Acaté’s integrated aquaculture project was announced as a recipient of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) special recognition award, recognizing excellence in aquatic food systems. Our project, now starting its fourth year, is advancing highly productive, climate-resilient aquaculture systems integrated with diverse agroforestry.
This special recognition award, to celebrate the 80th anniversary of FAO, highlights effective practices and innovations that have contributed to the responsible and sustainable development of fisheries and aquaculture, strengthening their contribution to poverty alleviation, food and nutrition security, and healthy aquatic ecosystems.
Over the past three years, a total of 45 aquaculture sites were established in the Matsés and Kukama communities. The largest ponds hold up to 24,000 cubic meters of water, which is roughly equivalent to 10 Olympic-sized swimming pools. These sites are producing fish at weights comparable to those found in private commercial fish farms. Importantly, the design of the aquaculture sites, along with integrated plantings, has made them resilient to recent periods of severe flooding and drought, which are becoming increasingly common in the region.
The successful extension of the project into the Kukama communities along the Marañón River is a significant milestone, demonstrating the replicability and scalability of the project to seasonally flooded areas along the major rivers.
The communities directly benefit from this initiative in several ways, including enhanced food security, most notably increased protein availability for children during times of scarcity, increased economic opportunities for families, ready access to medicinal plants, and support for training a new generation of traditional healers. The indirect benefits include the recovery of fish stocks in the rivers, reduced hunting pressure on game species, and a reduction in the labor needed to meet their basic needs.
This project operates at the nexus of food security, health, economic advancement, and women’s empowerment. To date, nearly 300 people have been trained in integrated aquaculture, with many becoming experts. The community training element is very popular with the communities, as they appreciate the opportunities to learn instead of relying on outsiders for designs and technical aspects. The program also established the first Matsés Women’s Association, advancing women in leadership and governance while improving their economic situation. The aquaculture sites are integrated with medicinal agroforestry, resulting in the planting of tens of thousands of medicinal plants. The medicinal agroforestry and advanced interns component of the project is a continuation of our Matsés Traditional Medicine Initiative that started over a decade ago. The advanced Matsés apprentices are being trained and guided by elder plant masters who are passing on their ancestral knowledge before it’s too late.
This past year, as part of our effort to scale the project to meet the needs of the Matsés communities, we began work on realizing the ambitious goal of a simplified yet practical fish reproduction laboratory, centrally located in the Matsés territory, to restock the integrated aquaculture systems. Once operational, the laboratory will obviate the logistically complex and expensive air-freight transport of fish fry to replenish the farms.
Background
The Amazon Basin holds one-fifth of the world’s fresh water and contains a truly extraordinary diversity of fish. Global climate change, which is impacting even the most remote regions of the world, has exacerbated food insecurity through major shifts and unpredictability in rainfall patterns, bringing hardship to communities whose way of life and existence depends on healthy forests and rivers. The populations of migratory fish have been declining rapidly due to overfishing and upstream habitat disturbances.
Traditional fishing weir, rendering by Matsés indigenous artist Guillermo Nëcca Pëmen Mënquë ©Acaté
Communities that live near small jungle streams (quebradas), which contain fewer and smaller fish, are impacted by fluctuating water levels during the extremes of the rainy and dry seasons, making fishing challenging year-round. Nearly all indigenous communities in the Amazon with sustained contact with the outside world transitioned decades ago from traditional semi-nomadic settlement patterns to more fixed and permanent settlements that afford more access to infrastructure like schools and health outposts. Growing populations in fixed settlements create real challenges for communities to meet dietary protein requirements.
Prior to first contact with missionaries in 1969, the Matsés moved their settlements every three years to a new locality where animal game was more abundant, allowing the rainforest to reclaim their farmland, as well as for fish stocks to replenish. The Matsés still practice swidden agriculture, which was superbly adapted to their former pre-contact semi-nomadic lifestyle. Traditionally, steady access to abundant game balanced out the Matsés’ starch-rich, but protein-poor, polyculture farm production. Significant deficiencies and challenges, however, have arisen with their shift to a sedentary settlement pattern, characterized by fixed villages that support growing populations.
