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A 2025 field update Camino Verde, in the Peruvian Amazon.

Mélida is a mother and an artisan, a farmer and a beekeeper. From a native community on the Ampiyacu River. Since 2021, she has participated in Camino Verde (CV)’s cohort of indigenous Peruvian Amazonian farmers making up the organization’s Rosewood Farmer Livelihood Program, an expansion of CV’s work, in part supported by Regenerative Farms and the Woka Foundation.

Already a skillful farmer of diverse crops in mixed fields in the tradition of her Bora ancestors, Mélida didn’t bat an eye at CV’s proposal to plant over thirty useful tree species, including the endangered Brazilian rosewood. 

Excited by the prospect of a culturally important species being restored in a way that also generates income, she spearheaded her family’s management of an acre plot of mixed agroforestry, with seedlings and practical trainings provided by CV complementing the hard work, hers, of establishing the farm plot and then keeping the young trees free of weeds. Believing in the value of the tree her forebearers called makapahe, Mélida was one of her community’s most successful rosewood cultivators. Her parcel is a poster child, now often visited by farmers from other communities who are interested in what adopting rosewood agroforestry looks like. Though CV had cautioned rosewood farmers that the tree can take four or five years to reliably begin sustainable production of biomass in the form of leaves and woody branches, Mélida’s plot broke all records and began its output of essential oil derived from the biomass at just two-and-a-half years of age. 

In this context, the coordinator of Camino Verde in the native communities of the Loreto region was delighted when Mélida approached our team about presenting a proposal to a recently announced funding opportunity for indigenous women leaders to propose small projects in their communities. Conservation International has supported CV’s work in Loreto in 2024 and 2025, and we helped Mélida navigate the application form in the name of an amazing initiative she envisioned for her community. At her request, we sat down to help her build out the budget for proposed activities. Having recently learned some of the basics of native melipona stingless beekeeping from the CV Loreto team, and having met other rosewood farmers from other communities who are also beekeepers, her proposal focused on her training and subsequent functioning as a native beekeeping promoter in her community, coordinating honeymaking and beekeeping training activities among the 14 communities that form the federation of which her community is part. Beekeeping promotes public health (Amazonian honey is culturally very significant) and also can generate income for beekeepers after a couple years. 

With a strong proposal for a worthy cause, we weren’t surprised to learn that Conservation International selected Mélida as one of the indigenous women leaders to support. As such, in 2025 she realized her vision of bringing women beekeepers from Maijuna native communities (who are also rosewood farmers with CV) to realize beekeeping training workshops in the Bora and Huitoto communities of the Ampiyacu basin. This gave reciprocity to a previous farmer field school organized by CV, in which Maijuna women farmers came to the Ampiyacu to learn about growing rosewood (when they visited Mélida’s farm, of course). 

Now Mélida is a promotora de meliponicultura in her community and seven others on the same river where CV works with over 150 farmer families to date. Zooming out, CV’s total rosewood farmer cohort of 180 families from 11 native communities is all now being trained in melipona beekeeping, as an activity generating regenerative outcomes for both indigenous economies and forest biodiversity at the same time. 

Learn more about the important work of RF’s field partner in the Amazon, see photos, read about their other programs, and buy their rainforest grown aromatic essential oils -click here.