The Autumn of the Amazon

Chevron fines $8 million for Ecuador Oil Spill

2011-02-14T23:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/02/14/2066442/lawyer-judge-fines-chevron-8-billion.html

Amazon becoming increasingly less habitable due to cultural overlap

2010-09-06T09:50:00.001-07:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090302302.html

New Developments in the ongoing Oil Crisis

2010-06-14T21:22:00.001-07:00

MICHELLE CHEN

Oil crisis: uprisings from Nigeria to Peru

In the past few days, the wars over the world’s natural resources have been rekindled from the Amazon to the Niger Delta.

This week, a landmark legal settlement brought a decisive, though partial, end to a bloody chapter in the history of Nigeria’s Ogoni people.

Shell agreed to a $15.5 million settlement in a lawsuit, brought in US federal court, accusing the company of massive human rights abuses. The case stemmed from the government executions of activists, including groundbreaking environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who resisted the company’s decades-long plunder of Nigeria’s natural resources. Although Shell did not officially acknowledge its complicity, the Center for Constitutional Rights, which helped litigate the suit, called the settlement a victory in the broader movement to hold corporations accountable on human rights.

Oil and gas development in the Niger Delta has devastated the region’s fragile ecosystem and left indigenous peoples in deep poverty.

About one third of the settlement award will go toward a development fund for the Ogoni people. But some,reports the Daily Independent of Lagos, were dismayed that the legal maneuver seems to have spared the company—with its deep history of imperialism and exploitation—from being fully brought to justice. One Ogoni activist expressed worry that the payout will not be primarily used to restore and provide closure to the Ogoni as a whole: “We are still waiting to see how events unfold. It is not only the Ogoni Nine that died in the struggle, and it will be a disaster if anybody thinks otherwise.”

There are already opportunities to test whether Wiwa v. Shell marks a real turning point in environmental and human rights struggles.

In Peru's Bagua Province, a popular uprising has led to bloodshed and political chaos. Indigenous groups have protested against investment laws that threaten to carve up more of the Amazon rainforest for drilling and logging operations. After thousands tried to blockade an oil pipeline and highway last week, a deadly clash with riot police led to the deaths of 30 protesters and 24 police officers, according to the BBC.

Some activists say police have stolen and dumped bodies in the Marañón river in a cover-up attempt,reports IPS News. The government, meanwhile, continues its military clampdown, and publicly blames the violence on the Peruvian Rainforest Inter-Ethnic Development Association (AIDESEP), a broad federation of indigenous groups. AIDISEP leader Alberto Pizango has sought refuge with the Nicaraguan embassy in Lima.

The protesters were reportedly armed with spears, against the guns of the police. Edwin Montenegro, an activist representing the Amazon district of Condorcanqui, told IPS:

"After we draw up a list of our brothers and sisters who were killed, we will continue our protes... The government thinks that we have chickened out, but that will never happen. The blood of their brothers and sisters is an incentive to the Awajun people. The state has provoked us.”

With domestic politics taking center stage in Washington, the strife in Bagua may seem distant. But the investment policies, some of which have been suspended in the wake of the protests, are part of Peru's effort to facilitate a lucrative business deal with the United States, the Peru Free Trade Agreement.

Will the future of indigenous struggles be channeled into legal battlegrounds, as with the Shell lawsuit—or will the failure of government to provide real redress inspire more direct action in defense of basic rights? A federal courtroom rendered one kind of victory for some of the most disenfranchised people in the Niger Delta. Would Congress go a step further in opening a space for human rights in the Amazon?

Image: Amazon Watch

5 June 2009 - Source - New York Times

2009-10-14T22:30:00.000-07:00

Fatal Clashes Erupt in Peru at Roadblock

By SIMON ROMERO

Published: June 5, 2009

LIMA, Peru — Clashes between indigenous protesters and security forces on a remote jungle highway in northern Peru left more than a dozen dead on Friday, including 11 police officers, heightening tension over intensifying protests by indigenous groups over plans to open vast tracts of rain forest to oil drilling, logging and hydroelectric dams.

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Associated Press

Indigenous protesters fighting logging and drilling blocked a road in northern Peru on Friday as police tear gas hung in the air.

