Alto Purús: Beautiful and Damned

It is, undoubtedly, one of the most isolated regions of Peru. The only way to reach it is by light aircraft from Pucallpa. This isolation has meant that the area has managed to survive relatively intact. Created in November 2004, the Alto Purús National Park is the largest protected area in Peru. However, its problems, too, are huge: illegal loggers decimate its indigenous communities, murder ethnic groups in voluntary isolation and poach game to augment their incomes. They even decide who is allowed to enter the region, as Diego Shoobridge, an ecologist who spent several months in the park, writes.

Text: Diego Shoobridge (*) 

EIt was an all-too-symbolic image: the skinned jaguar before our horrified eyes represented, somehow, the prodigious natural wealth of the Alto Purús National Park which, despite being a protected area, is under attack from all sides. After the jaguar's hide had been removed from the bloodbath its body lay in, we gradually emerged from the catatonic state we had fallen into. There are fewer and fewer places where the hand of man has not interfered with nature, and when it does the results are invariably devastating and irreversible. I wonder if Alto Purús will be able to overcome the dark clouds on its horizon that the authorities appear unable to see.

Natural Paradise
Created through a participative process under the leadership of the Federation of Native Communities of Puru (FECONAPU), the Alto Purús National Park covers 2,510,700 hectares and shares a southern border with the 1.7 million hectare Manu National Park, as well as an eastern border with the Estadual Chandless Park in Brazil (670,000 hectares) and other reserves in Brazil, forming a huge area of strictly protected forest in the Amazon basin. This network of protected tropical forest extends virtually uninterrupted from beyond the Brazilian border to the Andes, some 300 kilometres to the southeast, forming the most important natural corridor in the entire Amazon region.

The area boasts great biological diversity and particularly attractive scenery, and has been identified as a priority area for biodiversity conservation in Peru. Species in danger of extinction protected within the park include the giant river otters, spider monkeys, giant armadillos, jaguar, forest condor, black caiman, turtles, boas and anacondas. The region is characterised by a large number of rivers, lakes, canyons, beaches, forests, wetlands, all kinds of birds, insects, reptiles and an enormous variety of plant species: in short, Alto Purús has all the resources necessary for the promotion of sustainable development activities such as tourism and scientific research for the benefit of all Peruvians.

The level of extraction of natural resources over the last two decades - particularly during the last five years - has meant that practically all of Peru's forests have been negatively affected and no longer possess their original capacity to satisfy the demands of forest dwellers and society in general. This has meant that the attention of those who extract natural resources - especially illegal loggers - has turned to protected areas and the territories of native communities. Purús, one of the few virgin areas left in the Peruvian Amazon, has not remained free of such exploitation.

The Threat of Logging 
Purús is one of the few areas where the finest wood can still be found: its mature mahogany could serve as the source of seedlings for the reforestation of other areas of Peruvian forest. The illegal extraction of mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) in the Alto Purús National Park and adjacent territories is intense, despite Peruvian legislation and existing international regulations for the protection of mahogany, indigenous populations and conservation areas. This illegal logging activity is detrimental to the ecosystem of the Alto Purús region, the native communities of the area, its biodiversity and the nation's natural patrimony.

Purús is practically a no-man's land, or rather a land that has been taken over by those behind a systematic exploitation without precedent. The loggers have established exclusive transport circuits, work practices bordering on slavery and relations with indigenous communities which only serve to prejudice the latter. These communities live in extreme poverty, with no adequate health care, education or protection under the law. In short, they have been totally abandoned by the state.

The only natural resource that gives the native communities access to the money they need to buy the basic goods the forest does not provide them with (clothing, salt, sugar, food, educational material and medicines) is the extraction of their own wood from their own lands. Under this principle, and with a growing market, native communities with no alternative income are forced to enter into contact with loggers from Pucallpa, whose numbers are growing in Alto Purús.

Mahogany Going Cheap
The loggers offer the communities advance payment in the form of goods in exchange for wood. Because community leaders are not empowered to enter into legal negotiation, the loggers, after getting them to sign a series of documents, obtain forestry permits on behalf of the communities. The costs of these permits are so inflated that the communities begin their relationship with the loggers heavily in debt before a single tree has been felled.

The communities enter into agreements with the loggers for the extraction of a given number of mahogany trees within their territory in a predetermined period. However, once their camps have been established, the loggers continually establish new agreements with the communities and do not leave the area until every mahogany tree has been felled. Once established in the forest, the loggers work wherever they find mahogany, regardless of the agreements signed with the owners of the land, as well as using the agreements to smuggle timber extracted from land not owned by the communities in question. Once established, the loggers flout any existing forest management plans and ignore the borders between different communities and all existing norms and regulations. 

