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The Sierra del Divisor Reserved Zone, created on April 11th 2006, has a forest that is unique on the planet, with more species of monkeys (16) that anywhere else in South America, among the many more treasures of its extraordinary biodiversity. However, as this report shows, its future is seriously threatened by the logging mafia, cocaine traffickers and small scale mining. Only through a demonstration of political will (expressed at the scene of the crime), together with the sustainable management of the forests and ecotourism, will this grave situation be reversed.
Text: Alvaro Rocha Revilla
Fhotos: Alejandro Tello
 Is it worth creating protected areas? The question would seem to be a rhetorical one in the face of the overwhelming motives for promoting their creation. But it is not, especially if after waging a long legal and administrative battle to include it in the National System of Protected Areas (SINAMPE), an area can still lack even the minimum level of protection needed to guarantee its sustainability over time.
Such is the case of the Sierra del Divisor. Raúl Vásquez Meza, a 36 year-old forestry engineer and director of the Reserved Zone, sends a clear message to the authorities: "Without the political will there can be no change". And he adds, "The illegal loggers are the principal problem for the survival of this protected area, although practically all the valuable wood has now been removed in Peru and they are using the Sierra del Divisor as a corridor to enter Brazil, particularly the Ramón Canyon, to fell the mahogany that is no longer seen in Peru".
Bad Wood
Indubitable proof of the truth of his words comes in the shape of the hundred Peruvians who have been imprisoned in Cruzeiro do Sul (the closest Brazilian city to Pucallpa) in recent years. Once locked up they are tried. Then they are released. If they reoffend then their next sentence is longer. In mid-August 2006 the Brazilian military police captured 11 Peruvians (8 men, 2 women and a three year-old child). The prisoners complain of the lack of effort on behalf of the Peruvian authorities to address their case. They say that the government does nothing for them. One of the prisoners even has shrapnel from a bullet wound in his leg - the product of a skirmish with Brazilian law enforcement officers.
 In contrast, in Peru nobody is locked up for illegal logging. And that is why, according to Raúl Vásquez, there are Brazilians in Ucayali removing timber illegally via Pucallpa. They also plant coca. Raúl Vásquez insists that effective control is needed now, with guard stations at the entrances to the main rivers used to access the Sierra del Divisor, such as the Callería and the Utiquinía, and additional control points at Puerto Bahía, in Pucallpa.
In August 2005, when some twenty scientists entered the Sierra del Divisor, they found no trace of humans for several days, until they came across illegal loggers who, according to the ichthyologist Max Hidalgo, were taking out their illegal harvest without impediment via the Tapiche River, from where it went to Requena and then on to Iquitos. From the capital of Loreto the wood is exported to the United States and Mexico.
Other Threats
 The mining concessions along the Shesha River, which are open cast, are devastating both banks of this important waterway. The miners also find themselves in conflict with the loggers - a clear indication of who really runs this territory, where the state has renounced power. Even Cono, an emblematic mountain in the southern part of the Reserved Zone, is the object of a mining concession. It is to be hoped - probably in vain, of course - that the Ministry of Energy and Mines will not renew the concessions located within this new protected area.
Overfishing is another problem affecting the area's environmental health. Also, the use of Tiodan, a toxic agrochemical, is killing fish. The Shipibo-Conibo community of Callería is an exception. Here there exists a closed season and other norms which have meant that the river's resources have been able to renew themselves. But what is really needed is an integrated protection programme for the entire river basin and a raising of consciousness among its inhabitants.
Amazon Island
Sierra del Divisor is a mountain chain that emerges from nowhere, hundreds of kilometres to the east of the Peruvian Andes in the middle of the lowland forests, and it has been described by Corine Vriesendorp of the Field Museum as "an island in the Amazon sea".
 Studies (although the definitive Field Museum study remains pending) have revealed 12 species new to science, as well as the highest incidence of primates in the tropics, including the Red uakari monkey (Cacajao calvus), which is an endangered species. Experts put the estimated bird population at 600 species, the star of which is Thamnophilus divisorius, which is endemic to the Sierra del Divisor.
"Sierra del Divisor is an ancient refuge for fauna, partly dating from the time of the dinosaurs. Its soils are very poor and sandy, creating extreme conditions which have encouraged endemism. Sierra del Divisor is a kind of natural laboratory for evolution", says Vriesendorp.
Facing the Future
Roberto Guimaraes, vicepresident of AIDESEP, maintains that "It is strategic to guarantee the sustainable use of the resources of this area which is threatened by so many illicit activities. The creation of the Reserved Zone allows for institutionalised protection". This is true, but the approach of INRENA will have to change radically, as currently it only has forestry technicians in the area, and not protected area technicians, and its staff work on a rota basis and are subcontracted (rather than being actual INRENA staff).
 Also, although local residents often possess an environmental consciousness, when they denounce activities to INRENA "They are asked to pay an inspection fee of 220 soles a day when these local people have scant economic means", according to Raúl Vásquez, who has worked for INRENA.
