Peru natives plead for Amazon protections

[Judi Lynn]

Source: MSNBC/Associated Press

Peru natives plead for Amazon protections
Government agrees to curb mahogany exports; activists to keep watch
Updated: 54 minutes ago

HAGUE, Netherlands - Alberto Pizango Chota saw loggers come to his Indian village in the northern Amazon when he was 7. First they felled the mahogany. Then they returned to cut the cedars. By the time they came back for other hardwoods, there was little left of the forest.

Pizango says illegal logging also has endangered his Indian people — and the survival of primitive tribes who avoid all contact with other humans. Dozens of violent encounters with the tribesmen have been documented in the last five years.

"Sometimes they run away" from the loggers, said Pizango, now 42. "Some stay and defend their rights to the forest," pitting their arrows against 16-gauge shotguns.

Peru, the world's largest mahogany exporter, came under sharp attack this week at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, for setting unsustainable export quotas and for failing to rein in poachers in its national parks and forest reserves where Indians live.

"This wood has been dirtied with the blood of indigenous people," said Pizango, the chairman of the National Association of Amazon Indians in Peru, who appealed to CITES for help.



Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19068671/

[blayne]

1. It always saddens me when I here about any type of

deforestation. Unfortunately, the indian tribes there will probably face the same fate as the Native Americans here. If they don't get killed in the process, they will continue to be pushed onto smaller parcels of land till they are down to 160 acres or even less.

This is why everyone looking at hardwood for anything should only consider wood harvested from sustainable forests.

[anotherdrew]

2. easy fix - kill the loggers n/t