várzea forest, and the neighboring Amanã Reserve.
Its most consequential recent work came out of a disaster. During the record drought of 2023, Lake Tefé lost about 75% of its surface area, and its water reached 41°C. More than 200 endangered Amazon river dolphins and tucuxis died, around 10% of the local population in a single week.
IDSM led the field response and subsequent study, using hydrodynamic modeling to prove the entire 2-meter water column hit 40°C, leaving animals no escape from the heat. This research now informs drought contingency planning across the middle Solimões, showing that rainforest conservation must prepare for extreme heat alongside stopping deforestation.
Ecotourism funds part of this. Uakari Lodge is a floating lodge inside the Mamirauá Reserve, reached by boat from Tefé, and it is one of the longest-running community-based tourism operations in Brazil. Managed through a partnership between IDSM and local riverine communities, the lodge offers professional opportunities for local residents while also working daily to protect the forest.
How to support: donate at mamiraua.org.br, or book your stay at the lodge.
👉 Read more: Best Amazon Jungle Lodges in Brazil
4. Sea Shepherd Brazil – Amazon Boto Expedition
Populations of Amazon pink river dolphins (Inia geoffrensis) and tucuxis (Sotalia fluviatilis) are halving every 9 to 10 years, according to research by Brazil’s National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA). Both are listed as Endangered. Illegal fishing, mercury from gold mining, plastic pollution, and the 2023 and 2024 droughts are all pulling in the same direction.
Sea Shepherd Brasil launched the Amazon Boto Expedition in 2021 to build the long-term dataset nobody had. Established in Vancouver, Canada, in 1977, the organization operates a dedicated Brazilian division centered on river dolphin preservation.
The sixth expedition set out on March 14, 2025, covering more than 1,000 km of rivers, lakes, and streams in the middle Solimões with a crew of 21, including nine scientists from INPA, Sea Shepherd Brasil, and UFPA (Federal University of Pará).
It closed the first six-expedition cycle, which for the first time allows a real assessment of how these populations are holding up. The team also stopped in Coari, one of the towns worst hit by dolphin mortality, and ran environmental education sessions with 100 students.
How to support: the campaign runs on recurring donations from R$ 1 per day at seashepherd.org.br.
5. Alter do Chão Forest Fire Brigade
Established in 2019 in Alter do Chão, Pará, this volunteer fire brigade oversees approximately 1.2 million hectares across six protected areas and Indigenous territories in the Lower Tapajós. The organization operates on the principle that firefighting should be a final resort rather than a primary tactic, arguing that most Amazon deforestation solutions are deployed too late.
Nearly every fire here is preventable through integrated fire management, controlled early-season burns, and steady work with the communities who use fire as an agricultural tool.
In 2024, the brigade helped create the Lower Tapajós Brigade Network (RBBT), seven volunteer and community brigades operating as one system: Alter do Chão, Esquadrão Combate Ativo (Anã), Guardiões da Terra (Maripá), Guardiões Kumaruara, Nova Vista, the Murucututu Indigenous Brigade, and Escrivão.
It works alongside ICMBio, Prevfogo/Ibama, and more than 15 partners, including WWF Brasil and the Pau Costa Foundation. Additionally, the model is now being studied for replication in the Cerrado, Caatinga, Pantanal, and Atlantic Forest.
How to support: donations by Pix or PayPal at brigadadealter.org.br.
👉 Read more: Best Amazon River Cruises in Brazil
6. Expeditionaries of Health (Expedicionários da Saúde, or EDS)
Expedicionários da Saúde was founded in 2003 by a group of volunteer doctors who decided that if Indigenous patients could not reach a surgical center, the surgical center would come to them. EDS packs an entire modular field hospital (operating rooms, sterilization, imaging…), flies it into villages that have no road access, and operates for two weeks.
As of 2026, the organization has completed 57 expeditions with more than 300 volunteers across an area of over 500,000 km². Its 54th expedition set a single-trip record: 107 surgeries, 712 medical consultations, and 2,179 exams and procedures.
EDS now runs expeditions with Brazil’s Ministry of Health under the Agora Tem Especialistas program. In 2023, it won the Zayed Sustainability Prize in the Health category, worth USD 600,000. Its founder and president, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Ricardo Affonso Ferreira, was invited to COP28 in Dubai that December.
Health is conservation policy here. Communities that stay on their land, in reasonable health, are the ones who keep watch over it.
How to support: donate at eds.org.br.
7. Women Entrepreneurs of the Forest (Mulheres Empreendedoras da Floresta)
Mulheres Empreendedoras da Floresta trains women in Santarém, Belterra, Mojuí dos Campos, and Aveiro, in western Pará, to build and run businesses based on forest products, oils, flours, fruit pulps, handicrafts, and agroforestry harvests. It is run by Projeto Saúde e Alegria (PSA), a nonprofit working in the Brazilian Amazon since 1987, with the Santarém rural workers’ union and funding from the European Union.
The logic is direct. When deforestation driven by cattle ranching, illegal logging, and mining depletes natural resources, local families suffer, with women experiencing the primary impact.
When provided with essential training, seed capital, and direct market access, local communities can turn the standing forest into a viable and far more lucrative economic alternative. 22 cooperatives and associations across the Tapajós region are part of the project, which held its results seminar in April 2026.
How to support: see the project and PSA’s other work at saudeealegria.org.br.
👉 Read more: When is the Best Time to Visit the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil
8. Carbon Neutral Program (PCN)
The Carbon Neutral Program is the longest-running project managed by Idesam, a nonprofit founded in 2004. It lets individuals and companies offset their greenhouse gas emissions by funding native tree planting in agroforestry systems, prioritizing species that also generate income (açaí, cupuaçu, andiroba, Brazil nut, etc.).
The planting happens in the Uatumã Sustainable Development Reserve, in the municipalities of São Sebastião do Uatumã and Itapiranga, about 330 km from Manaus.
Idesam published the program’s 15-year results (2010–2025): 23,179 tCO₂e neutralized, 77,262 seedlings planted, 101 hectares of degraded land restored, 129 agroforestry systems implemented, and 111 partner families involved.
Of all the Amazon rainforest conservation efforts on this list, this is the most direct option for a company that wants a measurable offset with a named community attached to it, rather than a certificate from a registry.
How to support: calculate and offset at idesam.org.
How ecotourism pays for rainforest conservation in the Amazon
It is no accident that visitors help fund three of the eight Amazon rainforest conservation efforts on this list. In a region where a hectare of cleared pasture returns a few hundred reais a year, tourism is one of the few land uses that pays more when the forest stays up.
The numbers make the case better than the argument does. Uakari Lodge, for example, moved R$ 607,688 to a community association in 2025 alone, while FAS logged R$ 8.6 million in gross tourism-chain revenue in 2024, and FAM’s workshop in Novo Airão runs on lodge sponsorship and craft sales to travelers.
This is also why sustainable tourism in the Amazon only works when the money lands locally, each penny counts for the forest and the people who call it home.
👉 Read more: Ecotourism in the Amazon Rainforest: A Solution to Deforestation
Support Amazon Rainforest conservation with PlanetaEXO
Now that you know which Amazon rainforest conservation projects are doing the work, the next step is picking how you back them, a donation, an offset, a purchase from a community workshop, or a trip that puts your money into the local economy on arrival.
PlanetaEXO is an ecotourism platform specializing in jungle experiences in Brazil, working alongside the local operators, guides, and community associations that keep these places standing. Our team plans the logistics, the permits, and the transfers, so your money goes where it should and you can focus on nature. Contact us now!
