SFS Peru: The Living Amazon

Experience the incredible biodiversity of the Peruvian Amazon when you spend a semester in the rainforest studying conservation, development, and sustainability. Meet the residents, analyze environmental policies, and explore diverse ecosystems to learn about climate change, resource extraction, and other regional issues.

Students climb from cloud forests to lowland jungles, surveying biodiversity, mapping plant–animal interactions, and tracing how altitude shapes life. From ridgelines, they see intact canopy stretching in one direction and fields newly cleared for timber and oil in the other. Each trek carries the tension that the world’s richest forests are also among its most endangered. Each dataset transforms from numbers to evidence in a struggle that links Amazon futures to global survival. The days are also filled with joy: the flash of macaws in the trees, river otters floating downstream, and the discovery of rare orchids, sometimes right beside you.