These include:
1) Shortage of protein, for which children are most vulnerable and impacted.
2) Once fully self-sufficient, the Matsés are now increasingly drawn into the cash economy with the advent of the public education system, adoption of manufactured clothing, and the use of tin pots. All Matsés families today require a source of monetary income to support their daily lives. Outside of a small handful of village school teaching jobs, the sole opportunities to obtain it are by timber extraction or for young people to travel to cities in search of work.
3) Swidden farms are inevitably being cut farther and farther away from villages. To efficiently access their farms, which are positioned at a distance from their village, the Matsés require fuel, at significant cost to families, for their small outboard motor (peque-peque) canoes. Women also endure the physical burden of transporting harvests increasingly longer distances as an inevitable consequence of swidden farms being cut farther and farther out.
4) With game animals increasingly distant from the permanent villages, men hike to hunting camps to smoke meat, and are absent from their village for 4-10 days. The women, then, are left in the villages with the responsibility of feeding their children, specifically through harvesting of swidden farm products, gathering wild fruits, and fishing. The latter requires a significant investment of time, as the waterways along which most of the Matsés villages are located are small jungle streams with fewer and smaller fish. Fishing can become particularly challenging during the extremes of water levels.
5) Last but not least, global climate change. Although the Matsés have not contributed to the drivers of global climate change, they tragically bear its impact. The Amazon region as a whole has been experiencing record droughts, stranding boats in large rivers, and killing fish. The smaller streams are now drying up completely, and the larger streams where some Matsés communities are located are being reduced to trickles during the low water period. While the average water levels have remained stable, extreme droughts and flooding periods have left the communities vulnerable.
Many indigenous communities throughout the lowland Amazon Basin share the challenges faced by the Matsés. It is critical to develop conservation interventions such as this initiative to ensure food security and climate resiliency.
There are many examples of successful commercial aquaculture projects, including for export to upscale restaurants around the world. Due to the pressing need and potential benefits, fish farm projects are commonly advanced by conservation NGOs and governmental agencies in the Peruvian Amazon. On paper, these projects look ideal. Unfortunately, the ground truth is that most projects fail, not due to a lack of interest or commitment from the beneficiary community members, but due to poor implementation and a lack of follow-through. In the case of Matsés, we are aware of at least five initiatives over the past two decades. These projects ranged from blatant money-grab schemes from NGOs in which not a single action on the ground was taken, to a large-scale scale well-funded initiative that resulted in the construction of a large concrete building to function as a fish laboratory. This structure is now dilapidated, with no viable fish farms currently operating at the community level. In this backdrop, even though Acaté has earned a reputation as an organization that can succeed with difficult projects through innovation and community engagement, some of our partners were initially hesitant about launching a large-scale fish farm project, aware that so many of these projects launched by other NGOs typically fail.
For detailed reporting on the experience of the first two years and a deep dive into the construction of fish farms and challenges encountered, please read our prior field reports: September 2023 Field Report (Year 1) and November 2024 Field Report (Year 2).
Year 3 Report
We are pleased to report the successful realization of 13 additional integrated aquaculture sites in Matsés and Kukama communities over the last year, bringing the total to 45. Shifting rainfall patterns have led to both periods of massive flooding and drought in the region. The changing climate has meant that the river levels are both higher and lower than the historic extremes. Some streams that were generally navigable year-round are now drying up completely during the low water season. To address this, we have been prepositioning materials in the communities upriver during the times of high water such that they’re available when needed. We have also taken advantage of the periods with limited rain to dig the ponds and tamp the clay down without having to deal with the thick mud. When the rain comes back is the ideal time for tree planting and makes for the highest survival rate of the seedlings and saplings. By adapting work schedules to the conditions, we have been able to overcome the challenges of the seasons and the changing climate. Timing is key for these projects.
