rewildingmag.com · 1 hour ago

The Group Restoring Colombia’s Tropical Dry Forest – and Helping monkeys, Too

In the tropical dry forests of northern Colombia - one of the world's most endangered ecosystems - a conservation effort is quietly rewriting what it means to save a species. Proyecto Tití has spent decades restoring fragmented land, not by working around local communities but by weaving them into the fabric of recovery: farmers who once cleared trees for survival have become allies, artisans are repurposing plastic waste into traditional crafts, and children are learning to see the cotton-top tamarin not as a curiosity but as heritage. "Some people think of forests as just trees," says co-founder Rosamira Guillen. "But forests are relationships - between species, between people and nature. That's what we're restoring." The recent appearance of a puma on a camera trap - a predator that returns only when an ecosystem is genuinely whole - suggests that when human communities and wild ones are tended with equal care, something larger than either can come back to life.