Amazon Medicinal Plant Research Volunteer Project, Peru

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The Medicinal Plant and Eco-tourism Development programme in the Amazon is for the local indigenous people of the lowland rainforest to share their practices and extensive knowledge of medicinal plants, while also promoting and developing their eco-tourism plans for the area.

Volunteers will get to experience first-hand the lives and work of local communities that have lived in the Amazon rainforest for generations. Volunteers will contribute to their eco-tourism efforts, while learn about and from their great knowledge of medicinal plants and their uses.

The programme works with several indigenous communities in various locations of the Tampobata province in the rainforest, which is among the most bio-diverse in Peru. Volunteers will live among the communities in some of the most remote parts, and learn about the forest in their proximity.

The Medicinal Plant Research & Eco-Tourism Development programme is focused on visiting local native and mestizo communities in the lowland rainforest, recording their multiple uses for medicinal plants and assisting them with their ecotourism development plans. By spending time with shamans, healers, and other community members, and using a combination of direct observation, structured and unstructured interviews, as well as botanical data collection alongside experts, the aim is to:

• identify the diversity of medicinal plants used in each community
• to calculate the abundance and extraction rates of these plants
• to document the main methods used to prepare the twenty most common plant-based remedies in each community
• to understand how medicinal plant ecology and use varies between communities (including between sex and age groups)
• to help develop a road-map for those communities interested in offering their remedies in local market.