How Indigenous communities brought a sacred caiman back from the brink

For years, two communities in the Curare-Los Ingleses Indigenous Reserve in southeast Colombia have worked to protect the black caiman — the largest predator in the Amazon River basin, which was hunted to near extinction in the area for its highly-prized skin.

Now, with support from a Conservation International partnership that combined scientific measures with traditional Indigenous knowledge, the Borikada and Curare communities are seeing this culturally and ecologically important species rebound, Astrid Arellano