Initial accounts of the clashes varied. Indigenous leaders here said the killings unfolded early on Friday after the police fired from helicopters on hundreds of protesters who had blocked the highway in the northern Bagua Province, with at least 22 civilians killed. The Chachapoyas Medical Association, in the region where the killings took place, put the number of dead Indians at 25.
Peru’s interior minister, Mercedes Cabanillas, said the police did not initiate the bloodshed but were “victims of the frenzy.” Prime Minister Yehude Simon said Friday night that 11 police officers and 3 Indians had been killed, and that 38 police officers and a civilian engineer were abducted by the protesters.
The protests are part of an increasingly well-orchestrated campaign by indigenous groups that have been inspired in part by similar movements in Bolivia and Ecuador.
Angered by the government’s failure to involve them in the plans, the indigenous groups in Peru have surprised the authorities with their sudden strength and organization and are now threatening to blunt President Alan García’s efforts to lure foreign investment to the region.
“The president thought we would be docile in accepting plans that could completely change the way we hunt for food and raise crops, and we are not,” said Juan Agustín, 41, a Shipibo Indian and a leader of the Peruvian Jungle Interethnic Development Association, an umbrella group here representing more than 300,000 people from dozens of indigenous groups.
The protests have disrupted oil production and pipelines, blocked commerce on roads and waterways, and halted flights at remote airports. While shortages of fuel and food have been reported in some jungle areas, the real concern is that the protests will succeed in cutting energy supplies to major coastal cities.
The killings in Friday’s clashes in Bagua, near an oil pipeline that was a target of the protesters, present a robust challenge to Mr. García, with indigenous leaders here describing them as “genocide.” Officials imposed a curfew in the region as they tried to prevent further violence.
Mr. García had already declared a 60-day state of emergency on May 9 in areas affected by the protests, which began in April. But the move seems only to have escalated tensions, with protests spreading from northern Peru to strategically important locations in the country’s south.
Last weekend about 200 Machiguenga Indians occupied valve stations on the pipeline that moves natural gas from the huge Camisea project in the southeast. Soldiers regained control of the sites, the energy ministry reported. But indigenous leaders said they would try again.
The protesters demand that Mr. García repeal decrees that have made it easier for companies to enter the Amazon Basin, and they have focused on thwarting larger projects.
For instance, leaders from the Asháninka indigenous group are trying to derail a plan by Eletrobrás, a company controlled by Brazil’s government, to spend more than $10 billion to build five hydroelectric plants in Peru.
“We want an immediate halt to every project that was conceived without consulting those of us who live in the forest,” said Daniel Marzano, 39, an Asháninka leader from Atalaya Province.
But it is the coordinated focus of the protests on energy installations that has most alarmed analysts and Peru’s business and political classes, who overwhelmingly live in coastal cities.
“The leaders have a strategic vision of hitting the country where it hurts,” said Alberto Bolívar, a security expert, who pointed out the potential for the protesters in some remote jungle areas to combine forces with a resurgent faction of the Shining Path, the Maoist group feeding off Peru’s cocaine trade.
On Friday, the guerrillas fired on a helicopter carrying troops in southern Peru, killing one soldier and wounding four others.
Aldo Mariátegui, editor of the daily newspaper Correo, speculated that the protests were being supported by the governments in Venezuela and Bolivia to oust Mr. García. It is a view held by some among Peru’s political and business elite.
Indigenous leaders interviewed here rejected the notion, however. Instead, they said conflict arose because the government had opened the rain forest to new investments without thoroughly consulting or involving the people who live there.
In the case of oil, for instance, at least 58 of the 64 areas secured by multinational companies for oil exploration overlay lands titled to indigenous peoples, according to a study last year by scientists from Duke University.
Explaining the government’s position last month, Mr. García said, “We have to understand when there are resources like oil, gas and timber, they don’t belong only to the people who had the fortune to be born there, because that would mean more than half of Peru’s territory belongs to a few thousand people.”
Such views resonate in a country of nearly 30 million people where almost three-quarters of them live in urban areas. But the protests, which show few signs of abating, offer a different vision of how Peru should develop.
Even before the clashes in Bagua, the government used the navy this week to break through blockades on the Napo River in the north to allow barges for Perenco, an oil company planning to invest $2 billion, to move deeper into the rain forest.
“Now we have a government resorting to using military force to spearhead development of the Amazon,” said Paul McAuley, an environmental activist in the Amazonian city of Iquitos with Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic lay order. “This cannot be a strategy that is sustainable.”

6 June 2009 - Source - New York Times

2009-10-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

9 Hostage Officers Killed at Peruvian Oil Facility

By SIMON ROMERO

Published: June 6, 2009

LIMA, Peru — Nine police officers were killed Saturday as security forces regained control of a petroleum facility from indigenous protesters in a remote jungle region, raising the death toll related to protests by indigenous activists since Friday above 30, Peruvian government officials here said.

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Mariana Bazo/Reuters

Relatives of a police officer killed in clashes between the military and protesters attended a mourning service in Lima, Peru.

Times Topics: Peru

Prime Minister Yehude Simon said the officers were killed in the events surrounding a push to retake a pumping station belonging to Petroperú, the national oil company, in the northern Bagua Province, where indigenous protesters had kidnapped 38 police officers. Twenty-two of the abducted officers were freed, but seven were still missing, officials said.
The killings came amid reports by indigenous groups that security forces killed as many as 25 protesters Friday in clashes at a different location in Bagua, where Indians had blocked a highway. Mr. Simon confirmed that at least 9 Indians had been killed and 155 wounded, and that a total of 22 police officers had been killed, intensifying the most acute crisis faced by President Alan García since he took office in 2006.
The bloodshed comes after two months of slow-burning protests, which spread from rain forests in Peru’s north to the country’s south, and have focused on interrupting petroleum production and transportation. In an increasingly well-coordinated movement, the lowland Indians are demanding that Mr. García withdraw decrees that ease the way for companies to carry out major energy and logging projects in the Peruvian Amazon.
After the operation at the Petroperú facility, officials said they were planning to re-establish the supply of oil to remote provinces that had been hit with fuel shortages and blackouts. Still, it was unclear how successful they would be when protesters were still blocking routes on important highways and rivers.
Officials also said Saturday that they were seeking to enforce an arrest warrant on charges of sedition for Alberto Pizango, a Shawi Indian and the leader of Aidesep, an umbrella organization of indigenous groups that had organized many of the protests. But Mr. Pizango apparently went into hiding and was replaced by another leader, Champion Nonimgo.
“Our protests will go on until our demands are met,” Mr. Nonimgo said.
A maneuver here in Congress sparked the clashes between protesters and the police, after lawmakers blocked an effort Thursday to allow debate on one of Mr. García’s most polemical decrees, which would open as much as 60 percent of Peru’s jungles to oil exploration and other extractive investments.
Ollanta Humala, a nationalist political leader and a former lieutenant colonel in Peru’s army who was defeated by Mr. García in the most recent presidential elections, has sided with the protesters, lambasting the use of use of force against the Indians and raising his profile ahead of the next elections in 2011.
Meanwhile, the climbing body count in the rain forest, along with unconfirmed reports that the number of Indians killed could be higher, threatens to deplete the legitimacy of Mr. García’s government. Mr. García, 60, is still hounded by claims of human rights violations from his first term as president in the 1980s, when soldiers suppressed a prison rebellion in 1986, killing more than 100 inmates suspected of being Maoist guerrillas.

11 June, 2009 - Source - New York Times

2009-10-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/world/americas/12peru.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Protesters Gird for Long Fight Over Opening Peru’s Amazon

Tomas Munita for The New York Times

Members of an indigenous group opposed to Peru’s plans to open large parts of the Amazon to drilling and logging demonstrated Thursday in Iquitos, Peru.

