Unique peanuts in Peruvian protected area

The Peruvian National Protected Areas Service has decided to allocate funds to help protect a large swath of the Amazon this year, which is home to several endangered species and indigenous groups.

The Protected Areas Service pledged to allocate USD 280,000 for surveillance activities in the massive area – encompassing a region larger than El Salvador – formed by the Alto Purus National Park and the Purus Communal Reserve. The protected area was officially created in 2004 in part through the support of WWF.

Interesting enough, but when we ran the WWF announcement by our resident expert on the agrobiodiversity of Amazonia, he had this to say:

Lots of unique peanut landraces are known to be cultivated by the Yaminahua — and surely other native groups — that live up in there on the Upper Purus.

It would be interesting to know if the Peruvian National Protected Areas Service’s surveillance activities extend to crop diversity. Maybe someone out there knows?

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