Peruvian Amazonia (), informally known locally as the Peruvian jungle () or just the jungle (), is the area of the Amazon rainforest in Peru, east of the Andes and Peru's borders with Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, and Bolivia. Peru has the second-largest portion of the Amazon rainforest after the Brazilian Amazon.
Extent
Most Peruvian territory is covered by dense forests on the east side of the Andes, yet only 5% of Peruvians live in this area. More than 60% of Peruvian territory is covered by the Amazon rainforest.
According to the Research Institute of the Peruvian Amazon (Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonía Peruana, IIAP), the spatial delineation of the Peruvian Amazon is as follows: Ecological criteria: (60.91% of Peruvian territory and approximately 11.05% of the entire Amazon jungle). Hydrographic criteria or basin criteria: (75.31% of Peruvian territory and approximately 16.13% of the whole Amazon basin).
Ecoregions and climate
The Peruvian Amazon is traditionally divided into two distinct ecoregions:
Lowland Jungle The lowland jungle (in Spanish Selva Baja) is also known as Omagua region, Walla, Anti, Amazonian rainforest or Amazon basin. This ecoregion is the largest of Peru, standing between 80 and 1,000 meters above sea level. It has very warm weather with an average temperature of 28 °C, high relative humidity (over 75%) and yearly rainfall of approximately . Its soils are very heterogeneous, but almost all have river origins. Because of high temperatures and high rainfall, they are poor soils with few nutrients.
The jungle contains long and powerful rivers such as the Apurimac, Mantaro, Amazon, Urubamba, Ucayali, Huallaga, Marañón, Putumayo, Yavarí, Napo, Pastaza, Madre de Dios, Manu, Purus, and Tigre. The Apurímac River is the source of the Amazon River. The Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, the Allpahuayo-Mishana National Reserve and the Tamshiyacu Tahuayo Regional Conservation Area are within the forest.
Highland Jungle The highland jungle (in Spanish Selva Alta) is also called Rupa-Rupa region, Andean jungle, ceja de selva. This ecoregion extends into the eastern foothills of the Andes, between 1,000 and 3,800 m above the sea level. The eastern slopes of the Andes are home to a great variety of fauna and flora because of the different altitudes and climates within the region. Temperatures are warm in the lowlands and cooler in higher altitudes. There are many endemic fauna because of the isolation caused by the rugged terrain of the area.Pulgar Vidal, Javier: Geografía del Perú; Las Ocho Regiones Naturales del Perú. Edit. Universo S.A., Lima 1979. First Edition (his dissertation of 1940): Las ocho regiones naturales del Perú, Boletín del Museo de historia natural, „Javier Prado", n° especial, Lima, 1941, 17, pp. 145–161.
Within the Amazon rainforest there are several other types of forest but they all have one characteristic in common: abundant rains. Over the course of a year, a portion of tropical forest will receive between 1,500 and 3,000 mm of rain. This creates the typical tropical atmosphere of a rainforest, with an average temperature of around 24 °C or more.
Biodiversity The Peruvian Amazon jungle is one of the most biologically diverse areas on Earth. As a nation, Peru has the largest number of bird species in the world and the third-largest number of mammals; 44% of bird species and 63% of mammal species inhabit the Peruvian Amazon. Peru also has a very high number of species of butterflies, orchids, and other organisms.This table was elaborated by Edwin Jesús Villacorta Monzón, with data obtained among many sources from years 1997, 2001 and 2006.
Taxa Number of known species Percentage of species In the world In Peru In the Peruvian Amazon Peru vs. world Peruvian Amazon vs. Peru Amphibians 5,125 403 262 8 65 Birds 9,672 1,815 806 19 44 Flowering plants 250,000 17,144 7,372 7 43 Ferns 10,000 1000 700 10 70 Mammals 4,629 462 293 10 63 Butterflies 16,000 3,366 2,500 21 74 Fish 8,411 900 697 11 77 Reptiles 7,855 395 180 5 46
Demography
Although it is the largest region of Peru, the Peruvian Amazon is the least populated. It is home to approximately 5% of the country's population. Many indigenous peoples, such as the Aguaruna, Cocama-Cocamilla and the Urarina,Dean, Bartholomew 2009 Urarina Society, Cosmology, and History in Peruvian Amazonia, Gainesville: University Press of Florida inhabit the jungle, some in relative isolation from the rest of the world.
The primary cities located in the Peruvian Amazon include:
Iquitos with 500,000 inhabitants at 104 m (Loreto region) Pucallpa, with 380,000 inhabitants at 154 m (Ucayali region) Yurimaguas with 140,000 inhabitants at 182 m (Loreto region) Puerto Maldonado with 104,000 inhabitants at 139 m (Madre de Dios region) Tarapoto with 181,000 inhabitants at 350 m (San Martín region) Jaén with 86,743 inhabitants at 729 m (Cajamarca region) Moyobamba with 77,000 inhabitants at 860 m (San Martín region) Bagua with 65,000 inh. at 400 m (Amazonas region) Rioja with 60,000 inh. at 848 m (at San Martín region)
History In the 1730s, Roman Catholic Franciscan missionaries established missions in the Gran Pajonal, but the missions were destroyed in the 1740s by the Asháninka under the leadership of Juan Santos Atahualpa. Several Spanish military expeditions tried to suppress the rebellion but failed or were defeated. The rebellion destroyed the missionary enterprise and left the Gran Pajonal in Asháninka control for 150 years although they suffered from periodic epidemics of European diseases and in the late 19th century from slave raids by businesses engaged in the gathering of rubber during the Amazon rubber boom.