By SIMON ROMERO

Published: June 11, 2009

IQUITOS, Peru — Faced with a simmering crisis over dozens of deaths in the quelling of indigenous protests last week, Peru’s Congress this week suspended the decrees that had set off the protests over plans to open large parts of the Peruvian Amazon to investment. Senior officials said they hoped this would calm nerves and ease the way for oil drillers and loggers to pursue their projects.
But instead, indigenous groups are digging in for a protracted fight, revealing an increasingly well-organized movement that could be a tinderbox for President Alan García. The movement appears to be fueled by a deep popular resistance to the government’s policies, which focused on luring foreign investment, while parts of the Peruvian Amazon have been left behind.
The broadening influence of the indigenous movement was on display Thursday in a general strike that drew thousands of protesters here to the streets of Iquitos, the largest Peruvian city in the Amazon, and to cities and towns elsewhere in jungle areas. Protests over Mr. García’s handling of the violence in the northern Bagua Province last Friday also took place in highland regions like Puno, near the Bolivian border, and in Lima and Arequipa on the Pacific coast.
“The government made the situation worse with its condescending depiction of us as gangs of savages in the forest,” said Wagner Musoline Acho, 24, an Awajún Indian and an indigenous leader. “They think we can be tricked by a maneuver like suspending a couple of decrees for a few weeks and then reintroducing them, and they are wrong.”
The protesters’ immediate threat — to cut the supply of oil and natural gas to Lima, the capital — seems to have subsided, with protesters partly withdrawing from their occupation of oil installations in the jungle. But as anger festers, indigenous leaders here said they could easily try to shut down energy installations again to exert pressure on Mr. García.
Another wave of protests appears likely because indigenous groups are demanding that the decrees be repealed and not just suspended. The decrees would open large jungle areas to investment and allow companies to bypass indigenous groups to obtain permits for petroleum exploration, logging and building hydroelectric dams. A stopgap attempt to halt earlier indigenous protests in the Amazon last August failed to prevent them from being reinitiated more forcefully in April.
The authorities said that nine civilians were killed in the clashes that took place last Friday on a remote highway in Bagua. But witnesses and relatives of missing protesters contend that the authorities are covering up details of the episode, and that more Indians died. Twenty-four police officers were killed on the highway and at an oil installation.
Indigenous representatives say at least 25 civilians, and perhaps more, may have been killed, and some witnesses say that security forces dumped the bodies of protesters into a nearby river. At least three Indians who were wounded said they had been shot by police officers as they waited to talk with the authorities.
“The government is trying to clean the blood off its hands by hiding the truth,” said Andrés Huaynacari Etsam, 21, an Awajún student here who said that five of his relatives had been killed on June 5 and that three were missing.
Senior government officials repudiate such claims. “There is a game of political interests taking place in which some are trying to exaggerate the losses of life for their own gain,” said Foreign Minister José García Belaunde.
He said the ultimate aim of the protesters was to prevent Peru from carrying out a trade agreement with the United States, because one of the most contentious of the decrees that were suspended on Thursday would bring Peru’s rules for investment in jungle areas into line with the trade agreement.
“But,” Mr. García Belaunde insisted, “the agreement is not in danger.”
Still, the government’s initial response to the violence seems to have heightened resentment. A television commercial by the Interior Ministrycontained graphic images of the bodies of some police officers who were killed while being held hostage by protesters. The commercial said that the killings were proof of the “ferocity and savagery” of indigenous activists, but an uproar over that depiction forced the government to try to withdraw the commercial.
The authorities are struggling to understand a movement that is crystallizing in the Peruvian Amazon among more than 50 indigenous groups. They include about 300,000 people, accounting for only about 1 percent of Peru’s population, but they live in strategically important and resource-rich locations, which are scattered throughout jungle areas that account for nearly two-thirds of Peru’s territory.
So far, alliances have proved elusive between Indians in the Amazon and indigenous groups in highland areas, ruling out, for now, the kind of broad indigenous protest movements that helped oust governments in neighboring Ecuador and Bolivia earlier in the decade.
In contrast to some earlier efforts to organize indigenous groups, the leaders of this new movement are themselves indigenous, and not white or mestizo urban intellectuals. They are well organized and use a web of radio stations to exchange information across the jungle. After one prominent leader, Alberto Pizango, was granted asylum in Nicaragua this week, others quickly emerged to articulate demands.
“There has been nothing comparable in all my years here in terms of the growth of political consciousness among indigenous groups,” said the Rev. Joaquín García, 70, a priest from Spain who arrived in Iquitos 41 years ago and directs the Center of Theological Studies of the Amazon, which focuses on indigenous issues.
“At issue now,” he said, “is what they decide to do with the newfound bargaining power in their hands.”
Andrea Zarate contributed reporting from Lima, Peru.

Peru Environmental Facts

2009-10-14T22:11:00.001-07:00

"One computer model of future climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions shows that the Amazon rainforest could become unsustainable under conditions of severely reduced rainfall and increased temperatures, leading to an almost complete loss of rainforest cover in the basin by 2100.[35][36] However, simulations of Amazon basin climate change across many different models are not consistent in their estimation of any rainfall response, ranging from weak increases to strong decreases [37]. The result indicates that the rainforest could be threatened though the 21st century by climate change in addition to deforestation.

Impact of Amazon drought

In 2005, parts of the Amazon basin experienced the worst drought in 100 years[38], and there are indications that 2006 could be a second successive year of drought[39]. A 23 July 2006 article in the UK newspaper The Independent reported Woods Hole Research Center results showing that the forest in its present form could survive only three years of drought.[40][41] Scientists at the Brazilian National Institute of Amazonian Research argue in the article that this drought response, coupled with the effects of deforestation on regional climate, are pushing the rainforest towards a "tipping point" where it would irreversibly start to die. It concludes that the forest is on the brink of being turned into savanna or desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world's climate.

The Peruvian population, estimated at 28 million, is multiethnic, including Amerindians, Africans and Spaniards. The main spoken language is Spanish, although a significant number of Peruvians speak Quechua and other native languages. This mixture of cultural traditions has resulted in a wide diversity of expressions in fields such as art, cuisine, literature, and music.

