Over 95% of the world's life forms live outside of the 4% of the earth currently set aside as parks and other protected areas. Clearly, community-based conservation is urgently needed if we are to preserve a signifigant portion of the world's biodiversity. The Focus Conservation Fund in the USA was created to be a leader in community-based conservation in South America and other continents.

Ecotourism can be used to both employ Brazilians and raise money to convert more land to reserve status. A considerable effort is being undertaken to make tourism an ally in biodiversity conservation, but current economics are stopping ecotourism from fulfilling its potential. Most tour profits stay with the company that sells the tours. They have to, if the company is going to stay in business.

A much smaller portion of the profit goes to companies in the cities where the tourists arrive by air. Vehicles, food, local guides, and other products come from here. Almost none of the profit ends up in the hands of the people that live in or near, and ultimately control, the biodiversity that tourists go to see. This equation needs to be reversed if ecotourism is going to play a significant role in biodiversity protection.

To do this, the local people need to own the tourism. They need to own comfortable lodges that will attract customers. They need to speak fluent English, and be trained as guides capable of guiding the most demanding naturalists and bird watchers. They must own their own vehicles so that they provide the service of picking people up from the airport. They must have web sites that will attract clients, and have prices that provide a commission for travel agents. With this, all of the profits, except the commissions, will stay in the community where the biodiversity is. A clear reason to preserve this biodiversity will be obvious.

The Focus Conservation Fund, together with Focus Tours, Inc., has financed a simple lodge at the Jaguar Ecological Reserve in the Pantanal. They currently have a comfortable 20-room lodge, staffed by well-trained Pantaneiros. This will bring Pantaneiro youth back to the Pantanal. The project will be primarily Pantaneiro owned, with the Focus Conservation Fund as the minority partner. Profits raised the FCF will be used to fund other reserves.

The Brazilian ONG Associação ABTC-BRASIL, known as the Andetur Brazilian Travel Club, also works with community tourism in the northeast of Brazil in the area known as the Seridó (or sertão) based in Acari, Rio Grande do Norte.

One of our current projects is the effort to save the ecological reserve Sernativo, by building a similiar guest ranch next to the reserve on the Gargaheiras lake. Beside providing employment for local families at the hotel, we are also implanting a system of Mandallas to help the local families survive.

The directors of the Focus Conservation Fund in the USA have agreed to represent our ONG by allowing Americans to make tax-free ductions via FCF.

The result will be Brazilians continuing to live in the sertão, earning a fair living and protecting their habitat.