On June 4, 2012, Peru’s first trust fund for a conservation concession was officially created to protect and conserve the Los Amigos Conservation Concession (LACC) in the Madre de Dios region of the Peruvian Amazon. The International Conservation Fund of Canada (ICFC), established to support biodiversity conservation in the tropics, established the $1 million endowment so that the Amazon Conservation Association (ACA), and its partner Asociación para la Conservación de la Cuenca Amazónica (ACCA), are able to continue working to conserve and protect the region from unsustainable development, gold mining, hunting, and illegal timber harvesting. Established by the Ministry of Agriculture in 2001, the LACC was the world’s first conservation concession, the success of which has led other countries to copy its design. Encompassing 360,000 acres of Amazonian rainforest, the concession has one of the highest levels of biodiversity in the area, with over 4,932 species currently registered, and is also home to Los Amigos Biological Station, which is one of the most active research centers in the Amazon basin.