Monitoring and mapping non-governmental conservation action in Amazonia

The vast forests of Amazonia are a major focus of conservation initiatives by NGOs and governments. Nevertheless, the dynamics and geography of conservation action in this iconic region is poorly understood and, unlike scientific production, has never been systematically assessed. Here, we address this deficit through a survey of ongoing conservation NGO project sites in the Amazon region. We identified a total of 170 conservation NGOs that were implementing 378 projects at 518 sites across the breadth of the Amazon region. Project sites were associated with inhabited regions near major rivers, but away from major urban centres. In contrast to scientific research sites, there was a relatively high representation of conservation NGO project sites in the so called `arc-of-deforestation`. As anticipated, conservation project sites were often situated within protected areas. Overall, our study shows that, as a sector, conservation NGOs have successfully implemented projects throughout the Amazon region and are seemingly well-placed to meet future conservation challenges. However, given the practical difficulties we encountered while collecting the data for this project, we strongly recommend the development of an online data platform for the entire Amazon region that would allow conservationists and scientists to share information, monitor governmental and non-governmental actions, and better coordinate conservation responses in the future.