By ROXANA POPESCU

SAN ANTONIO DE PINTUYACU, Peru - Women in this remote Amazon village can weave fibers from the branch of the chambira palm tree into practically anything they need? fishing nets, hammocks, purses, skirts and dental floss.

But for the last year they have put their hopes in baskets, weaving hundreds to build inventory for export to the United States. Their first international buyers are the San Diego Natural History Museum and San Diego Zoo, and they plan to sell to other museums and home decor purveyors.

The enterprise is one of many ventures here in the Amazon aimed at “productive conservation,”which advocates say will save the rain forest by transforming it into a renewable economic resource for local people? just as some eco-tourism lodges and other ventures in places like Africa and Southeast Asia have tried to do.

The government of Loreto, Peru’s densely forested and least populous region, organized the basket project, which is financed by grants from two nonprofit groups, Nature and Culture International and the Moore Foundation.

But the program is not without challengers. Ivan Vasquez, president of the Loreto region, said he had made some enemies for supporting conservation in a region where fishing and logging have been the primary sources of revenue for decades.

He called himself“the Quixote of the Amazon.”

“We are part of nature. When we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves,”Mr.Vasquez said.

The basket project was the idea of Noam Shany, an Israeli agronomist and entrepreneur. A bird-watching trip in 2005 led him to a remote village on the Tahuayo River, an Amazon tributary. There, he said, he noticed striking local baskets for sale in a tourist lodge.

Mr.Shany decided to put his retail experience to an environmental use. In 2006 he helped found Procrel, a biodiversity program that has worked with the regional government to establish three vast protected reserves. The basket program is one of several conservation initiatives intended to help indigenous peoples.

Artisans get $10 to $12 for each basket, which sells for $40 in the United States. About a third of that goes into shipping and distribution, and the rest is retailer profit, meaning the company that distributes the baskets gets a little more per unit than each maker. Mr.Shany and Procrel receive nothing.

The artisan’s cut may not seem substantial, Mr.Shany said, but it is more than double previous monthly earnings. Two years ago, households in this region earned as little as $30 a month selling fish and palm frond roofing at city markets, he said. Today, experienced weavers can earn up to $100 a month.

The baskets are bringing staples, and stability.“Already we’re buying more from the bodegas. Rice, sugar, soap,”said Erika Catashunga , who has just received the first business license granted to a basket weaver with Procrel, establishing her as the manager of a nine-village communal enterprise. Its name is Mi Esperanza, or My Hope.