Illegal logging Over the last decades illegal logging has become a serious problem in the Peruvian Amazon. In 2012 the World Bank estimated that 80% of Peru's timber exports are illegally harvested.World Bank (2012) Justice for Forests. Improving Criminal Justice Efforts to Combat Illegal Logging. Washington, DC: Pereira Goncalves, P., Panjer, M., Greenberg, T. S. & Magrath, W.B. This uncontrolled deforestation could negatively affect the habitats of indigenous tribes, the Peruvian biodiversity and contribute to climate change. Moreover, illegal deforestation might lead to more violent crimes. This has already been demonstrated on 1 September 2014, when four indigenous leaders were murdered, including the famous environmental activist Edwin Chota. These leaders were asking for governmental protection against illegal loggers, after being threatened several times. Partly due to this, illegal loggers are being blamed for the assassination.Collins, D. (2014). Illegal loggers blamed for murder of Peru forest campaigner.
Emergence of illegal industry In an attempt to support local incomes in the Amazon, the Peruvian government granted non-transferable contracts to some farmers to perform small-scale logging activities. Soon however, big logging companies started paying individual loggers for the use of their contracts and established an illegal, large-scale logging industry.Environmental Investigation Agency (2012). La Máquina Lavadora, p. 8 In 1992 the National Institute of Natural Resources (INRENA) was founded to guarantee a more sustainable use of national resources.Environmental Investigation Agency (2012). La Máquina Lavadora, p. 20 Yet, this institution has never been able to carry out its task due to several reasons. First of all, INRENA lacked sufficient resources compared with the magnitude of their responsibilities.Smith, J., Colan, V., Sabogal, C., & Snook, L. (2006). Why policy reforms fail to improve logging practices: The role of governance and norms in Peru. Forest Policy and Economics, 8(4), 466. Next to this, corruption was a problem in several layers of the organisation.Environmental Investigation Agency (2012). La Máquina Lavadora, p. 20 Moreover, until recently, INRENA was part of the Ministry of Agriculture.Smith, J., Colan, V., Sabogal, C., & Snook, L. (2006). Why policy reforms fail to improve logging practices: The role of governance and norms in Peru. Forest Policy and Economics, 8(4), 463. This suggests that INRENA was not completely independent; it was housed in an institution that had to safeguard the interest of the agricultural sector, which could be conflicting with INRENA's objective.
In 2000 Peru modified the Forestry and Wildlife Law in order to improve the logging sector.Naughton-Treves, L. Deforestation and carbon emissions at tropical frontiers: a case study from the Peruvian Amazon. World Development 32.1 (2004): 185 In the subsequent years however, the situation in the Peruvian timber industry only deteriorated. To some extent this can be explained by the fact that Brazil illegalised the exports of mahogany (one of the most valuable and endangered types of wood in the world) from 2001 on.Environmental Investigation Agency (2012). La Máquina Lavadora, p. 6 This Brazilian ban is likely to have caused the increase in Peruvian mahogany exports. Soon after the ban, international institutions revealed their severe concerns about the state of the Peruvian timber industry. In particular the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), started paying extra attention to Peru as the trade in mahogany falls under CITES’ regulation. Albeit the fact that from then on, one needed special permits for harvesting and exporting any endangered species, the forestry sector was still far from sustainable.
Illegal logging with permits Although it is understandable that illegal logging cannot be stopped easily in the Peruvian Amazons (an inaccessible area bigger than Spain), the illegal exportation of timber is supposed to be more difficult; the shipments are huge and there are very few routes from the Amazons to the coast. Nevertheless, until now it has been relatively easy for companies to ship and export illegal timber. Despite the fact that the Peruvian government claims that it does not know anything about the method used by these companies, it is common-knowledge.Matalon, L. (2014). Building a Template for Sustainable Forestry. Revista: Harvard Review of Latin America, Peru 20–24.
The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) provided a clear picture of this mechanism in their report The Laundering Machine. According to them, the biggest flaw in the Peruvian system for years has been the granting of logging permits: 'Concessionaires submit for approval lists that do not exist in the real world, and complicit authorities approve the extraction of this non-existent wood'.Environmental Investigation Agency (2012). La Máquina Lavadora, p. 4 These permits allow companies to transport almost all sorts of wood (both legal and illegal) out of the country. There are only two ways to stop illegal loggers: catching them in the act, or, in case of controlling a shipment, environmental prosecutors have to prove that the timber does not come from the place written on the permit (which is only possible by going to this place). With not more than a hundred environmental prosecutors in Peru, it is not surprising that both methods are far from effective.
The American-Peruvian Free Trade Agreement