In 1968, the Armed Forces, led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado, staged a coup against president Fernando Belaunde. The new regime undertook radical reforms aimed at fostering development but failed to gain widespread support.[23] In 1975, Velasco was forcefully replaced as president by General Francisco Morales Bermúdez, who paralyzed reforms and oversaw the reestablishment of democracy.[24] During the 1980s, Peru faced a considerable external debt, ever-growing inflation, a surge in drug trafficking, and massive political violence.[25] Under the presidency of Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000), the country started to recover, however, accusations of authoritarianism, corruption, and human rights violations forced his resignation after the controversial 2000 elections.[26] Since the end of the Fujimori regime, Peru has tried to fight corruption while sustaining economic growth; the current president is Alan García.[27]

Peru is a developing country with a 2004 Human Development Index score of 0.767.[52] Its 2006 per capita income was US$3,374;[53] 51.6% of its total population is poor, including 19.2% that is extremely poor.[54] Historically, the country's economic performance has been tied to exports, which provide hard currency to finance imports and external debt payments.[55] Although exports have provided substantial revenue, self-sustained growth and a more egalitarian distribution of income have proven elusive.[56]

Peruvian artistic traditions date back to the elaborate pottery, textiles, jewelry, and sculpture of Pre-Inca cultures. The Incas maintained these crafts and made architectural achievements including the construction of Machu Picchu. Baroque art dominated in colonial times, though it was modified by native traditions.[76] During this period, most art focused on religious subjects; the numerous churches of the era and the paintings of the Cuzco School are representative.[77] Arts stagnated after independence until the emergence of Indigenismo in the early 20th century.[78] Since the 1950s, Peruvian art has been eclectic and shaped by both foreign and local art currents.[79]"

26 January 2009 - Source - New York Times

2009-10-14T22:09:00.000-07:00

Groups say Peru oil project threatens Indians
The Associated Press
Published: January 26, 2009

LIMA, Peru: The development of a remote oil field in Peru's Amazon jungle could threaten the survival of isolated Indian communities in the region, an Indian rights group said Monday.

This month, Peru's Finance Ministry approved plans submitted by Anglo-French oil company Perenco SA to invest $1 billion over the next three years to extract crude from an oil field in the northern province of Loreto near Ecuador's border.

An international tribal-support organization and local Indian rights groups say the oil field is the ancestral home of up to three nomadic Indian communities living in voluntary isolation.

"If Perenco works in the area, it could lead to more than half of the uncontacted Indians being wiped out," said Stephen Corry, director of the London-based tribal-support organization Survival International.

Isolated groups lack immunity to common Western diseases and are vulnerable to contact with oil workers, loggers and other outsiders.
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Peru's environmental minister has said there is no definitive proof that such groups live in the region. President Alan Garcia says the oil field, which contains an estimated 300 million barrels, would turn Peru into a net oil exporter.

A company spokesman for Perence in Peru said no official was available for comment Monday.

The Peruvian Jungle Inter-Ethnic Development Association, or AIDESEP, a national rights group, filed a lawsuit in Loreto in 2007 and has petitioned the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to halt the oil project.

A court in Loreto ruled last October against AIDESEP, which is appealing to Peru's highest court in Lima, AIDESEP spokesman Edson Rosales told The Associated Press on Monday.

Perenco plans to build 100 oil wells in the area and extract 100,000 barrels of oil a day, according to the company's Web site. But the project requires new oil pipelines to connect the field to Peru's main pipeline grid.

Peru's state oil company Petroperu planned to invest $1 billion to build the pipelines, but last week Peru's oil and mining minister said falling global oil prices have forced the government to "re-evaluate" the project.

Without Petroperu's pipeline investment, Perenco would have to assume all the transportation costs itself. Perenco has not indicated any plans to suspend the project.

Perenco acquired the rights to the oil block last year when oil prices were still above $100 a barrel. Prices for light, sweet crude have since dropped to $48. Peru's heavy crude trades at 15 to 20 percent lower than light crude.

Survival International says there are more than 100 tribes living in voluntary isolation worldwide, most of them in Brazil and Peru.

November 2008 - Source - BBC News

2009-10-14T22:08:00.000-07:00

November 2008
Lawlessness mars Amazon dreams
By Carolina Glycerio
BBC Brasil, Alta Floresta, Mato Grosso

Carlito, a cattle rancher
Cattle ranching is blamed for up to 70% of current Amazon deforestation

Carlos Alberto Guimaraes (or "Carlito") is one of the biggest individual deforesters in the Amazon rainforest.

Since he moved here four decades ago, he has been responsible for clearing 100,000 hectares of trees across three states to make way for his cattle.

He is straight-talking and matter-of-fact about his role in destroying the rainforest.

"Deforestation is a necessary evil," he says.

The fact is land in the Amazon rainforest is much more valuable with the trees cleared off it - whether this is to make way for cattle or crops - and nobody has yet come up with a viable economic incentive not to cut down trees.

Land-grabbers

Cattle ranching is generally held responsible for up to 70% of the current deforestation in the Amazon, but to point the finger solely at cattle ranchers would be to miss a central point about the Amazon region.


Amazon Paradox graphic

This report is part of a BBC World Service special on the Amazon rainforest.

Starting at 0500GMT on Thursday 15 May, there are live and recorded broadcasts.

Highlights include a double edition of Newshour, presented live from three locations in Brazil - Manaus, Paragominas, and Alta Floresta - at 1200 and a one hour special at 1600.

BBC World Service special report

This is frontier land and many people are trying to exploit it, from ranchers to farmers to the landless movement to land grabbers.

Travelling around Mato Grosso state, the more complicated the picture became.

In some areas, authorities are nowhere to be seen and there is a sense of disorder and lawlessness.

The region attracts people with a frontier mentality.

They do not trust the government and they firmly believe that they have as much right to their piece of land as anyone else, no matter how they got it.

And almost all are deforesting their land at an alarming rate, pushing back the edges of the jungle.

'Eating dust'

Sebastiao is part of the landless workers movement, the MST, that campaigns for land redistribution.



He is among some 1,000 people who seven months ago were granted land on a farm expropriated by the government.

But red tape means he and his family are yet to take possession of their land.

"We are here eating dust at the side of the road just waiting", he says.

To add to Sebastiao's problems, the land he has been promised has already been "grabbed" by others who have started clearing it for their own use.

"It is not right that we are crushed here and there are people making money out of our forest," Sebastiao said.

Among the "landgrabbers" is Lindomar, who we met down a long road that a group of 500 families had cut out of the forest.

Grey area

Rolling a cigarette and resting beside his two chainsaws, Lindomar readily admits he took his land illegally.

Milton, a "settler"
The region attracts people with a frontier mentality

His justification is there is no proper land title and public land belongs to the people, so unlike Sebastiao he did not go through official channels to be allocated land.

"I do not think it is right to invade a land that is properly documented. But if it is something they haven't paid taxes for and that they don't take good care of, we should have it", he says.

Further along the road was Milton, working on a piece of land he said he had bought 45 days earlier.

He falls in that grey area between land grabber and land owner, so we'll call him a "settler" for argument's sake. He says he has a legal deed for the land and he paid for it, but he also admitted he knew all along it was disputed property.

