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Rare’s Program for the Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE) habitat and watershed protection in the Andes protects forests, watersheds and water by giving farmers incentives to preserve their land. The framework for the cohort is straightforward: Lowland farmers, who depend on stewardship of highland watershed habitats, contribute to a conservation fund. The fund provides “payments” to the highland landowners as an incentive to maintain healthy forests. The most popular payments are barbed wire, fruit trees, and bee keeping equipment. Pride campaigns accelerate and deepen community support for this approach.

The extensionists – the technical people associated with each conservation fellow to take on most of the nuts and bolts of reciprocal water agreements (ARA) negotiation – all went down to Santa Rosa, Bolivia in March to receive training from Fundacion Natura Bolivia on how to use the water quality monitoring kits each campaign has been given.

In the video you see us arriving in Santa Rosa, which is an upstream community in which certain producers first signed ARAs years ago when Fundacion Natura Bolivia first started. Julian Torrico, the first guy talking in the video, explains how farmers get bee boxes and/or barbed wire and/or fruit trees in exchange for forest that they leave alone for conservation.

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The 11 extensionists from Rare’s Program for the Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE) habitat and watershed protection in the Andes were Invited by Nigel Asquith of Fundación Natura Bolivia to assist in water quality monitoring training workshop in Bolivia.

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An interview with a farmer in Santa Rose, Bolivia.