In Panama’s Darién, Indigenous communities test a new way to fund conservation

Indigenous communities in Panama's Darién region, including Puerto Lara and Arimae, have spent the past several years cataloguing wildlife on roughly 18,000 hectares of forest they manage, using camera traps and bioacoustic monitoring guided by residents themselves. The tally so far: nearly 200 bird species, 73 animal species including jaguars, Baird's tapirs, and crested eagles, with 15 of those considered threatened.

The point isn't just curiosity. Facing illegal logging, agricultural encroachment, and land disputes covering more than 650,000 hectares of contested Indigenous territory, these communities are trying to turn documented biodiversity into income through emerging biodiversity credit markets, with help from the FSC Indigenous Foundation and partners like Health in Harmony and Savimbo.

The economic backdrop is stark: middlemen reportedly take a 50% cut on crops like plantains and cassava because roads are barely usable, and community members describe logging or hunting as the fallback when there's no other way to meet immediate needs. The hope is that proving the forest's wealth on paper might finally make keeping it standing pay better than cutting it down.

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