"If someone asks us to leave, what are we going to do?" he says, banging his machete against a fence post.

"I can't go anywhere else, my family are here, all my money is in this land. What is our option?"

He says he fears the Indians, because he knows he is on land that was given to them by the government, but he says he has never tried to speak to them because he considers them "enemies".

'Corrupt politicians'

But for Damaio, the chief of the nearby Xavante Indian settlement, everyone else in the region, from ranchers to politicians, are enemies of the forest.


People here are aware of the bigger issue of deforestation but are also convinced it is their right to make a living from their own parcel of land

"They got here and finished with it all," he said.

The Xavante need government help to keep their 166,000 hectare reservation safe from land invaders, Damiao says.

Suspicion of outsiders is rife in this region and I was warned more than once that I should be very careful what we said to whom.

Corrupt politicians, hired gunmen, night-time attacks were mentioned, and two of the people I spoke to freely admitted they had threatened to kill each other at one point.

People here are aware of the bigger issue of deforestation but are also convinced it is their right to make a living from their own parcel of land.

They also feel they alone should not be blamed for deforestation.

Brazil as the biggest beef exporter and second largest soya exporter in the world is under pressure to create more agricultural land, especially given the rising prices for foodstuffs.

For Carlito it is pure hypocrisy for the rest of the world to criticise him as a deforester.

"There are a lot of people in this world that have been living on the food I produce", he says.

May 2008 - Source - BBC News

2009-10-14T22:05:00.001-07:00

ARC OF FIRE
Front line battle to save Amazon forest
By Gary Duffy
BBC News, Paragominas

Soldiers watch logging operation
Soldiers are backing up environmental officials and police officers

In the small town of Paragominas, in the Brazilian state of Para, watching operation Arc of Fire can be an impressive sight.

This is the front line in the battle to contain deforestation - police and environmental officials setting off in a convoy of vehicles, with armed soldiers from the national security force for added protection.

The precautions are not unjustified - on a recent operation in the nearby town of Tailandia, residents angered by Arc of Fire and its impact on local firms clashed violently with police.

In Paragominas, bemused local people watch as the police cars, with flashing lights and sirens blaring, make their way out of town en route to a local logging firm three to four hours away.

These officials want to know if the wood there has been legally cut down, and if the owner has the paperwork to prove it.

Illegal ovens

When the convoy reaches the logging firm, the owner is not there, as is often the case, but officials begin checking the wood to see if the law has been broken.

Amazon Paradox graphic

This report is part of a BBC World Service special on the Amazon rainforest.

Starting at 0500GMT on Thursday 15 May, ther are live and recorded broadcasts.

Highlights include a double edition of Newshour, presented live from three locations in Brazil - Manaus, Paragomina and Alta Floresta - at 1200 and a one hour special at 1600.

BBC World Service special report

If the owner cannot explain the presence of all the logs in his yard, it could be seized and he may face a significant fine.

A short distance away, police cars stop at a site where row after row of open air ovens are being used to burn wood for charcoal.

Checks reveal that more than the permitted number of dome-shaped ovens has been built, so two are destroyed on the same day.

This operation on the ground in the Amazon has been continuing for two months, and police chief, Sergio Rovani, who is responsible for tackling environmental crimes in Para, insists it is getting results.

According to the official statistics, Arc of Fire has recovered enough illegal wood to fill 1500 trucks, and 1600 hundred charcoal furnaces have been destroyed. Many fines have also been imposed.

'Destruction is chaotic'

However Sergio Rovani also accepts the scale of the challenges is daunting.

clay ovens are destroyed
Illegal charcoal ovens are being destroyed as part of Arc of Fire

"Para is a giant state which covers 1.3m sq km," he says.

"It is really of continental dimensions, and we have only four local police stations so we don't have many resources to confront destruction of the forest that nowadays is so chaotic.

"The police are every day investing more in equipment and recently got new recruits - who are being brought as a priority to states in the north to combat deforestation."

Paulo Maues, who is the coordinator in Paragominas for Ibama, the Brazilian government's environmental agency, also acknowledges the difficulties faced by his team.

"In regard to the wood, we have all sorts of problems -illegal logging, illegal transportation, illegal processing of the wood, fraud," he says.

"People who deforest justify themselves, saying the state is very slow to release licences. However we're here to do our job, and to execute the law."

But public prosecutor Felicio Pontes says the Brazilian government is failing to live up to its responsibilities, and his hopes for the future are heavily qualified.

"It depends if we can get the government to recognise the importance of the question of Amazonia," he says.

"With operations like Arc of Fire it won't have effective results and we are going to be in a worse situation in four years time because the federal government is much more concerned nowadays about the money Brazil is getting through exports such as soya and beef."

Deforestation rate rising

In Belem, the capital of Para, satellite images reveal in intimate detail what is happening on the ground in Paragominas, and in other parts of the Amazon basin.

These are being monitored carefully by Imazon, a non-governmental organisation which was the first to alert the world late last year that deforestation in the Amazon was on the rise again.

Senior researcher Paulo Barreto says deforestation dropped between 2004 and 2006, but in the latter part of 2007 and early 2008 the figures have again been showing a rise.

"Brazil has advanced in terms of improving field inspection, now they go there and issue fines against environmental violators," he says. "But the application of fines is very weak.

"The second point is the free occupation of public lands in the frontier - allowing people to settle in public lands illegally. Land amounting to about three times the size of the UK is occupied by people who didn't buy it, or pay a lease, and it is very hard to make these people responsible for environmental violations."

However there are some signs of changing attitudes, with the local mayor supporting a pact to promote "zero deforestation" and encouraging schoolchildren to learn more about the environment.

Environmental pariahs

The history of Paragominas is the history of deforestation in Amazon - those who came here first were viewed as pioneers opening up the rainforest in order to benefit the rest of the country.

Officials study satellite images
Officials at Imazon sounded the alarm about the recent rise in deforestation

Now they feel like they are environmental pariahs accused of destroying one of Brazil's and the world's greatest riches.

This is a community trying to reconcile its economic imperative to survive with the wider issue of protecting the environment.

Paragominas is one of the municipal areas with the worst record of deforestation in the region, and has already destroyed more than 45% of nearby forest cover. The scale of devastation is such that a municipality that used to have 240 sawmills now has fewer than 60, as other towns have taken over a leading role in deforestation.