All of the ponds built over the prior years have fortunately withstood both the massive rains and the droughts. The outstanding results are due to a combination of site selection, design, and maintenance. If any of the ponds had been built in areas outside of optimal elevation, including calculating for the relative concavity of the surroundings and drainage, then the risk of washing away or drying out increases considerably. With proper site selection, it is possible to design the ponds with the available equipment and materials such that there is no overtopping of the dikes during floods nor drying out during drought periods.
In the seasonally flooded areas along the Marañón River, the communities face many of the same challenges as the Matsés.
Aquaculture Site Maintenance
While site selection, construction/design, and maintenance are all necessary for a successful outcome, and we have continued to improve on all three aspects, our emphasis in Year 3 has been on maintenance and fish production. Working with our field staff, all the project beneficiaries and the women’s association have been trained to maintain the aquaculture systems and care for the fish. Some of the potential risks that must be remedied before the torrential rains such as clogged drainage pipes, blocked drainage downstream of the dike, and erosion of the dike or leakage in the dike wall. To prevent the ponds from emptying during periods of little rain, the ponds must be cleared of plants with roots that could pierce the clay seal and cause leakage, holes in the dike, and blockages to the inflow of water. Finally, all this would be moot without healthy, growing fish.
The Matsés Women’s Association has taken the lead in the care and growth of the fish, and some sites are reporting weights of nearly 2 kg after one year of growth. One of the missteps we made in the first year was using nets with a mesh size that was too big and ended up entangling the fish. We have moved to using mosquito netting so that the fish can be caught, inspected, and measured without risking injury.
An additional benefit can be gained from the removal of muck from the ponds, which is a necessary maintenance chore over time to avoid the buildup of decomposing organic material that can deplete the pond of oxygen. The nitrogen-rich muck can be matured and used as fertilizer to enrich the soil for the associated agroforestry sites.
The key factors for the health and rapid growth of the fish are water quality, sufficient food, and especially protein. In the training courses, the beneficiaries were encouraged to use the abundant ant nests around the area to provide protein for the small fish. Each beneficiary has a grinding mill so that they can grind seeds for the fish, especially important for the smaller fish. They feed the fish with food waste (cassava and plantains), corn meal, fruit seeds (Mauritia flexuosa, Bactris gasipaes, Oenocarpus bataua,Theobroma bicolor), and leaves (sweet potato, kudzu). Using these feed sources, most of the ponds have achieved weights of 1.5 kg or greater after one year, an amazing achievement considering commercial operations with optimal conditions can reach a max of 2.2 kg after one year!
The availability of an abundant protein source has alleviated some of the pressure on older men, who traditionally provide meat for their families, particularly with fewer younger men available to help with hunts due to urban migration.
Replenishing the Integrated Aquaculture Sites
The aquaculture sites need to be stocked with young fish fry and replenished over time. To date, we have delivered 20,000 fish fry to the project beneficiaries to stock the sites. The process and coordination involved in obtaining sanitary certificates and transport authorizations from the Peruvian authorities for air travel from Iquitos to the settlement town of Angamos, at the gateway to the Matsés territories, are complex. Once in Angamos, the fish fry then need to be transported to the Matsés communities, some of which are a further three days upriver by boat on narrow jungle streams. We have improvised and developed an effective fish ladder protocol to move the tiny and fragile fish upriver to the most distant Matsés communities. This is achieved by creating custom holding pens using mosquito netting and transporting the fish by boat at night for a maximum of eight hours.
Then the fish are placed in the custom-built pens and allowed to rest and feed until they are moved to the next stop. We have obtained excellent results, but there are still challenges. In the dry season, the shrinking water levels of the narrow jungle streams often expose submerged logs, which obstruct the waterways for canoe carrying tanks of fish fry or construction supplies.
