January 2, 2020
2020 is off to a great start!!! Today, we successfully completed our first fundraising campaign. We thank all our supporters who selected one of our rewards, the photographic ebook, the responsible tee shirt from our partner Coureur Du Dimanche or both, that helped us achieve our crowdfunding target. The profit of £1,238 will contribute to our Matsés Ops workstream. We have several other ongoing projects and even more ideas to raise funds and achieve all our jaguar conservation and Matsés community improvements efforts. Stay tuned!
August 23, 2019
Hector and Dennis have returned from their last expedition with mixed news. On the bright side, they’ve observed rare species such as the vulnerable red uakari monkey and the poorly studied green anaconda, which are animals of interest in our conservation activities. We are still going through the camera trap footage to see what else was recorded. Unfortunately, they also reported that the communities aren’t as supportive as they used to be. They’ve elected new village chiefs, who have different views over practices in the area and have granted back access to the travel companies that were previously banned.
August 16, 2019
The UK charity commission confirms that we meet all the necessary requirements to carry out jaguar conservation in the Peruvian Amazon. We receive our official registration certificate and our charity number: 1184923. This is a fantastic achievement for us and we are really excited to scale up our work with the native communities to protect the rainforest. You can view the registration certificate here: Jaguar Matses Connection_Registration Certificate.
May 29, 2019
We have been aware for some time of travel companies bringing visitors to the area. That’s not an issue, the more people to see the incredible biodiversity of the forest the better. But unethical practices are. That includes the killing of endangered species such as spider monkeys or black caimans, the advertisement of jaguar killing and disrespectful behaviours in the communities, particularly in the maloca where Matsés elders live in the ancestral way. Partly thanks to Hector and Dennis and thanks to the communities’ chiefs, those companies have been banned and will be denied access to the area.
March 5, 2019
We are joined by Thomas Gicquel and Luca Viadana as trustees for our applicant charity. They are bringing an incredible amount of passion and skills to our NGO’s work. We also receive invaluable help from knowledgeable people in their respective field, Peter Hopton for the legal documentation, Maud Laisney, for the website, Caroline Gicquel for the logo design and David Gicquel for medical matters. We are extremely thankful for all these contributions that we so important to our success.
December 15, 2018
Only two weeks after we holding the meeting with the community, we receive the tragic news that a jaguar has been shot nearby the village. We are told that a pair of them entered the village and killed some of the dogs. Someone took a rifle and fired the shot. From the pictures we received, the casualty is a young female. The other jaguar escaped and we can only suppose it was a male. These two were probably a breeding pair, such a sad news.
October 24, 2018
During their 5-week expedition to one of the most remote part of the rainforest in the Reserva Nacional Matsés, our founders Dennis, Hector and Guillaume looked relentlessly for signs of jaguars, to ultimately try to photograph it. But they found very few. There are probably many reasons for this but discussions in camp revealed one of them could be that they are sometimes shot by other village hunters, fearing being attacked. They started thinking about creating an NGO to promote wildlife conservation and shared this idea during a meeting with the villages of Buen Peru and Remoyacu upon their return.
Jaguar Matsés Connection is a registered charity in England and Wales 1184923.