Until last December, before everything changed, Jorge Chavez kept wild animals at home.

“We had macaws, we had parrots, we had a sloth, we had boas,” he says.

“We” describes Chavez and his family—but it also describes a town. Puerto Alegría, a tiny Peruvian community perched on the banks of the Amazon River, had long been a tourist destination for exotic wildlife encounters. Townspeople provided the animals, poached from the jungle; tourists paid them in tips.

Then, in December, the police came to confiscate the wildlife. The animals were airlifted away to rescue centers. And dozens in the town were left grappling with what to do without a primary source of income.

“Today we offer bird watching,” says Chavez, seven months after the raid.