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I wanted to share my thoughts about the Amazon fires. These past four weeks have taken me on trips to various rainforests all over Peru, from montane rainforests in the Andes (cloudforests), to Pacific tropical forests on the coast, to Amazonian rainforests in the north, central, and southern Peru. The Amazon is vast, the rainforest feels vast, and yet as the world is learning, it is very vulnerable.
The world is reading the news about the forest fires all over the Amazon. I am not shocked, I am not surprised. This was expected. Every year, the rate of forest fires in Peru as in Brazil has increased. The “summers” (what locals call the dry season) are longer and stronger. Normally, the drier forests close to the Andes are the ones that burn the most intensely. Not so this year.
On one of these trips to Calabaza, one of our Rainforest Partnership partner communities, the president of the community urgently asked us for our help in protecting their lands. Calabaza, as many many communities in Peru, do not have all the paperwork that officially recognizes the borders of their territories. Hence they can’t make decisions over their territories, like the creation of their own conservation areas.
Read the rest here.
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