The environment and interior ministries in Peru have announced plans to set up a special task force to safeguard forests and monitor the rivers in the Amazon basin. The special force will be made up of around 3,000 officers to be known as the Environment Police.
The force will oversee 373,000 sq km of Amazon rainforest and patrol rivers to combat illegal logging and the unauthorised clearing of forest. Peru’s Environment Minister Antonio Brack said that until now the issue, “a problem of organized crime, morality and oversight,” has not been adequately addressed due to a severely understaffed police force running to just 240 men.
The Amazon rainforest covers almost a third of Peru and is highly prized by companies seeking to exploit the lax enforcement regime to harvest precious hard woods like mahogany. For many years, ecologists have voiced deep concern over the rapid depletion of Amazon biodiversity and say that, at the present rate of deforestation, the basin, home to an incredible array of flora and fauna (much yet to be discovered), could be harmed beyond repair in coming decades.
Image Credit – markg6 via flickr.com on a Creative Commons license
Well the problem with this is that most cops in that region of the world are on the take and for sale to the highest bidder. Almost like US cops!
Jiff
http://www.anonweb.eu.tc
Given the entrenched issues of land grabbing, timber smuggling, poverty and illiterate population it sounds like just "window dressing" to shut everyone up.
3000 officers are not going to make the problem go away.
If Peru or anyone was going to get serious about the problem they would button the Amazon region up with even use made of defence personel and at the same time put some serious capitol and legislation into the already damaged areas to start plantation forests. The local population gains jobs working the plantations and the illegal loggers havn't got a way to move their timber.
I don't like plantations but the opposite argument is to leave a population with no jobs or future the sawmillers and loggers have a cooperative population that they economically deprive anyway.
Interesting story on the happenings in Peru. Positive signs. I wonder if this has anything to do with some of the requirements to address illegal logging and forest governance reform that were part of the US trade deal with Peru.
I did a post on illegal logging (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/jschmidt/illegal_blogging_and_climate_change.html). Illegal logging in Peru of mahogany was a major factor in the push to get the Lacey Act amendment adopted in the US that I reference in my post.
I have been concerned about the Amazon Rainforest so much that I was compelled to write a book
LIVING ON THE EDGE about the deforestation of the rainforest and the tumultuous effect on indigenious people. My story covers a family dealing with the trials they had to endure while their home is distroyed.
The book is dedicated to Sister Dorothy Stang 73 year old Catholic Nun shot 6 times while attempting to save the rainforest.
I think this was a horrific occurance that has not made the impact it should have.
Rosiland MIller
the irony of this articLe is sick, today in peru the police and military are killing peaceful indigenous protesters who are trying to protect their land from commercial mining, oil drilling etc…
look for:
Peru declares curfew after bloody clashes in Amazon jungle
Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 7 June 2009 19.52 BST
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