In 2001, the Ashaninka community of the river Amonia adopted a new system for the sustainable management of the tracajá, a type of river turtle that had become scarce due to over-consumption of its eggs and meat by whites and Indians.

In 1973 an artist named Liz Christy found of the Green Guerillas, got some friends together and reclaimed as garden space an abandoned lot of Manhattan's Lower East Side. This simple act of grass roots activism began the community garden movement. By 2005 it had spread to more than 600 gardens in five boroughs. When Central Park was opened in 1859, it was thought of as green space to "civilize" the newly-arrived masses of immigrants. The community gardens of today represent a totally different sentiment.