[CTC] Kirk sets November 2011 Deadline for TPP

[Citizens Trade Campaign]

http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/6196

US timber demand threatens uncontacted Peruvian tribe 13 July

Illegal mahogany loggers are plunderinguncontacted Indians’ landin the  
depths of the Peruvian Amazon, according to a new report by the Upper  
Amazon Conservancy (UAC).

The report says the logging ‘provides evidence that Peru is failing to  
uphold the environmental and forestry obligations of its 2009
Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US’ because ‘more than 80% of  
Peru’s mahogany (is) exported to the United States’. UAC’s report has  
been released just a month after the US Secretary of State Hillary  
Clinton travelled to Peru to meet President Alan Garcia and claimed,  
‘The United States and Peru are working together to protect the  
environment.’

The report also reveals how loggers trick Peruvian and US authorities  
into believing the mahogany has been legally sourced. The logging  
‘will continue until the US government unilaterally rejects  
questionable Peruvian mahogany,’ it says.

UAC’s report includes photos of a logging camp and cut mahogany in the  
Murunahua Reserve, which is supposedly set aside for uncontacted  
Indians’ sole use, in south-east Peru. It says that logging is  
‘widespread’ in the reserve, and that a ‘vast network of logging  
roads’ used by ‘over a dozen tractors’ connects the reserve to a major  
Amazonian tributary.

The uncontacted tribes in the reserve ‘lack natural defenses against  
diseases brought from outsiders and are threatened by any type of  
contact,’ says the report. It also says the logging violates the  
‘Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species’ (CITES),  
which aims to protect mahogany.

The Murunahua Reserve was recently made off-limits to oil and gas  
companies because of the threat exploration would pose to the  
uncontacted Indians living there.

Survival director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘It would be a tragedy  
for US citizens to continue buying Peruvian mahogany if it puts the  
survival of uncontacted Indians at risk.’

Download the report

Arthur Stamoulis
Oregon Fair Trade Campaign
(503) 736-9777





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