Why Biocultural Restoration?

For many years, Native Future has been supporting Indigenous communities to restore the biodiversity important to their way of life. Why? First, we understand that people and their environments are inextricably linked, especially Indigenous peoples. Biocultural restoration revitalizes and strengthens their cultural and linguistic relationships with their natural world - their traditional ecological knowledge - helping to protect and restore the plants, animals and overall health of their ecosystems, too.

However, due to cancellations of US Government grants, Native Future's biocultural restoration program will be completely unfunded by 2026.

Wounaan have a list of more than 30 species of trees that they want to plant to in their forests and farms. These are trees and plants important to the construction of their traditional homes and boats; their art, music, and many other cultural uses. All are important to the wildlife and ecological integrity of their tropical forest territories, too. However, the invasion and deforestation of their territories decreases the availability of the seeds and seedlings they seek to plant. This also contributes to the loss of their traditional tree planting knowledge and practice. Such a diversity of seeds and seedlings are not available in Panama's nurseries, and the trees from which the seeds might be collected are found in some territories but not others.

In 2022, the Biocultural Restoration program began addressing this issue. The Wounaan coordinator began a series of interviews with elders of the communities to learn how seed collecting and tree planting traditionally took place. Then, in 2023, young and old from five communities came together in a workshop to review these traditional practices, which contributed to a Wounaan tree planting manual. They identified 30 priority native species to plant in each community, and agreed on a strategy to share seeds between the communities, overseen by a volunteer steering committee from the five communities.

By 2025, one of the participants, Hector Osorio (pictured left) was out collecting seeds from one of the priority trees, Mountain Almond (Dipteryx oleífera). The seeds, 2,600 of them, were processed and shared with 26 families to plant in the community of Rio Hondo (pictured right). Mountain Almond fruits are food to macaws, monkeys, rodents and coatis, and traditionally have been a source of nutrition to Wounaan communities during seasonal periods of food scarcity.

Unfortunately, the Biocultural Restoration program will be completely unfunded by 2026 due to the US Government terminating our cooperative agreement with the US Forest Service International Programs (USFS IP). The USFS IP provided critical technical assistance, training and equipment to Wounaan, such as in seed collection and safe tree scaling (picture center). Approximately $50,000/year, the costs of the program include coordination, travel, equipment, workshops and materials translated into the Wounaan native language, that support them to exchange seeds, traditional knowledge and practice.