This morning I've been studying up on CI's "Conservation Stewards," program, which brings local communities into the process of protecting their own lands.  It's very cool.

Basically, the program helps people create opportunities to protect their natural resources (forests, animals, fresh water) while making a decent living. 

It makes such simple, staggering sense to me: If you can't feed your family, of course you aren't going to fight to protect the trees.

I'll include a few teasers from what I've been reading, but check out our communities section for some more info. 

1) In Tetepare, Solomon Islands, we're helping fund a conservation scholarship for local youth.

2) We reopened a local school in Dongma, China, to allow the local community -- who consider the forests surrounding a local monastery to be sacred -- to limit hunting and firewood collection in the forests, as well as discourage outside impacts.

3) In Peru, CI helped rewrite antiquated systems that required the stripping of local forests. Our project, which included providing culturally appropriate but more effecient cookstoves to local homes, not only reduced deforestation but also eliminated 90% of cooking-related respiratory disease.

That's it for now!  Check back at conservation.org in the coming months. We'll be highlighting some very cool stuff soon.