Becoming of Place

Our work began in 2018 with the stewardship of severely degraded land that we now know as Sacha Isla. We built strong relationships with our neighbors and community members who are mostly migrants from the highlands of Peru. Together, we formed a committee for the wellbeing and conservation of the Tiracu Valley and began to facilitate educational experiences for the children of the valley. In 2022 we officially became a formal legal entity: Asociación Siendo Naturaleza.

OUR STORY

Stewarding the land

In 2017 Eliane Cohen, Founder of Siendo Naturaleza, met the land for the first time. She encountered a place absent of large trees and with compacted soil lacking in fertility. For 50 years the land had been used for monoculture and grazing. This was all about to change. In 2018 the land and Eliane entered a partnership where she, and others who came after, would become stewards of the place.

Picture taken in November 2019.

Eliane is standing on a recently cut patch of grass, that was like the one behind her. This grass that comes from Africa is called Brachiaria (Urochloa brizantha), and in Peru it is an invasive species. It is planted to graze cattle and once it is rooted and soaking up the sun and the rain, it doesn’t allow other species to grow. In many regions of the Peruvian Amazon, like in the Tiracu Valley, where there once was a forest there is now invasive grass.

At the beginning of our Sacha Isla stewardship process we were not fond of Brachiaria. It was a symbol and a daily reminder of deforestation and of an absence of nutrients in the soil. Over time, we learned to see the role of this grass in our ecological regeneration needs, and today wherever it sill stands invasively, Brachiaria has the potential to become an ally and help us build soil.

This shift in perspective and relationship to Brachiaria is but one example of ways in which we are learning here, evermore finding ways to collaborate with all the beings for a common goal of humanity: to regenerate ecosystems and our human culture.