To achieve our ultimate goal of self-sufficiency for the program and communities, we launched the next phase to help obviate the logistically complex and expensive air-freight transport of fish fry to replenish the farms. This involves 1) creating large ponds to raise the support hatchling fish fry, and 2) building a simplified yet practical fish reproduction laboratory to produce the hatchlings. The logical location for these is the settlement of Angamos and the gateway to the Matsés territories. Angamos is centrally located to all three river systems of the Matsés territory, which will facilitate safe travel for the hatchlings.
The first step for this phase was acquiring land in Angamos. The best available land was a relatively flat former pasture consisting of nine hectares. This land was cut from the forest many years ago and is highly degraded and eroded. Building ponds in flat areas, however, requires significantly more excavation and increases the risk of unexpected emptying. The proximity to the river has allowed us to use a pump and hose to ensure water levels are maintained during low rainfall periods. The tolerances for water quality in these ponds are precise, as the larvae are sensitive. The land was formerly pasture land and heavily degraded. To address the eroded area and the risk to water quality and oxygenation, we initiated a reforestation component that is a crucial component of the plan to prevent erosion and provide some shading. The most important element of fish production is having sufficient pond area for each species and to segregate different age fish. To achieve this, we built ponds that can be divided to hold the four species at various stages of development. These ponds included many of the same features as the 45 community-based ponds constructed during the project, but they are larger and contain additional protected areas for the fish to hide from avian predators, along with associated tree plantings to provide the right amount of shade.
The second step, and greater undertaking, is to construct a fish hatchery to supply the ponds. Fish laboratories can be large structures with a sophisticated setup of pumps and enormous tanks to hatch and hold the fry at different stages. In its design, we are adapting its structure and function to the remote and resource-constrained settings which it is being built. In the coming two months, we will install simple fiberglass tanks for the larvae where the water is filtered and aerated to optimal conditions for the fish, maintaining the proper pH,stay within the appropriate temperature range, having sufficient oxygen levels, and have the correct depth and surface area for each fish species. This process will inevitably involve modification of the tanks, equipment, and ponds to achieve the pH, temperature, and oxygen levels necessary. As the larvae grow, they can be released into the outdoor ponds to continue their growth cycle until they are of the optimal size for transport to the beneficiaries.
This process will clearly be challenging, but upon completion it will remove dependency on fish fry from Iquitos and the risky and frustrating process of delivering them to Angamos.
Medicinal Agroforestry
In Year 3, the beneficiaries continued the extraordinary integration of medicinal agroforestry areas into the systems previously reported in last year’s field report. The medicinal agroforestry component is coordinated by the Junta Directiva of the CCNN Matsés, village elders, and the Women’s Association. Young women are now included in the training from the elders in the use of the Matsés’ traditional medicine. In each community, between 1500 and 2000 trees are being planted. This number of trees would make for an impressive reforestation project by itself. The diversity of trees, vines, and epiphytes planted is unprecedented.
This project is a continuation of our Traditional Medicine initiative that has been ongoing since 2013. Back at that time, over a decade ago, the Matsés’ rich and ancestral legacy of healing knowledge and wisdom was on the precipice of being lost forever. For centuries, the Matsés and other Amazonian peoples had passed on through oral tradition an accumulated wealth of knowledge of the natural world. This knowledge is more than a method to thrive in one of the most biodiverse yet complex ecosystems on the planet; it is a realization of their deep ties to the natural world.
Traditional healing in the rainforest. Watercolor rendering by Matsés indigenous artist Guillermo Nëcca Pëmen Mënquë ©Acaté
With cultural change destabilizing even the most isolated societies, their knowledge was rapidly disappearing. For the Matsés, peaceful outside contact was initiated in 1969, after decades of conflict. By then, the current elder healers had already mastered their knowledge before being told it was useless by missionaries.
