history of Hiléia Association

History of Hiléia Association

The starting point was the desire to contribute to the preservation of “Floresta da Vida” , a private forest reserve near Manaus, that Zygmunt Sulistrowski had founded more than 20 years ago. Therefore in 1999 Erich (Eije) Pabst, Sven Thanheiser, Claus Schmidt and some more friends founded in Munich the non-profit NGO “Forest of Life”, with the objective to raise money to buy those parts of the reserve that were about to be sold. On middle term, the profit of a green investment in tourism - Amazonas Park - should provide the funds to buy the whole reserve and protect it forever. For handling the local work the non-profit NGO "Hiléia" was founded in Manaus on may 9, 2000.

Already in june 1999 we could lease a small country seat at the road from Manaus to Manacapurú, where it crosses the reserve. Thanks to voluntary work and donations from Germany it was developed to serve as a Field Station and as the base of the future "Hiléia Centre".

Thanks to donations from Germany, in may 2002 we were able to buy "Pythagoras", one of the ten land titles that make up the reserve. The size is 667 hectares, completely covered with pristine, extremely diverse tropical rainforest. It borders on our Field Station.

In the year 2004 it became possible to contract a second ranger, thanks to the support from the Munich NGO "Tierparkfreunde München Hellabrunn e.V.". This amplified greatly our possibilities to monitor the reserve.

Due to insuperable problems with contracts, till now it was not possible to implement the tourism project „Amazonas Park“. Consequently we are working without the funds expected from the profit of this project, meant to buy further rainforest areas and to further develop the Hiléia Centre.

In addition to work for the reserve, Hiléia Association carries out several projects of sustainable rainforest use.