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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Peru Seeks To Stem Amazon Logging
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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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