Amigos de Iracambi

The Legend of the Humming Bird

Once upon a time there was a terrible forest fire and all the aniimals were fleeing as fast as they could. Except for the humming bird. She was flying back and forth to the river, carrying drops of water in her beak to quench the flames. "Hey, you silly little bird," cried the eagle, "Do you really think you can put the fire out all by yourself?" "Not all by myself," she replied, "but I'm doing my part."

Amigos de Iracambi

Our Aims

Amigos de Iracambi is a Brazilian registered non-profit association whose vision is to see thriving communities living sustainably in a thriving landscape. Our mission is to work with the community to make the conservation of the forest more attractive than its destruction.

We do this through our work in public policy, our research, our programs and our projects. Our public policy work ranges from participating in the State Environmental Policy Commission (reviewing environmental licensing) through serving on the board of the Serra do Brigadeiro State Park and the Collegiate Council of the Serra do Brigadeiro Development Territory, to our work with local and regional tourism associations and the Rosário da Limeira county sustainable development committee.

Our research supports our three main programs, each of which is subdivided into different project areas. All of these rely on our toolkit which makes everything possible: our departments of Information Technology and Geographical Information Systems, our forest nursery and the Iracambi Volunteer and Research Division.

The directors of Amigos de Iracambi are:

President	Binka Le Breton, Director, Iracambi Recursos Naturais Ltda
Vice President	Sérgio Aparecido Gonçalves, former Director of Environment Department in Rosário da Limeira county, presently county councilor
Secretary	Antônio Marcos Pereira, biologist from Muriaé
Treasurer	Vicente Chavez Júnior, teacher from Rosário da Limeira
Advisory panel	Dr. Maria Cristina Weyland Vieira, director of the Instituto Sul Mineiro and Vice President of the Minas Gerais Association of Private Forest Reserves
	Dárcio Calais, Associação Mineira de Silvicultura, Belo Horizonte, native of our area
	Joaquim Ferreira de Laia, community leader, Graminha Community, Rosário da Limeira
	Profa. Maria Irene Cardoso, Professor of Soils, Federal University of Viçosa
	Prof. Robert Young, Professor of Animal Behavior, Pontifical University, Belo Horizonte
	Paulo Sérgio Ferreira Neto, formely of CTA, Viçosa and consultant on Community Development
	Dra. Rosana Cambraia, professor at the Federal University of Diamantina and also a native of this area

You can download our latest Annual Report here and the NGO statutes here.

In the USA we are supported by Amigos de Iracambi (US) Inc., which is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a Section 501 (c) (iii) organization.