As a result of these outside influences, the remaining Matsés elders, all over 60 years old, had no apprentices among the younger generations. Their ancestral knowledge was poised to be lost forever. Despite the lack of apprentices, most Matsés villages still actively depended on and utilized the medicinal plant knowledge of the remaining aging healers as a primary source of health care. What has followed the loss of endemic health systems in many indigenous groups is near total dependency on the rudimentary and extremely limited external health care that is available in such remote and difficult-to-access locations.
In 2013, the Matsés elders and Acaté developed a three-phase plan to rescue, revitalize, and restore their traditional healing systems from the brink of loss. The first step was to write down their healing knowledge in the form of an encyclopedia. Each elder healer would be paired with two young Matsés, who had been schooled by the missionaries to write in a written articulation of their language. One young Matsés would record the information from the elder and photograph the plants, and the other young Matsés would work to digitize the chapter. Importantly, the encyclopedia was going to be written only in the Matsés language.
Two years later, at the end of May 2015, the remaining elder shamans of the Matsés tribe came together for a historic gathering in the Matsés village of Puerto Allegre, where they reviewed drafts and finalized the first volume of the encyclopedia.
The Matsés Traditional Medicine Encyclopedia marked the first time healers of an Amazonian tribe had created a complete transcription of their medicinal knowledge written in their own language and words. Each entry is categorized by disease name, with explanations of how to recognize it by symptoms, its cause, which plants to use, how to prepare the medicine, and alternative therapeutic options. A color photograph taken by the Matsés of each plant accompanies each entry in the encyclopedia. The Encyclopedia is written by and from the worldview of the Matsés healer, describing how rainforest animals are involved in the natural history of the plants and connected with diseases. It was entirely written and edited by indigenous healers, the first of its kind and scope.
Matsés review and edit drafts of the Encyclopedia at the meeting©Acaté
The production of the first indigenous medicine encyclopedia garnered worldwide social media attention, inspiring other indigenous groups and conservation organizations to initiate similar projects. Without public announcement and fanfare, the Matsés leaders, elders, and communities set out quietly to continue their work in the creation of a second volume comprising an additional five chapters. Their work was carried out over two years with the support of Acaté and culminated in September 2017 with the completion of Volume II.
The second phase involved restoration of traditional Matsés agroforestry practices that fell into abandonment following sustained contact with the outside world. For generations, Healing Forests supplied the Matsés communities with an abundance of sustainably sourced medicinal plants to treat urgent health needs. The benefit of having the plants nearby, especially the rare ones, provides both a classroom for teaching and access for treating patients. Healing Forests have now been restored in all Matsés communities. The Matsés elders and apprentices alike confirmed that actually working with the plants in developing the medicinal Healing Forests was the most efficient way to teach the identification and learn the applications.
From those apprentices drawn out in each community, it provides the opportunity for the most dedicated and knowledgeable apprentices to emerge and select themselves out through their demonstrated aptitude, interest, and dedication. The third phase set out by Matsés elders is to identify the most knowledgeable and promising of the young apprentices and provide for further in-depth advanced apprenticeships with the remaining elder plant masters.
Medicinal agroforestry is closely integrated into the aquaculture sites in all the Matsés communities. Each medicinal agroforestry session includes an elder and six apprentices. In conjunction with the Women’s Association, we suggested that the group be three men and three women. One of the interesting aspects of the classes is that some participants were older individuals who had always wanted to learn about plant medicines but never had the opportunity. The advanced apprentice workshops were a mix of the best students from previous training sessions. The communities and apprentices greatly appreciate these sessions, as traditional healers often treat many patients in villages where there may not be a living traditional healer. The courses were so popular that the same individuals consistently audited the classes. Many of the apprentices are now training others and, perhaps most importantly, their own children. Over the past year, we have held three month-long training sessions for the most advanced apprentices.
