Bruce Farnsworth Photography,Conservation photography,Rainforest animals, Rainforest photos, Tours 

Amazon Headwaters

Sustainable Contact with Indigenous Communities

These are the feet of Tigue, an indigenous Huaorani man hired by botanists assigned to a Smithsonian study of tree diversity in Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park. Using a variety of vine (Paulinia sp.) - with the best tensile strength among the dozens of vines around him - he climbs over 100 feet into the rainforest canopy.

Tigue and colleagues in his community collect flowers and other voucher specimens for botanists waiting below. In this way, more species can be identified by science and protected. The Huaorani use this technique – borrowed by today’s utility workers - to hunt monkeys and other arboreal rainforest mammals with blowguns. Photographed in Yasuní National Park and UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Reserve, Amazonian Ecuador.