Amid these changing times there is much talk among the local authorities of a new approach, but a lot of harm has already been done, and it will take even more work if that damage is to be repaired.

15 May 2008 -- Source -- BBC News

2009-10-14T22:03:00.000-07:00

Seeking an Amazon solutionBy Fergus Nicoll
BBC News, Amazonas state, Brazil

Amazonas river
The Amazon landscape is epic in scale

Seen from a small boat emerging from Puraquequara lagoon into the full flow of the Amazon River, this is a world reduced to water, trees and sky.

It's a full three kilometres to the other side and at that distance even the forest giants that tower over the canopy seem reduced in size.

Amazonas state - a territory three times the size of France but with a telephone book just a centimetre thick - is 98% pristine rainforest.

But it is an environment threatened by powerful forces - like the march of economic development.

Former Harvard law professor Roberto Mangabeira Unger, the man charged with implementing Brazil's new Plan for a Sustainable Amazon (PAS), is under no illusions about the difficulties he faces.


Amazon Paradox graphic

This report is part of a BBC World Service special on the Amazon rainforest.

Starting at 0500GMT on Thursday 15 May, there are live and recorded broadcasts.

Highlights include a double edition of Newshour, presented live from three locations in Brazil - Manaus, Pargominas and Alta Floresta - at 1200 and a one hour special at 1600.

BBC World Service special report

"The Amazon is not simply a collection of trees," Unger, Brazil's minister for strategic affairs told the BBC.

"It's a group of people: 25 million Brazilians.

"If those people lack economic opportunities, the practical consequence will be disorganised economic opportunity, which will hasten the deforestation.

"What we must do is develop a regulatory legal and tax regime, ensuring that the forest standing is worth more than the forest cut down."

'No Amazon support'

The PAS plan is a detailed, yet controversial roadmap. Environmentalists have criticised it for focusing more on development, than protecting the environment.

Logging operation
There is a delicate balance between economics and environmentalism

Even the appointment of Unger to oversee the plan - rather than the former environment minister and staunch defender of the Amazon, Marina Silva - added to this impression.

Ms Silva resigned on 13 May and she criticised what she said was a lack of political support to protect the Amazon among Brazil's leaders.

However, the plan's supporters say seizing control of development in a structured manner is the best way to safeguard the forest's future.

Among the PAS plan's initiatives are:

    * Develop the infrastructure of the region with new roads, navigable river routes and more hydroelectric dams

    * Set up a tax regime benefiting those using sustainable practices

    * Establish a legal framework for transferring parts of the forest from public to community control

    * Add three million hectares to the "officially protected" zone

    * Seek ways of allowing the international community to help preserve the forest.

Ambitious scheme

In Amazonas state, there are practical examples of how these initiatives might work.


The Amazon rainforest
Largest continuous tropical forest
Shared by nine countries
65% Brazilian territory
Covers 6.6m sq km in total
Pop: 30m - 23.5m are in Brazil

Delicate balance

Virgilio Vianna of the Foundation for Amazonas Sustainability said that since 2003, tax breaks on commodities such as fish and fruit had made local producers richer.

One of the state's most ambitious, and controversial, environmental programmes - The Bolsa Floresta (forest bursary) scheme - was set up to compensate the state's traditional and indigenous people.

It amounts to a straightforward exchange - cash in hand for trees left standing.

To qualify for a hand-out of 50 reais (US$30) per month, a family must attend a two-day training course on environmental awareness and commit to zero deforestation.

Local community associations can get up to $3,000 under the scheme, financed by a partnership between Amazonas State and Brazil's largest private bank, Bradesco.

Another programme offers cash for sustainable activities that do not produce smoke, such as bee-keeping, fish-farming or forest management.

Compensation 'derisory'

But there are those who say the Bolsa Floresta has been ill thought-out, and imposed from above.

"One of the problems is that there was no discussion with the communities concerned, it was a top-down policy and very focussed on [state capital] Manaus," said Marta Cunha, of the Catholic Church's Pastoral Land Commission.

The compensation levels are also regarded by some as very low - "derisory" according to Angelus Figueira of the Amazonas Green party.

Defenders say the project - now eight months old - is in its early stages.

Investments by Bradesco and the state should provide more than enough funds to sustain the Bolsa Floresta, its backers say.

And according to Vianna, it's a sign of the "private sector associating itself with the protection of the forest".

Globalisation

Another programme - a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification scheme - addresses the question of "ethical logging".

In a typical FSC-accredited business, just five trees would logged from an area of 10,000 square metres of pristine forest.

Growing global demand for Brazilian commodities has helped accelerate destruction of the Amazon forest.

Deforestation increases and declines according to international prices of beef and soya, as well as the relative strength of the real to the dollar.

But some argue growing demands from the global food market will be matched by increasing concern for environmental responsibility.

Daniel Nepstad, a forest ecologist with more than 20 years of Amazon experience, believes international markets and financial institutions will require more responsible land management on the part of Brazil's beef ranchers and soya farmers.

"There may be a silver lining to the cloud of globalization that has spread across the Amazon," Nepstad wrote in a recent report for the Woods Hole Research Centre in Massachusetts.

'Emergency measures'

Nepstad also predicts Brazil will benefit from the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) initiative, launched under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.


We do not see any contradiction in principle between an active economic project and the conservation of this treasure for humanity
Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Under the scheme, he says Brazil would be rewarded for reducing deforestation, because burning the trees releases a vast amount of carbon into the atmosphere.

From the local level to the complexities of macro-economics, an increasing range of incentives is influencing the future of the Amazon forest.

For Roberto Mangabeira Unger, maintaining a careful balance is central to the success of his government's evolving strategy.

"The commitment to preservation has been long-standing," he says.

"Emergency measures are under way. The next step is to put in place the elements of a long-term programme.

"We do not see any contradiction in principle between an active economic project and the conservation of this treasure for humanity."

November 2008 - Source - BBC News

2009-10-14T22:01:00.000-07:00

Plane to monitor Brazilian tribes
By Gary Duffy
BBC News, Sao Paulo

The Amazon is home to an estimated 39 isolated groups

The Brazilian authorities are to use a plane equipped with body-heat sensors to monitor uncontacted Indian tribes in the Amazon from a distance.

Brazil has a policy of leaving such isolated indigenous groups in peace unless it is absolutely necessary to make contact.

