The Nature Conservancy. Protecting nature. Preserving life.™

Canaima National Park is a breathtaking collection of rivers, jungles and savannas, located in eastern Venezuela, south of the Orinoco River. Known for its high levels of endemism and the highest waterfall in the world, Angel Falls, the park encompasses over 7.4 million acres.

Besides harboring incredible biodiversity, Canaima is also home to about 10,000 Pemón, an indigenous group that has lived in the region for centuries.

Why the Conservancy Works Here

We work with the Pemón indigenous people to ensure their needs are integrated into the park’s management and tourism is done in a culturally and environmentally sensitive way that provides enough financial resources for the Pemón to make a living off of protecting the park’s natural wonders.

Our actions in Canaima included capacity-building for long-term biodiversity conservation and sustainable resource management activities, such as:

• Developing a natural resource management plan for areas within the park, including actions to protect and restore natural areas that have been threatened by unsustainable tourism.
• Training indigenous environmental extensionionists, to monitor fish and other aquatic species, restore degraded areas, and assist with fire management and prevention, among other activities.
• Collaborating with partners to develop the first-ever comprehensive socioeconomic study of the Pemón people, focused on their cultural and natural resource base. Results of this study have been documented in three books written in Pemón languages and Spanish.
• Launching a book about the park’s flora and the fauna. The publication - a milestone in the study of biodiversity in Venezuela -, compiles the results of over eight years of research and will be a strategic tool to develop conservation and management plans in Canaima and other parks in the region. See the publication here (in Spanish only).

The Conservancy also works with five indigenous groups across the border with Brazil, in the state of Roraima, where we build the capacity of indigenous groups in environmental and territorial management.