Isolated peoples at risk from logging in Brazil, warns organization

By Lucas Thiago – From Cenarium

MANAUS (AM) – The Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Survival International denounced the resumption of logging in the territory of the isolated Mashco Piro Indigenous people, in the Madre de Dios region of the Peruvian Amazon, near the border with Brazil. According to the entity, in a statement last Wednesday, 27, the illegal activity puts isolated peoples in “great danger.”

The warning was issued by Enrique Añez, president of the Yine Indigenous community. He reported that heavy machinery is once again opening paths in the forest, crossing the river, and cutting down trees near the community. “It is very worrying, they are in danger. From the community, we can hear the engines. The isolated ones are hearing them too. Something bad could happen again,” said the Indigenous leader.

“Heavy machinery is once again opening paths and crossing our river upstream from our community, and cutting down our trees. An illegal bridge was built by the logging company Canales Tahuamanu, in the territory of the Mashco Piro, to transport excavators to more remote areas of the forest,” said Añez.

The Mashco Piro live in nearby areas but rarely leave the forest. In June of this year, Survival International released unprecedented images showing dozens of isolated Indigenous people from the Mashco Piro in the Peruvian Amazon.

The records of the Indigenous occurred just a few kilometers from areas designated for logging. Part of the Mashco Piro territory has been protected since 2002, when the Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve was created to protect the forest of the isolated Mashco Piro, Yora, and Amahuaca peoples.

But the Peruvian government left out large areas of the Mashco Piro territory, which were sold by the government as logging concessions, including to MCT. In 2016, after pressure from local Indigenous organizations, the authorities agreed to expand the reserve, which has not yet been carried out.

The director of Survival International, Caroline Pearce, stated that the loggers need to establish, together with the Peruvian government, the demarcation of areas with limitations on Indigenous regions. She called on the Peruvian government to demarcate and protect the entire territory of the Mashco Piro and to end all logging concessions within it.

“This is the ancestral forest of the Mashco Piro and it is their home. The suggestion that logging companies could continue operating with the full approval of the FSC, as long as they promised to establish limited conservation areas in their concessions, is both an attack on the rights of Indigenous peoples and dangerous naivety. The Peruvian government must demarcate and protect the entire territory of the Mashco Piro and end all logging concessions within it,” said Pearce.

Translated from Portuguese by Gustô Alves