Economic Advancement
In an extraordinary reversal of past misappropriations from indigenous people, the purchase of kambo, dried skin secretions from the Phyllomedusa bicolor treefrog, has now become a significant source of much-needed household income for many Matsés families. Proper harvesting does not injure the frogs, but over-collecting outside traditional settings has impacted populations in many areas of collection.
Some of the trees selected for the integrated aquaculture systems have leaves that are ideal for the kambo (Phyllomedusa bicolor) tree frogs to make their cone-shaped nests, which must be over water to deposit their tadpoles. Some Matsés families are now taking advantage of the increased frog habitat in the aquaculture sites to farm and sustainably harvest kambo from semi-domesticated frogs living around the ponds. This has been a welcome development for informed and conscientious buyers who are concerned by the non-sustainable practices of kambo vendors around Iquitos and other areas that are negatively impacting local populations of this species.
The Women’s Association established in the course of this project has chapters in all nineteen villages. These chapters are led by a president and a three-member board selected in an election in each village. The formation of the Women’s Association has been impactful in amplifying the women’s voices in the general assembly and in the community at large, as the Matsés formally recognize it on both the population and village levels. With each village having its own Women’s Association, the women can be better organized and form a consensus among their membership with regard to issues of community life. We are now seeing more women who are delegates to the general assembly (the maximum authority a native community where legally binding decisions are made).
Launched in 2016, the Matsés Handicraft Initiative brings much-needed economic opportunities to Matsés elders and youth and transmits timeless ancestral artistic practices.©Xapiri/Tui Anandi/Mike van Krutchen/Acaté
The Association has expanded both the community and our overall capacity for the traditional handicrafts initiative. Managing and distributing orders across 19 different communities has always been challenging. However, with the collaboration of the Association, this has become much more workable now that they manage the traditional crafts project and equitably distribute the sales to their membership.
Handbag woven from natural chambira palm fiber. If you are interested in purchasing wholesale and supporting the Women’s Association, please contact us.
Over the past year, Acaté has established business relationships with companies that export chambira bags to the United States and the European Union. The added organizational capacities of the association have enabled us to expand the sustainable economic program to include export opportunities and to work with larger apparel companies based in Lima.
We are grateful for our funders whose support and vision made possible this ongoing work. We look forward to realizing major advancements in the coming year!
If you missed it, take a look at our February 2025 field report on the launch of a second interactive phone application to support the Kukama, one of Peru’s largest indigenous groups, as their communities seek to restore and revitalize their native language from being lost. This new app features a fun, word-matching game for kids on the ecology of local rainforest plants and animals in the Kukama language!
The Kukamaru Animaru phone application is the 12th and latest in a series of successful app built by Acaté from the ground up with communities in the Peruvian Amazon.
Stay turned also for a forthcoming update on the Matsés community-led river turtle conservation program which has successfully restored the giant river turtle (charapa) into formerly extirpated region, and lots more!
Acaté Amazon Conservation is a non-profit organization based in the United States and Perú that operates in a true and transparent partnership with the Matsés people of the Peruvian Amazon to maintain their self-sufficiency and way of life. The Matsés safeguard a critical conservation corridor and shield some of the last remaining uncontacted tribes in isolation from unwanted encroachment from the outside world. Acaté works to protect their forests and way of life through supporting on-the-ground initiatives that are led by the Matsés indigenous people.
Operating on the frontlines of conservation, Acaté’s initiatives over the past decade have included the first indigenous medicine encyclopedia as well as projects with original methodology in sustainable economic development, traditional medicine, medicinal agroforestry, nutritional diversity, regenerative agriculture, integrated aquaculture systems, biodiversity inventory, education, native language literacy, participatory mapping, and protection of uncontacted tribal groups in isolation. All of our initiatives are developed with, led and implemented by the Matsés indigenous people. Donations are tax-deductible and go directly to fund these on-the-ground initiatives that operate with unparalleled transparency.
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