A small Bolivian town of 2,500 people has just done something most national governments haven’t: passed a law protecting more than a million acres of Amazon rainforest for the direct benefit of Indigenous and peasant communities. The Gran Manupare Integrated Management Natural Area, covering 452,639 hectares in Bolivia’s Pando Department, is now one of the largest municipally protected areas in the Amazon — and it was built from the ground up.
At a glance
- Amazon rainforest protection: The new protected area covers 452,639 hectares (1.1 million acres), raising Pando’s total conservation coverage from roughly 18% to 26% of its land area.
- Carbon storage: The forests of Gran Manupare hold an estimated 9.2 million tons of irrecoverable carbon — carbon that, once released, cannot be recaptured on any human timescale.
- Conservation mosaic: Over the past 25 years, Bolivian towns like Sena have collectively protected 10 million contiguous hectares of Amazon — an area nearly the size of Iceland — by assembling protections piece by piece.
Why a small town made a big difference
Sena sits in Bolivia’s Pando Department, the country’s northernmost territory and home to some of its most intact Amazonian forest. Pando has an average forest cover of 90%, compared to a national average of 44% — a striking gap that reflects both geography and community choices.
The law creating Gran Manupare was passed by the municipality itself, not the national government. That matters. It means the protection was designed by and for the people who live there — Indigenous communities and rural farmers whose livelihoods depend on healthy forest. Conservation International, which supported the project, called Pando “the largest proportion of well-preserved Amazonian forest in the country.”
Bolivia’s per capita deforestation rate has historically been among the highest in the world. The Pando exception is no accident — it’s the result of decades of deliberate, community-led conservation work that began with the creation of Madidi National Park in the 1990s C.E.
The wildlife this protects
Gran Manupare is home to an extraordinary range of species. The giant river otter (Pteronura brasiliensis), one of the Amazon’s top predators, lives here alongside the big-leaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) — both listed as Endangered by the IUCN Red List.
Healthy populations of jaguars, white-lipped peccaries, and lowland tapirs move through the forest. Vulnerable species including the blue-headed macaw (Primolius couloni) and the giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus) also find refuge here. For ecologists, this kind of intact predator-prey community is increasingly rare — and increasingly valuable.
The Brazil nut economy that made it possible
One reason this forest has stayed standing is that standing forests pay. Bolivia is the world’s largest producer of Brazil nuts, and Pando is at the heart of that industry. Harvesting Brazil nuts requires intact rainforest — the trees don’t survive in degraded land, and they depend on specific pollinators found only in healthy ecosystems.
Conservation International worked with Sena’s municipality to show that a large protected area could formalize and strengthen what local communities were already doing: earning livelihoods from uncut forest. The result is what Eduardo Forno, vice president of Conservation International-Bolivia, calls a “conservation mosaic” — a patchwork of Indigenous-owned lands, Brazil nut management zones, watershed protections, and wildlife corridors that together form one of the largest intact forest regions on Earth.
“It’s a combination of having a clear objective and consistently seeking opportunities to add new pieces to the puzzle,” Forno said. “Protected and conserved areas remain one of the most important tools for conservation, with enormous potential to guard against loss of wildlife and stave off the worst consequences of climate change.”
A mosaic 25 years in the making
Gran Manupare didn’t appear in isolation. It’s the latest addition to a conservation story that spans a quarter century. Since the 1990s C.E., communities across Bolivia’s Amazon have been building protections incrementally — national parks, Indigenous territories, municipal reserves — until the pieces connected into something much larger than any single designation could achieve.
The Madidi National Park, established in 1995 C.E., was an early anchor. Gran Manupare now extends that legacy into new territory, and the cumulative result — 10 million contiguous hectares of protected Amazonian forest — is a conservation achievement that rivals anything achieved by executive decree anywhere in the hemisphere.
Still, the work is incomplete. Bolivia continues to face significant deforestation pressure, particularly in its lowland agricultural zones, and the legal durability of municipal protections can be challenged by future political shifts. What communities build, future administrations can sometimes undo. Vigilance and sustained political will remain essential.
For now, though, a town of 2,500 people has drawn a line around a million acres of irreplaceable forest — and made it official. That’s worth paying attention to.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Good News Network
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Indigenous communities secure 160 million hectares ahead of COP30
- Ghana expands marine protected area at Cape Three Points
- The Good News for Humankind archive on Amazon conservation
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