“It’s a perfect marriage of indigenous wisdom and western technology,” says Mark Plotkin of the mapping project carried out by Suriname’s Tirió people. Plotkin’s Amazon Conservation Team, the U.S.-based Center for the Support of Native Lands, and Surinamese cartographers helped the Tirió document their traditional lands, a new tool in the fight for legal protection. They mapped culturally important places, including hunting sites, sacred places, and areas where medicinal plants grow. The Tirió have already benefited: While researching the map, the Tirió surprised illegal gold miners who had infiltrated their land at a boat portage hidden near a waterfall; the tribe began to monitor the site, and the mining was stopped.