In Ecuador, ELF has supported a family of shamans (indigenous healers), who are the traditional custodians of a sacred mountain, to formalise their custodianship in law and set up a National Park.

In Tambopata, Peru, funding enabled an indigenous community to continue development of a cultural centre on an area of protected forest for which they are custodians.

In Bolivia and India, grants have been given to enable indigenous communities to form teams of forest guards, to protect the forests where they live from further colonisation and logging.

At Mount Kilum in Cameroon, a site originally identified as a conservation priority for a rare bird species has been set up as a forest reserve which local communities value for the protection of the watershed and for products such as honey, animal fodder and firewood.

In one of the few remaining forests in Thailand, Earth Love Fund has helped a group of Forest Monks to work with their local communities in setting up community forest areas.

In the Philippines, ELF has contributed through the World Land Trust and the Philippines Reef and Rainforest Community Project towards community education on the importance of marine and forest reserves to maintain fish stocks and forest resources.

Kilum Mountain Forest, Cameroon

Earth Love Fund has funded community timber management in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and Nigeria.

In Peru, ELF has given grants to the Ashaninka Indians to develop and market traditional medicines from rainforest plants.

In Brazil, ELF is supporting a project to demonstrate the value of the forests for the people in their daily lives. Also in Brazil, ELF is helping the Yanomami Indians to learn Portuguese so they can fight for protection of their land.

The Value Of The Forest From The People's Perspective -- Amazonia, Brazil

"Wokabout Somils" In Papua New Guinea

Rainforest Medicines From The Ashaninka In Peru

In West Papua, an Earth Love Fund grant supplied an Indigenous Resource Centre with equipment and training to join the Internet.

In Venezuela, an ELF grant was used to compile national laws pertaining to indigenous peoples, publish a legal justification for the creation of indigenous reserves and support a project for self-demarcation of ancestral lands by an indigenous group.

In Columbia, ELF helped fund emergency work with the Nukak Maku, who are suffering mass epidemics and mortalities due to their first sustained contact with Western society.

Earth Love Fund has given funds for infrastructure of local indigenous organisations in Brazil, Peru, Columbia, and Venezuela. ELF has also given emergency funds to help indigenous organisations coordinate responses to multi-national development projects in Peru, Guyana, Venezuela, Suriname and West Papua.

Community Workshops On Oil Exploration, Peru

In Kenya, Earth Love Fund has supported the work of the Green Belt Movement mobilising village women in a mass tree-planting movement.

In the Philippines, an ELF grant to the UK Foundation For The South Pacific was matched by the UK Overseas Development Administration to allow the Tribal Co-operation for Rural Development (TRICORD) to reforest the bare slopes of Nueva Vizcaya province. To date, they have planted over 120,000 saplings.

In the Garwhal Himalayas, India, ELF has funded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy to set up community seedbanks to maintain old crop varieties and revive aspects of traditional agricultural practices in place of failing modern methods involving ever-increasing use of chemicals.

In Cameroon, villagers are being supplied with seedlings of a tree whose bark is in international demand for cancer treatment.

In Brazil, ELF has funded tree nurseries for production of leaves for mate tea.

In Nepal, ELF is helping to support a permaculture project.

In Bali, Indonesia, a grant to the Environmental Bamboo Foundation is being used to develop community-based bamboo nurseries to propagate a variety of economically valuable and ecologically beneficial species of bamboo currently in short supply. Mature seedlings will be intercropped with other food crops on farmland and also used to rehabilitate degraded areas.

Peace Trees In Kenya

Jajarkot Permaculture Project

Tea Leaves Help Save Some Of Brazil's Most Endangered Forests

Bark From Cameroon

The World's First Environmental Bamboo Center

In 1993, Earth Love Fund gave a grant through the Rainforest Alliance to the "ECO-OK" programme in Costa Rica, to set up a certification programme for banana growers. Since then, the programme has been adopted by the region's largest banana company, Chiquita, and deforestation for banana plantations has stopped throughout Costa Rica.

More recently, ELF has given start-up funds for the development of a cocoa certification system in Ecuador through the organisation Corporacion para Conservacion y Desarollo, and for training in certification of timber production for Honduras Siempre Verde in Honduras.

How Green Are Your Bananas?

Ethnobiology:
Since 1992, ELF has supported an indigenous centre in Ecuador which is studying management of game animals.

In India, ELF has funded a new research project to study the ethnobiology of the Konyak Naga people.

In Brazil, research with the Kayapo Indians is defining how the Kayapo manage soil nutrient levels through their agricultural practicies.

In Peru, an ELF grant has enabled an Ese-Eja community to continue a re-evaluation of traditional forest practices.

Traditional Resource Rights:
Earth Love Fund has supported the Work Group for Traditional Rights and Resources at Oxford University, UK, since 1995. It has also funded policy work on intellectual property rights and biodiversity issues in Colombia, Ecuador, Ethiopia and Canada.

In addition, a grant to the Rainforest Alliance funded three case studies in Africa and Latin America which will form part of a book on processes, environmental effects and equity and justice implications of resource extraction and prospecting on local communities and host countries.

Ethnobiological Studies Of Konyak Nagas, India

In Africa, Earth Love Fund has supported the International Green Belt Movement to spread the success story of women's tree-planting activities in Kenya to other parts of the continent.

In Nepal, an ELF grant was used for the production of the film Ancient Futures in Nepalese. The film gives a clear understanding of the value of traditional systems of food production and community organisation and highlights the dangers of conventional development. It will be shown in rural communities who have expressed interest in the ELF funded Jajarkot Permaculture Project, which is working in over 50 villages to improve agriculture through sustainable methods.

In the Philippines, ELF has provided funds through the World Land Trust for an education officer near Danjugan Island, a Pacific paradise cloaked in rainforests and encircled by coral reefs. Danjugan has recently become protected and will act as a vital refuge for the fish on which local communities depend.

Environmental Workshops In Central America And Mexico