Deforestation haunts top Peruvian reserve and its Indigenous communities

[Judi Lynn]

by Aimee Gabay on 24 April 2024

• Peru’s Amarakaeri Communal Reserve, considered one of the best-protected nature reserves in the world, has seen a spike in deforestation on its fringes from the expansion of illegal coca cultivation and mining, and new road construction.
  
  
• The forest loss appears to be affecting the ancestral lands of several Indigenous communities, including the Harakbut, Yine and Matsiguenka peoples, according to a new report by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP).
  
  
• The report found that 19,978 hectares (49,367 acres) of forest have been cleared in the buffer of the reserve over the past two decades.
  
  
• According to Indigenous leaders, the state is doing “practically nothing” to address deforestation drivers in the buffer zone, and they warn that if left unchecked, the activity will spread into the protected area itself.

A recent report has revealed a spike in deforestation in the buffer zone of one of the world’s best-protected areas, Peru’s Amarakaeri Communal Reserve.

Between 2001 and 2023, 19,978 hectares (49,367 acres) of forest were lost in the buffer zone of the reserve, which is home to the ancestral lands of the Indigenous Harakbut, Yine and Matsiguenka peoples. According to the report by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), there are several factors for this trend, including illegal mining, coca cultivation and creation of landing strips, and new road developments.

Amarakaeri is co-managed by ECA Amarakaeri, an Indigenous organization representing the communities in its buffer zone, and SERNANP, the Peruvian agency for protected areas. It’s home to many threatened and endemic species, such as harpy eagles (Harpia harpyja) and spectacled bears (Tremarctos ornatus), and in 2018 was named to the Green List of the IUCN, the global nature conservation authority, for sites that are “effectively managed and fairly governed, with long-term positive impacts on people and nature.”

“About five years ago, probably the most threatened protected area used to be the Tambopata National Reserve,” said Sidney Novoa, a co-author of the MAAP report and director of conservation technology at the Peruvian NGO Conservación Amazónica–ACCA. “But in the last few years, Amarakaeri has scaled up in this list of most threatened protected areas in southern Peru. If the pressure increases, they are going to eventually lose this [IUCN Green List] category.”



Illegal activity in the buffer zone of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve in Peru. Image courtesy of Amarakaeri.org.

More:
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/deforestation-haunts-top-peruvian-reserve-and-its-indigenous-communities/