The Center

The Centro de Educación, Ciencia y Conservación Tambopata (CECCOT) is a small private conservation area on the Tambopata River just a few miles from its confluence with the Madre de Dios River at Puerto Maldonado. CECCOT was established in March 2007 as a continuation of past efforts of two landowners to contribute to the conservation of the area and the environmental education of students in Puerto Maldonado. In the Google-Earth images below, the center is right by the first large meander in the smaller river south of the confluence with the large Rio Madre de Dios that bisects the image from West to East. As is evident from the images, much of the area around the city has been transformed by development, but the bend still includes extensive native forest linked by corridor along the Rio Tambopata to the unbroken, virgin forest that stretches south for hundreds of miles. The solid forest on the east side of the Rio Tambopata represents a forest reserve associated with the Tambopata (Bahuaja-Sonene) National Park. The yellow line to the east (right) is the international border with Bolivia.

Our Mission

CECCOT’s mission is to promote human integrated conservation of tropical rainforest offering learning opportunities on research, conservation, education and sustainable livelihoods for the local community and visitors of all ages.

We aim to become a conservation center that serves as a base for research and education programs that can take advantage of the habitats surrounding our lands and the proximity to the Tambopata Reserve, while providing a model of sustainability and sound conservation practices that can be shared with visitors, students and the local community.

Location

CECCOT is located about 9km by dirt road from Puerto Maldonado on the Carretera Bajo Tambopata. It is neighboring a few rural communities who intend to preserve the area as a conservation area and are anxious to learn more about conservation alternatives to the encroaching urban development to improve their quality of life sustainably.

Our Philosophy

We are embarking on a life project to create a conservation center open to the world community. We intend to provide educational experiences in science and nature for local people as well as for people from around the world. What sets our philosophy for this environmental education facility apart is the integration of up-to-date scientific methodology with our effort to minimize our ecological footprint.

For this reason we are trying to keep the facilities as simple as possible. We want to minimize our generation of excess CO2 by trying to set up a full solar system to power the center; so far we have only a small amount of solar energy capacity but are working to develop more. We use rain water and composting toilets to dispense with the need for well-water pumped with fuel-operated generators: so no running water! We also try to minimize the production of large amounts of solid waste. We cook only with fresh vegetables and mostly free-range animals, but most of the food is vegetarian since cattle ranches have been a major source of habitat destruction in the area.

We are a young organization with many opportunities for helping us to achieve our goal of sustainability and to offer effective conservation education and low-impact ecological alternatives for local families. We want to show that a simple lifestyle at low economic cost can achieve a high quality of life. Similarly, we want to demonstrate this simple-but-high-quality lifestyle concept to the international community. In addition, by including the participation of committed scientists and conservationists, we can promote the protection of biodiversity not only for its intrinsic value, but also for the opportunities it presents to demonstrate the direct connection between healthy ecosystems and our own healthy existence.

We make every effort to minimize the impact on the environment caused by any of the activities conducted at CECCOT. This is a matter of our organizational policies as well as our own personal choices. Unfortunately, Puerto Maldonado does not have recycling facilities, thus while we compost all the organic matter we generate, we want to minimize the amount of solid waste. We work carefully at reducing our consumption of packaging, we buy mostly in bulk, and used our own bags/ boxes to transport supplies.

To assist CECCOT with this goal, we ask you to consider re-usability and sustainability as you make your packing decisions. Bring only the essentials and plan to return with everything you bring, including packaging, plastic containers, plastic bags, even items billed as disposable, such as non-biodegradable hand wipes. The issues are always larger than meets the eye. In this case, the Puerto Maldonado landfill is overflowing and poorly contained. As in many parts of the world, much of that garbage ends up in the rivers. We encourage your support in these efforts and hope also to raise awareness of how much impact we all have in our daily life that we often don’t even notice or take for granted.

To further assist in these efforts, we strongly encourage you include on the packing list refillable water bottles, your personal cloth napkin, and a reusable container for packing lunches, snacks and other food.