Profile in Forbes Gives a Face to Wren's project in the Amazon
Forbes profiled Betty Padilla, an indigenous monitor on this project. Her story is inspiring.
Just the gist
If you're in a hurry, here's what you need to know this month:
📣 Our project with Rainforest Foundation US recently released a peer-reviewed paper—providing more evidence that indigenous communities are the best at protecting their Rainforest Home. It caused quite a splash, getting press in outlets around the world including the BBC, Thomson Reuters, and France24. You can learn more about the paper in our previous update.
✍️ Forbes recently sent a journalist to this project and wrote an excellent profile on Betty Rubio Padilla, one of the project's indigenous monitors. Read on to learn more!
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For years, our partnership with Rainforest Foundation US has helped indigenous peoples in Peru protect their rainforest against deforestation by equipping them with smartphones and training them in a satellite-based territorial monitoring system that alerts them when their land is being destroyed.
The work our indigenous partners do is heroic. Their territory is vast, and the local police force is small. The invaders in their forests are multitudinous, and have shown a historic propensity for violence against indigenous people when challenged. So who are these indigenous heroes and heroines at the front lines of rainforest protection?
That’s what a recent Forbes profile of Kichwa woman Betty Rubio Padilla explores. Padilla is a community monitor: the official job title for the forest guardians RFUS supports against the gold miners, illegal loggers, and narco-agriculturalists deforesting their land.
“There’s the perception that indigenous people are blocking development or progress. But it’s absolutely the opposite of that,” Padilla tells Forbes. “We… want to take care of the environment because the natural world is all we have.”
These are wise words from Padilla. The natural world is the only thing we all have.
That's it for this update. As always, thank you for your support. Thanks to you, large parts of the Amazon rainforest is in the hands of people like Betty Padilla—who can protect it better than anyone.
— The Wren team 🧡