In the heart of South America, deep within the Amazonian lowlands of Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil, a centuries‑old ecological covenant is quietly unfolding. While the world rediscovers ayahuasca for its visionary, therapeutic, and spiritual potential, the Indigenous peoples who first brewed this sacred vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) are now leading a new chapter: defending it from extinction.
The surge in global ayahuasca demand — from healing retreats near Iquitos to private ceremonies in cosmopolitan São Paulo or Lima — has triggered unprecedented environmental pressure. Wild vines are disappearing faster than they can regrow, especially around urban tourist centers. For local communities, this is not only an ecological crisis but a direct threat to cultural survival. Yet, in the face of overharvesting and biopiracy, South America’s Indigenous healers and elders are emerging as frontline conservation scientists — and political actors. Groups like the Shipibo‑Konibo, Kichwa, Asháninka, and Yawanawa have long managed vine abundance through rotational harvesting, tending family gardens known as chacras, and cultivating old‑growth mother plants whose chemical and spiritual potency takes decades to mature. Today, these time‑tested techniques form the backbone of what researchers call biocultural conservation: protecting biodiversity by safeguarding cultural practice. This ancestral stewardship is no longer only local. In June 2025, at the Psychedelic Science conference, Indigenous leaders joined forces under the Indigenous Medicine Conservation Fund, proposing practical strategies: uniting as “ancestral doctors,” defending territorial rights, and setting ethical standards for global practitioners and tourists alike. Their call is clear: conserving ayahuasca must mean respecting the people and forests from which it comes — not transplanting rituals into the global market stripped of context.
Modern science increasingly backs them. Ethnobotanists working alongside Kichwa communities are documenting growth rates, soil preferences, and genetic diversity of wild caapi vines. Conservationists warn that commercial overharvesting disrupts forest structure and endangers species that climb or flower on the same trellises. Indigenous knowledge offers answers science alone cannot: how to balance ceremony with ecology, when to rest a patch of forest, and how to propagate vines without depleting sacred wild stocks.
In the broader South American context, this story mirrors deeper struggles: Amazonian peoples resisting extractive industries, defending rivers from mining waste, and challenging monoculture plantations that erase biodiversity and local livelihoods. Ayahuasca conservation becomes part of a continental movement — one where Indigenous science and modern ecology collaborate rather than collide.
For the global public, the lesson is profound. The real guardianship of ayahuasca is not found in quick weekend retreats or imported brews. It is rooted in living landscapes, languages, and cultural laws that South America’s Indigenous peoples have refined across generations. If the modern world truly wishes to preserve the vine’s gifts — medicinal, ecological, and cultural — it must first protect those who have kept it alive. photo: varta.Space/File
