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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Peru Seeks To Stem Amazon Logging

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org

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07/08/00

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY

In an amazing action, Peru's President has deployed the military to

stop unsustainable logging. He has also declared three huge new

protected zones covering 15.6 million acres. It is critically

important that a timber boom not threaten Peru's globally exceptional

species and habitat diversity. While the authoritarian nature of

Peru's government may be problematic, a firm hand may be warranted in

this instance. Once a large transnational logging industry becomes

firmly entrenched, it is generally too late to pursue sustainability.

It is now or never to draw the line and say these rainforests are too

important for a cut and run American logging company to liquidate.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: Peru Seeks To Stem Amazon Logging

Source: Copyright 2000, Associated Press

Date: July 7, 2000

LIMA, Peru (AP) - Reacting to what the government said was

unauthorized logging by a U.S. company, Peru's president has deployed

the military in an Amazon frontier region and declared wide swaths of

Peru's jungle protected zones.

Peru's armed forces were dispatched this week to Inapari, near the

borders with Brazil and Bolivia, and President Alberto Fujimori

declared an ``environmental state of emergency'' on Thursday.

The moves came after loggers working for a U.S. company ``irrationally

and without authorization extracted mahogany valued at between $37

million and $40 million,'' the government said in a statement Friday.

``The exploitation of resources will take place under certain

conditions,'' Fujimori said. ``That is to say, in a sustainable

manner, which means that with time the resources will be renovated and

our forests will not be depleted.''

But the president of a U.S. lumber company working in the region said

his company recently won a ruling in its favor from Peru's Supreme

Court and was about to restart production after the government shut

down the operation nine months ago.

``As far as I understand, everything was legal, and it went through

the court system,'' said Roy Newman, president of Newman Lumber

Company of Mississippi.

He said the government wrongly accused his company of employing local

loggers who armed themselves and caused disturbances in Inapari, a

jungle village 500 miles east of the capital, Lima.

``As far as I know, there is no civil disturbance in the area at

all,'' he said. ``We were invited in to work in the area and all the

people seemed happy with it.''

Fujimori's decree making parts of the jungle protected reserve areas

affects three Amazon regions.

Two are located in the central jungle, covering a combined area of

13.6 million acres. The other is a 2 million acre swath of jungle in

the far northeastern corner of the country near the border with

Colombia.

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