La Joya

Just five kilometers outside of Puerto Maldonado by road, our center in the area of the rural community of La Joya in the Tambopata district covers 25 hectares (62 acres) of degraded cattle pasture.  We estimate that this land was slashed and burned, converted from virgin forest to barren grassland, at least 20 years ago.  As the result of so many years of cattle grazing, annual burning of grasses, and the impoverishing effect of the grass itself, the soil is heavily eroded and compacted.  

Sadly, as more and more local farmers turn to cattle farming as an attempt at economic improvement, Madre de Dios’s degraded pastures continue to expand.  Tropical soil fertility is notoriously fragile to begin with, but land management involving over-grazing and annual burning only deepens the destruction of slim topsoil resources.  

Because of the ubiquity of the cattle pasture scenario in our region and in fact throughout the tropics, the La Joya center provides us with a perfect living laboratory for experiments in managing and enriching a landscape that is exceptionally difficult to reforest.  We have actively employed soil-restoring cover crops and nitrogen-fixing leguminous tree species to begin to reclaim this “tired” land in the hope that we will be able to begin planting native tree species such as brazil nut and jungle cedar within the next five years.