Charity Battle VII Goals
Tier 1: $15,000 Conserving the Brazil Nut Corridor in Peru
Most of the world's supply of Brazil nuts comes from the Madre de Dios department of Peru. Because Brazil nut trees are dependent on intact rainforest to complete their life cycle, the Peruvian government has designated family-owned concessions where most extractive activities are limited and the sustainable harvest of Brazil nuts can be maintained. As long as the Brazil nut harvest continues to support the concessionaires who live there, this globally-significant region of the Peruvian Amazon will remain intact.
At the request of local concessionaires, the Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon (ASA) is working to ensure the sustainability of the Brazil nut harvest and by extension the survival of this essential piece of the Peruvian Amazon. They do this through the Brazil Nut Corridor Project. Participating concessionaires are provided with workshops on the cultivation and planting of Brazil nut seedlings in forest gaps, and those who complete the program receive 80 Brazil nut seedlings for the lands they manage. Transportation assistance is provided when needed to attend the workshops, and concessionaires are given a guidebook created by ASA and a forestry expert in the region as a reference.
This year, ASA is continuing to expand the program, providing workshops for new concessionaires and checking in with participants from previous years to see their progress. Wild Green Future has had the pleasure of supporting this excellent community-based conservation project since its start in 2021, and we are excited to provide continued funding through Tier 1 of this year’s Charity Battle.
Tier 2: $27,859 Expanding Frosted Elfin Conservation
The frosted elfin is a small brown butterfly considered to be rare and declining throughout its geographic range, which extends from New Hampshire and Wisconsin to Florida. It is likely extirpated in several states and provinces of its former range, and is listed as a species of special concern, threatened, or endangered in 11 states. It occurs in small, localized populations, and its caterpillars specialize in sundial lupine and wild indigo. Extremely vulnerable to habitat destruction and fragmentation, frosted elfin populations have been lost from 7 of the 10 locations in Florida where they were present as recently as 2017.
The Daniels Lab at the Florida Museum of Natural History's McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity has over 30 years' experience in captive breeding of at-risk taxa, including the Miami Blue Butterfly and Schaus's Swallowtail.
Last year, Wild Green Future funded the augmentation of the Daniels Lab's frosted elfin captive breeding program with new individuals and diverse DNA from remaining wild Florida populations. Funds from Charity Battle VI also enabled the creation of a manual containing the comprehensive set of husbandry and breeding best practices for conservationists across the butterfly's range.
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We are expanding on last year's success in Tier 2. This year's grant will support the creation of a separate captive population with genetics from frosted elfins in Virginia to ensure the survival of that region's genetic variation. It will also allow for the collection of nondestructive tissue samples to enable further genetic analysis of the Virginian populations. Finally, funding from this year's Charity Battle will allow the Daniels Lab to conduct trainings for frosted elfin detection and population survey methods with natural resource professionals in Louisiana and Alabama, enabling these state agencies to better monitor their local populations.
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Jaret Daniels and Geena Hill
Tier 3: $31,000 Staff for the ASA
The ASA is working to ensure a secure future for the people and ecosystems of the Peruvian Amazon through collaboration with local communities and research into the ecology and wildlife of the region. They are a young but already accomplished organization, rapidly expanding in both size and impact.
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To help sustain this growth, last year’s Charity Battle provided funding to contribute to ASA's staff salaries for positions including a lead naturalist, fundraising intern, lepidoptera project lead, and assistant researchers. ​
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In Tier 3, we are continuing to support the work of these natural resource professionals. It takes people power to conserve nature, and these positions have had an exponential effect on ASA's work, allowing them to bring even more capacity, expertise, and funding to their efforts.
Danielle Russell
Tier 4: $25,000 Facilities for Rainforest Conservation
The ASA conducts most of its activities from its field station in the Peruvian Amazon, Finca las Piedras. Their location allows them to conduct research in the forest and to interface directly and organically with local communities, but the field station’s capacity to support staff and visiting researchers was limited by the lack of facilities in the region.
To help remedy this limitation, Wild Green Future has worked with ASA to fund the construction of resilient infrastructure, including solar panels, bathroom and shower facilities, and a biodigester for waste treatment.
In 2024, Wild Green donors allowed us to continue our support for these vital projects by funding the construction of new staff housing, expanding storage facilities, and conducting necessary improvements and maintenance to the dining hall. With these improvements in infrastructure, Finca las Piedras now has the appropriate living space for its regular staff and the flow of visitors it receives. ​​
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This year's infrastructure fundraising goals will support upgrades to their solar energy system to further improve the function of Finca las Piedras and its molecular lab (one of the only such labs for ecology research in South America), continued improvements to the visitors' quarters and kitchen, and the implementation of a new work and collections space in Puerto Maldonado, the nearest major city to the field station.​
Danielle Russell
Tier 5: To Ecology and Beyond!
Any funds donated beyond Tier 4 will support further Wild Green Future grants, projects, and initiatives. Learn more about what we've funded in the past at the links below!
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Bernard Dupont