In contrast, when IBAMA (the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Natural Resources) receives a complaint it has a helicopter at its disposal and mobilises immediately. In 2001 there were talks between IBAMA and INRENA. IBAMA offered to equip guard posts on the frontier, but inexplicably the Peruvian authorities did not take up the Brazilian offer.
The work of Nature Conservancy and Pronaturaleza in the area is commendable, but it is not enough. What is needed is more decisive political support. "With the change of government we hope the situation will improve", said Vásquez, as he looked up at the sky as if in search of a solution.
The Invisible Natives
It would appear that the Isconahuas - an indigenous group in voluntary isolation to the south of the Sierra del Divisor and threatened by "progress" - have moved to Brazil.
 In these times of globalisation, with information networks that provide instantaneous communication anywhere in the world, with even the greatest depths of the ocean sounded, the heavens filled with satellites and plans to establish human colonies on Mars, there exist small groups of people in the Amazon who want nothing to do with this civilization and reject contact with Western culture because it only brings them misfortune and dispossession. What for us is a boom (first rubber, now gas and wood) is for the first inhabitants of the Amazon a catastrophe. One of the groups affected by this "civilizing crusade" is the Isconahuas.
 The first recorded evidence of the Isconahuas dates from 1792, during an expedition made by the Franciscan priest Dueñas. After Peruvian independence in 1821, the Franciscans of Spanish origin were expelled, and so the next news of the Isconahuas came from the British Royal Navy lieutenants W. Smith and M. F. Lowe, who journeyed along the Ucayali River from 1834 to 1835.
In 1862, the missionary M. Sans located a group of Isconahuas at the headwaters of the Callería River, and despite the fact that "it was difficult to control so many heathens" he managed to convince some of them to abandon their nomadic lifestyle and create a village. It was a mistake, for the Conibos attacked, took the women and enslaved the children.
In 1959, after spotting Isconahuas smallholdings (wai juni) from the air, H. Clifton Russell and James Davidson, missionaries from the South American Indian Mission, journeyed by motorised canoe from Pucallpa and after a week reached the military post of Utiquinía, near the Brazilian frontier. They then set out on foot, heading south through the forest for three days until they located a group of 25 Isconahuas. With some difficulty they managed to become friendly with the tribe and lived with them for a year.
The women were completely naked, adorned with brown "paniba" necklaces and discoid shells or painted with red "nishita" berries. Some of the women wore mother-of-pearl discs hanging from a hole in their septum. The men wore only a "chajo jau": a small bone from a duck or deer through the opening of which their foreskins emerged. Without their "chajo jau", which was tied around their waists with a cord, the men felt naked and embarrassed.
The Violence of Civilization
 The most recent reports of the Isconahua group date from 1995, when a AIDESEP study indicated that 80 natives were living in voluntary isolation at the headwaters of the Abujao and Utiquinia rivers, and in the Piyuya and Bushnaya canyons of the Callería River. As a consequence of this report, in 1998 the Isconahua Territorial Reserve, covering some 275,665 hectares, was created.
However, despite the reserve status of their lands, the Isconahuas were finally driven off by drug traffickers, illegal loggers and miners. The anthropologist Manuel Cuentas, who produced a field report between July 2004 and December 2005, only found pottery shards, and believes that the Isconahuas have moved to Brazil to escape the violence of civilization.
Natural Beauty
Contamana is a unique tourist destination.
 Contamana, the pearl of Ucayali, has all the charm of settlements with no access to highways. Modernity has not knocked on its doors with the cruel blow that has destroyed the architectural soul of so many of Peru's communities. In Contamana, which at the beginning of the 20th century was the cultural centre of the forests, the old wooden mansions remain and the plazas are orderly and clean. A series of viewpoints - "Jerusalén", "Encanto a Primera Vista" and "Calvario" - give the city its own identity and speak of the excellent panoramas available from the town, including the ineffable Ucayali River. And as if that were not enough, residents are friendly and festive, and the women are especially beautiful.
Contamana, strategically located between the Cordillera Azul National Park and Sierra del Divisor, can be reached from Pucallpa by light aircraft via a pleasant half-hour flight, or by fast boat along the Ucayali River - a six-hour trip. One hour from Contamana, along a track suitable for vehicles and within the Reserved Zone, is Aguas Calientes, a unique spot in Peru.
 Here, in the middle of a pristine forest, one can bathe in the thermal waters of a stream in which water temperatures range from 30 to 40 degrees centigrade. And if one bathes at midnight, under a full moon and accompanied by a chorus of wild animals, the experience is an incomparable one.
Another regional attraction is the fact that there is nowhere else in Peru where one can observe macaws so closely. Also, these macaws belong to a species (Ara chloroptera) rarely seen. However, ecotourism - a challenge yet to be faced here - will have to play a decisive role if other activities that threaten the forest are to be successfully combated.
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