Peru grappling with deforestation

While Peru has enjoyed large growth from the oil sector and gas industry, as well as other sectors, over the past ten years, the Latin American nation is still struggling with deforestation of the rainforest and illegal activity.

February 20, 2010 | Nature, News

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Without Machu Picchu you’ll enjoy the trip of a lifetime

SPECIAL: PERU WITHOUT MACHU PICCHU – Machu Picchu is closed. It will stay that way through all of February at the very least. Do you have your flights booked and are wondering what to do next? Should you cancel or put off your trip to Cuzco?

February 4, 2010 | Travel and Places

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Little town of Quince Mil is becoming a Hotspot [Featured]

For TIME, Lucien Chauvin writes about developments in the little town of Quince Mil, from the benefits of the new Inter-Oceanic Highway that links the Atlantic with the Pacific via Peru and Brazil, to the environment problems it will bring.

November 28, 2009 | Cusco Guide, News

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Brutal deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon [Featured]

Forests are converted into deserts due to the advance of informal mining that illegally extracts gold. Regular buying and selling of mercury is demanded by locals, who use it for the extraction of the precious metal.

November 17, 2009 | Nature, News

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A marvellous hummingbird display [Featured]

The Marvellous Spatuletail is perhaps one of the most beautiful, rare and unique of Peru’s native creatures. This hummingbird, that only exists in a few small isolated areas of cloud forest, and its special mating ritual are introduced to us by the BBC. Their camera team was the first to ever record the male spatuletail’s attempts to woo a female, the whole mating display from start to finish.

November 3, 2009 | Amazonas Guide, Nature

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Peru’s Garcia tussles with tribes over land rights

Peruvian President Alan Garcia’s push to lure foreign investors to the Amazon basin has run into homegrown opposition, with indigenous leaders saying he has disregarded a U.N. declaration that protects their rights to control land and natural resources.

Thousands of indigenous people have protested in Peru’s Amazon for much of the past 40 days, hoping to pressure Garcia to modify or strike down a series of laws he passed last year that encourage oil, mining and agricultural companies to invest billions of dollars in the mostly pristine region.

May 21, 2009 | News

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The Shipibos of the River Rimac

They used to live and the edge of an Amazonian river that was an unending source of life. But they came to Lima, and now they live on river that is a polluted source of illness and death. Far from their lands, their children no longer speak Shipibo and their customs are almost forgotten.

April 13, 2009 | Lima City Guide, News

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The last of the Taushiros

Peru’s Amazon rainforest has seen the last of the great Taushiro nation. Prospering in the area of the Quebrada Aguaruna in Alto Tigre, Loreto, for thousands of years, the Taushiro, like countless other tribes, have been wiped out by us and our world.

December 5, 2008 | Culture & History, Opinion

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Peru’s Amazonian Indigenous

In Peru’s vast Amazon region there are 65 ethnic groups with their own distinct traditions and languages passed down orally from generation to generation. What does the future hold for these peoples?

September 5, 2008 | Opinion

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Peru drops plans to open up uncontacted tribes’ reserves

Peru’s government has dropped plans to open up uncontacted Indians’ reserves to oil exploration. The latest round of concessions, announced this week, do not include any of the uncontacted Indians’ reserves.

May 8, 2008 | News

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Petroglyphs of Pusharo

In his article for the Athena Review, Deyermenjian tells us, “I first encountered petroglyphs in 1984 while my party of highland campesinos and Peruvian adventurers was traversing the Cordillera de Paucartambo, the easternmost range of the high Andes to the northeast of Cusco. We were at an altitude of 13,500 feet when we found ourselves astride a rockhang covered with bas- relief images of llamas and walking humans. All the human figures on the rock were heading in one direction, northeast, toward the tropical forests This site is named Demarcación, whose meaning would doubtless have been understood by Incan peoples of old passing this way”.

November 10, 2007 | Archaeology, Opinion

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Suffering of uncontacted Amazon tribes

The Amazon Rainforest is full of isolated indigenous peoples. They exist in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Brasil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru. For President of PetroPeru Daniel Saba speaking of this is like speaking of the Loch Ness monster. Faced with protests from organized native groups, who point out the dangers for uncontacted and isolated tribes of selling off huge areas of Peru’s Amazon, he declared in April of this year “no one has seen them, so what uncontacted people are they talking about?” Surely Saba is not so unbelieving now, after the publication of photos taken from the air on the 18th of September by a group of belonging to the Zoological Society of Frankfurt and the National Institute of National Recourses of Peru, showing some 20 isolated and previously unknown villages along the Los Piedras River.

October 25, 2007 | News, Opinion

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