Officials say the plane will help them to protect remote communities without interrupting their way of life.

Some 39 isolated groups are believed to be living in the Amazon region.

In May this year the authorities released a photograph of members of an uncontacted tribe firing arrows at a passing plane - an image reproduced in newspapers and on websites.

Health risk

It is thought there may be more than 100 such tribes still in existence worldwide - more than half living in Latin America.

Life for these isolated communities is often precarious.

In Paraguay the campaign group Survival International says land belonging to one such tribe is being destroyed by outside developers. Similar problems have been reported in Peru.

Now the authorities in Brazil are to adopt an innovative solution to monitor uncontacted tribes.

A plane fitted with body-heat sensors and flying at high altitudes will be used to locate them.

The Brazilian agency which oversees the welfare of indigenous people, known as Funai, says it will then be able to ensure that loggers and farmers are kept out of Indian territory.

As well as the threat to their land, diseases brought by outsiders pose a major risk to the health of these remote indigenous groups.

Without the plane, the work of locating the tribes has been enormously difficult and just confirming the existence of some of these communities will be a priority for the new service.

The majority of Brazil's indigenous population has greater contact with outside society, sometimes living in reservations where agencies provide health and other support, but their lives are often blighted by poverty and other social problems

24 March 2008 - Source - BBC News

2009-10-14T21:56:00.001-07:00

Published on Monday, March 24, 2008 by BBC News
Peru Tribe Battles Oil Giant Over Pollution
by Dan Collyns

It is a familiar story. Big business moves into a pristine wilderness and starts destroying the environment and by turn the livelihoods of the indigenous people who live there.0324 04 1

But in a reversal of plot, there are now cases of people living traditional lifestyles who are now invading the territory of the big companies and taking them on at their own game.

The story of the Achuar tribe living in the Amazon rainforest of north-eastern Peru is one of them.

Last year, they filed a class action lawsuit against oil giant Occidental Petroleum, in Los Angeles.

Now they are awaiting a judge’s decision on whether the case can proceed in the US or will be sent back to Peru, where it stands little chance of coming to court.

‘No credible data

The Achuar people, who have lived for thousands of years in the rainforest, allege that the company contaminated their territory during more than 30 years of oil drilling, making their people sick, even causing some to die, and damaging their land and livelihoods beyond repair.

Occidental Petroleum, which pulled out of Peru eight years ago, denies liability in the case.

It has responded, saying: “We are aware of no credible data of negative community health impacts resulting from Occidental’s operations in Peru.”

The oil bonanza began in Peru almost 40 years ago when many foreign companies were given an open invitation by successive governments to test and drill in the Amazon.

What they did not consider was the devastating impact it would have on the native people, principally the Achuar - their land, their livelihood and their health.

The Achuar’s spiritual leader, Tomas Maynas, wears a bright red headdress made of toucan feathers, and has red war paint streaked on his face. He is the plaintiff in the suit against the company.

He remembers how everything changed when the oil companies arrived. He says the animals ran away, the fish died and their crops started to wilt.

“The Peruvian state just wants to extract as much oil as they can from our land. They’ve made millions of dollars but we haven’t seen it here.

“We know there’s wealth here and there’ll be more drilling so the state will keep on killing us. But sometimes, when there is pressure, the state gives in.”

The lawsuit alleges Occidental Petroleum ignored industry standards and employed out-of-date practices, dumping around 9bn barrels of toxic waste water into streams and rivers over 30 years.

After Occidental left, its operations were taken over by Pluspetrol.

Pluspetrol agreed to change practices in late 2006 when the Achuar, after repeated attempts to negotiate, took direct action.

Shotguns and spears

Many of the older Achuar men once fought in tribal wars with their neighbours, now they finally had the chance to hit their elusive new enemies where it hurt - in their pockets.

Peacefully, yet armed with shotguns and spears, they occupied and held the Amazon oil wells in October 2006.

The government and the company, losing millions of dollars a day, were forced to come to the negotiating table.

The Achuar came away with a commitment from Pluspetrol to reduce contamination and to pay millions of dollars to clean up and establish a 10-year health plan.

It was thanks to help from outside but also a new generation of indigenous leaders who are learning how to protect their rights in the modern world.

“A whole generation had their health damaged. How can we keep quiet as our parents did?” asks 29-year-old Petronila Chumpi.

“We can’t allow this, we’re a new generation, we know how to read and write and we have to help our people because they didn’t have the knowledge to defend themselves against the oil companies. But now we do.”

Improvement

Even on a fast motorboat, Trompeteros is a long day’s journey up three rain-swollen rivers from Loreto’s regional capital, Iquitos. A hamlet of some 3,000 people, it is situated right opposite Block Eight, one of the main oil wells.

Local people say there is still contamination and oil spills, but now the Achuar have GPS transceivers to log the problems where they find them.

Little by little there are signs of improvement.

But there is frustration on the part of Pluspetrol, which has pledged to pay millions of dollars, that the government is not playing a bigger role.

“This oil industry should be of benefit for everybody - maybe today it’s not of benefit to indigenous people and the government should find the best way to solve that problem,” says Roberto Ramallo, general manager of Pluspetrol Norte.

But the problem is that the Achuar and other tribes live on top of potentially enormous reserves of crude oil.

Thanks to an intense drive to auction it off, almost three-quarters of the Peruvian Amazon is leased for oil exploration and extraction.

High global demand and the price of oil is also making companies look at the Peruvian Amazon as an attractive prospect, but is it sustainable?

“All of this petroleum exploration in the Amazon is a grand experiment,” says Bill Powers of E-Tech, a not-for-profit engineering firm.

“It’s just coming into the jungle, developing the resource, getting the economic benefit and historically it’s been whatever happens to whoever was there before, happens.

“There’s no plan, there’s no effort made to ensure that they maintain their cultural integrity or that they have something to do once the rivers and the forest don’t provide what they used to provide.”

Future plans

Carbon trading schemes have yet to reach this part of the Amazon and the oil boom is not the only threat.

President Alan Garcia has proposed privatising large areas of the rainforest, but local officials say the government in Lima does not understand the impact this would have.

The regional president of Loreto, Ivan Vasquez, says the Amazon needs to preserve its diversity at all costs.

“The ecosystem is the genetic bank of the Amazon, as it brings together genetic matrices which don’t exist anywhere else - thousands of interconnected genetic bases.

