Touch the Jungle is a rain forest wildlife and habitat protection project sponsored by the US nonprofit Earthways Foundation. Touch The Jungle is working mainly in the South American country of Ecuador at this time. The main interests of this project are:

• Protect threatened rainforest habitats
  
• Protect, rescue, and rehabilitate native animals.
  
• Empower local people to preserve the rainforest and protect its wildlife.

These goals are interdependent. Wildlife cannot survive without habitat.
The habitat cannot survive if the local people don't protect it. The
local people cannot survive without wildlife and the forest. Yet extreme
poverty and lack of jobs cause many communities to accept the offers of
loggers and miners just to provide their families with the necessities
of life. If we want local people to support and protect the rainforest
and its wildlife, then we must support them. This Touch The Jungle does, by
supporting community projects such as health care and education, and
assisting them in developing environmentally-friendly sources of income
such as ecotourism.

Since 1995, Touch The Jungle has been working with Playa de Oro, a hunter-gatherer community in Ecuador's Choco Rainforest. This village has designated all of its 25,000 acres of primary rainforest as a reserve for margays and other endangered jungle cat species. In exchange, Earthways and Touch The Jungle have supported the community's low-impact ecotourism project. This project, which is entirely in the hands of the local people, involves hosting visitors from all over the world, so that they may experience and better understand both the rainforest and those who live there.

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