The Amazon rainforest — the lungs of our planet — is disappearing at an alarming rate. Vast areas once rich in wildlife and towering trees have been reduced to barren land. But together, we can bring life back.

Tamarin Trust is raising funds to support a fantastic new initiative to buy native seeds and seedlings directly from local communities in the heart of the Amazon – the home of the critically endangered pied tamarin, or “monkey of Manaus”.

Professor Marcelo Gordo of the Federal University of Amazonas has been raising native tree seedlings to plant in areas where the tamarins’ habitat has been degraded or lost altogether. Now he wants to involve the local community much more in the fight to save pied tamarins and the Amazonian forests, teaching them to collect and germinate seeds, and then plant and monitor the seedlings to ensure the forests thrive.

Tamarin Trust will help Marcelo buy native seeds and seedlings from local farmers. Every sale will provide a vital source of income for families, while at the same time creating wildlife corridors and protecting endangered species like the pied tamarin, providing them with the food sources that they depend on, and routes through a maze of patchy forest and urban areas so that the population is brought back together again.

_{Professor Marcelo Gordo (left) collects, plants and grows seeds from trees that are important for pied tamarins, before planting out the seedlings to form new areas of forest.}

Marcelo’s extensive knowledge of the native tree species, and how to collect and grow seeds, will help communities nurture these new forests, not only for wildlife but to improve their own environment and wellbeing.

This approach restores not only trees, but hope. Supporting Tamarin Trust means that you will be helping to grow forests that sustain life.