“That is our capital, the genetic bank that we have to preserve for humanity, and for the world.”

The Achuar have so far rejected new oil exploration on their territory.

Their story is an emblematic case of resistance for indigenous Amazonians and is unprecedented in Peru.

But the Peruvian rainforest, the biggest stretch of Amazon outside Brazil, is still the focus of the relentless global hunt to find new sources of fossil fuels.

© 2008 BBC News

29 May 2008 - Soruce - livinginperu.com

2009-10-14T21:51:00.000-07:00

Environment/Nature | 29 May, 2008 [ 16:30 ]
Uncontacted tribe photographed near Brazil-Peru border

00
© Gleison Miranda/FUNAI
Members of one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes have been spotted and photographed from the air near the Brazil-Peru border.

The photos were taken during several flights over one of the remotest parts of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil’s Acre state.

‘We did the overflight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist,’ said uncontacted tribes expert José Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Júnior. Meirelles works for FUNAI, the Brazilian government’s Indian affairs department. ‘This is very important because there are some who doubt their existence.’

Meirelles says that the group’s numbers are increasing. But other uncontacted groups in the region, whose homes have been photographed from the air, are in severe danger from illegal logging in Peru.

Logging is driving uncontacted tribes over the border and could lead to conflict with the estimated five hundred uncontacted Indians already living on the Brazilian side.

‘What is happening in this region [of Peru] is a monumental crime against the natural world, the tribes, the fauna and is further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the ‘civilised’ ones, treat the world,’ said Meirelles.

There are more than one hundred uncontacted tribes worldwide, with more than half living in either Brazil or Peru. All are in grave danger of being forced off their land, killed and decimated by new diseases.

Survival has launched an urgent campaign to get their land protected, and a unique film narrated by actress Julie Christie.

Survival’s director Stephen Corry said today, ‘These pictures are further evidence that uncontacted tribes really do exist. The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct.’

30 May 2008 - Source - livinginperu.com

2009-10-14T21:50:00.000-07:00

Environment/Nature | 30 May, 2008 [ 06:30 ]
French company in legal battle over uncontacted Peru tribes

A French company is locked in a legal battle with Amazon Indians over its plans to drill for oil in parts of the jungle inhabited by some of the world’s last uncontacted tribes. A hearing is due on 30 May.

The company, Perenco, is working in a remote part of the Peruvian Amazon where at least two uncontacted tribes live. It is believed to be the biggest oil find in Peru in thirty years and the Peruvian president, Alan Garcia, has expressed hopes it will transform the Peruvian economy.

The case has been filed by Peru’s Amazon Indian organisation, AIDESEP. It urges the judge to prohibit Perenco and other companies from working in the region and making contact with uncontacted tribes.

Perenco acquired the rights to work in Peru after taking over a US company, Barrett Resources, earlier this year.

Barrett had already attracted fierce criticism from Peruvian Indians after revealing plans to ‘communicate’ with the tribes using megaphones if its oil crews were attacked by them.

Any form of contact with the tribes could be catastrophic because of their vulnerability to outsiders’ diseases. After first contact, it is common for more than 50% of a tribe to die.

Despite this, and despite an international law that recognises the tribes as the rightful owners of their land, Perenco continues to work there.

Survival’s Director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘Perenco must understand the potentially disastrous consequences its actions may have for the uncontacted tribes. Perenco, pull out. It’s the Indians’ land, not yours, and you’re breaking international law by working there.’

3 June 2008 - Source- livinginperu.com

2009-10-14T21:47:00.000-07:00

Environment/Nature | 3 June, 2008 [ 11:15 ]
Peru: Uncontacted tribe photos spur government into action

Peru’s government has announced plans to investigate the plight of uncontacted Indians living in the remote Peruvian Amazon.

The announcement comes after unique photos of an uncontacted tribe in Brazil, near the Peruvian border, made world headlines.

They are among an estimated 500 uncontacted Indians in the region, some of whom are believed to be at risk from conflict with other uncontacted tribes from Peru fleeing into Brazil.

‘The idea is to protect them, not contact them,’ the director of the Peruvian government’s indigenous affairs department, Ronald Ibarra, is reported as saying. ‘A team of professionals will travel to the region to gather information and see if illegal logging really is displacing the tribes.’

Photos were also taken of the houses of one of these refugee tribes, now living five kilometres across the border in Brazil.

In total, there are an estimated fifteen uncontacted tribes in Peru and all of them are threatened with extinction, mainly from illegal logging and oil exploration. They are exceedingly vulnerable to any form of contact because they have no immunity to outsiders’ diseases.

Survival International’s director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘This is a positive first step from the Peruvian government, but it must act fast. It must stop the logging, remove the loggers and any other invaders from the uncontacted Indians’ land, and ensure that no one else enters in the future.’

13 June, 2008 - Source- livinginperu.com

2009-10-14T21:46:00.000-07:00

Environment/Nature | 13 June, 2008 [ 15:45 ]
Peru: Uncontacted tribes not Peruvian and not fleeing illegal logging

Living in Peru
Israel J. Ruiz

After the Brazilian government released pictures it had taken near the Peru-Brazil border of an indigenous tribe that has avoided contact with the outside world, several organizations began efforts to protect the uncontacted people.

It was believed that the tribes were fleeing the area because of illegal logging that was taking place near the Peruvian border with Brazil.

The Peruvian Amazon Indian organization (AIDESEP) affirmed that logging was forcing uncontacted tribes "out of their own territories". Moreover, they urged the government to protect the tribes.

According to biologist Grocio Gil Navarro, the indigenous people that were photographed were not Peruvians.

The head of Alto Purus National Park and the Comunal Purus Reserve clarified that contrary to what many believed, the tribes were not Peruvian.

Furthermore, the head of the reserve assured that the uncontacted individuals were not fleeing from illegal logging that was taking place in the region of Ucayali.

He added that information being given out by certain NGOs was not true, stating that there were several control towers in the area which tracked and protected the tribes.

"We were very surprised," said Navarro, affirming that there were control towers near the areas where NGOs were claiming that illegal logging was taking place.

He stated that he had not received reports of illegal logging and affirmed that uncontacted tribes were not being chased from their homes.

Navarro added that the tribes frequently moved from Peru to Brazil, stating that they were not aware they were moving from one country to another.

He assured that this was part of their migratory habits.

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