The agreements with the native communities are based on the exchange of mahogany for foodstuffs and other products, with the loggers inflating the prices of the goods supplied. The communities receive these goods before work begins, which means that they are forever in debt to the loggers. The felling of trees continues until the communities are deemed to have paid their debt in full according to the prices set by the loggers. For example, a ten horsepower outboard motor, which normally retails at about 1500 soles, and is almost impossible for the communities to obtain any other way, is exchanged for mahogany the true value of which is a hundred times that of the motor. 

Flight Control
The prices the loggers pay the communities for the timber extracted represent a fraction of its market value. The loggers offer between 20 and 80 cents per foot of mahogany, when the market price in Lima is 12 soles and for export 18 soles. The communities receive between 100 and 200 soles for each mature tree felled, when its true value on the international market runs to several thousand dollars. This enslaving system has reached such extremes that there are communities so heavily in debt to the loggers that they will not free themselves from their agreements before 2010.

The only direct access to Alto Purús is by air to Puerto Esperanza, a small settlement of approximately six hundred inhabitants and the capital of the province of Purús. Puerto Esperanza has an asphalted landing strip that is used by small and medium-sized aircraft arriving from the city of Pucallpa, some 400 kilometres away. In other words, the only way the timber can be removed from Alto Purús is by air. This is such a lucrative operation that the loggers are able to afford such an expensive mode of transport. 

Because there is no commercial air service to Purús, all flights are chartered, most of them by the loggers who virtually monopolise transport to and from the region, using the planes to ferry goods into the region and take mahogany out via Pucallpa. The largest planes used to transport timber are rented from the Peruvian armed forces, when the true role of these aircraft is the protection of the very communities who are the victims of illegal logging. 

The Lepers
In this way the loggers control the region by monopolising the only existing link with the rest of the country, via Puerto Esperanza. They practically own the province, controlling the movement of basic goods, gasoline and construction materials. This abuse has reached such levels that it is the loggers who decide who is allowed to board the planes. Several complaints have been made to the authorities, but the loggers grip continues to tighten. The local population is convinced that this situation is maintained thanks to an unbroken chain of complicity reaching into the highest levels of authority.

Everybody who lives in Purús province relies on the loggers for transport when they need to do business in Pucallpa, access health care or simply return home. Those who dare to complain or protest against the loggers' abuses are simply not permitted to travel, and remain isolated in Puerto Esperanza for weeks or months. Such is the case of a group of functionaries that includes the sub-prefect of the region, Luis Lima, and the regional council leader Sidney Hoyle, together with another fifteen people who simply have no other way to travel. When these people want to leave the area they are forced to gather other passengers wishing to travel in order to cover the cost of charter. In response, the loggers send one of their own hired planes and carry their own passengers, thereby ensuring that the so-called "undesirables" - known as "lepers" locally - are unable to travel. The loggers even control the mail sent, and mail simply does not reach those on their black list. Under such pressure, many local functionaries eventually turn a blind eye to the loggers' activities, afraid of being named "lepers" themselves and isolated indefinitely.

This exasperating situation has led some to consider the option of building a road linking Iñapari with Puerto Esperanza. This would be absurd. A road would mean the destruction of Purús: thousands of loggers would arrive, along with migrating farmers from the Andes and others in search of the region's natural resources. Brazil is opposed to a new road adjacent to its own protected areas and reserves because of its long experience with illegal logging on its own territory and its concerns over drug trafficking. With a new road, history will be repeated and the destruction already seen in other parts of the Peruvian Amazon will come to Purús. A road will bring no benefits, but instead unleash depredation and the exploitation of the region's poorest inhabitants.

Jaguar Dreams
There is another group of loggers operating illegally and extracting timber on the western side of the Alto Purús National Park, along the Sepahua and Inuya rivers. This is uncontrolled exploitation with no respect whatsoever for norms or regulations. The logging activities in this area are affecting the isolated ethnic groups that dwell there. Several cases have been documented of violent encounters between these groups and the loggers, with the latter armed with shotguns with which they murder mercilessly.

The trade in illegal timber violates the Convention on the International Trade of Threatened Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES), of which Peru is a signatory. CITES includes mahogany on its list of endangered species. Nevertheless, the Peruvian government continues to facilitate the export of mahogany by issuing permits in flagrant contravention of this international agreement. 

The logging industry relies on the heavy demand for mahogany in the industrialised nations. As mahogany become scarcer in other parts of the Amazon, logging pressure in Alto Purús will grow. Under such conditions, the future of Alto Purús and its inhabitants would appear grim. This is a situation that cries out for intervention by national authorities in order to regulate logging, stop the exploitation of the indigenous population and punish those responsible. The state must guarantee the conservation of those territories designated protected areas, together with the natural resources they are home to and the native peoples who live there. 

If this is not done, then only a mark on the map like the bloodstain left by that skinned jaguar will remain where this beautiful region of the Peruvian Amazon lies today.

(*) Diego Shoobridge is a recognised environmentalist and his work can be seen at: www.parkswatch.com 

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