Amazon tribe saves plant lore with ‘healing forests’ and encyclopedia

In a bid to safeguard knowledge the Matsés in Peru have been planting “medicinal agroforestry” plots and written a 1,044-page two-volume book.The seven indigenous Matsés elders were slowly meandering through the forest. They were explaining how different trees and plants are used for medicinal purposes, exchanging stories about how they had acquired their extraordinary knowledge and put it to good use. There were memories of an encounter with a jaguar and someone’