Dear friend,

What brings you hope for the Amazon? This year, we celebrated as rainforest advocates like you faced down the oil industry, when Ecuador became the first country to vote to keep oil in the ground, halting a major oil project in Yasuní National Park! This is incredible – Yasuní is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, home to Indigenous peoples including those living in isolation.

Amazon Watch was the first organization to fund Yasunídos, the group who led the campaign for Yasuní, and we’re now working with Indigenous partners to end all crude oil drilling in the Amazon biome. Will you support this work with a donation today? Your gift will be matched through December 31. This is how we End Amazon Crude, together!

All gifts up to $200,000 will be matched by generous donors to support Indigenous rights and solutions for the rainforest.

Amazonian peoples are clear in their demands to end oil drilling in their ancestral territories. Crude oil drilling brings rainforest destruction, contamination, and violence into Indigenous communities. It threatens our climate future.

Nemo Andi Guiquita is a Waorani Earth Defender, and Yasuní is her ancestral homeland. Amazon Watch has worked closely with Nemo and her community for years to oppose oil drilling in the region. Recently, she shared this reflection with us:

“What does Yasuní mean for us, for the Waorani people, for the Amazon and for the world? For us, Yasuní is our house, it’s our temple, it’s our home. We have grown up here for millennia. Our grandparents have taken care of the home. But today, we have seen how the arrival of oil companies has been destroying our house... that is why we defend Yasuní.”

This historic win shows us the way to End Amazon Crude – a people-powered path that centers Indigenous rights and the rights of nature. Your gift today, which will be doubled, is an act of solidarity with Indigenous Earth Defenders resisting oil drilling and protecting the Amazon. Thank you!

For the Amazon and Mother Earth,

Leila Salazar-López
Executive Director