Peru sends army to stop loggingFujimori’s decree making parts of the jungle protected reserve areas affects three Amazon regions.
THE MOVES came after loggers working for a U.S. company “irrationally and without authorization extracted mahogany valued at between $37 million and $40 million,” the government said in a statement Friday. “The exploitation of resources will take place under certain conditions,” Fujimori said. “That is to say, in a sustainable manner, which means that with time the resources will be renovated and our forests will not be depleted.” But the president of a U.S. lumber company working in the region said his company recently won a ruling in its favor from Peru’s Supreme Court and was about to restart production after the government shut down the operation nine months ago. “As far as I understand, everything was legal, and it went through the court system,” said Roy Newman, president of Newman Lumber Company of Mississippi.
He said the government wrongly accused his company of employing local loggers who armed themselves and caused disturbances in Inapari, a jungle village 500 miles east of the capital, Lima.
“As far as I know, there is no civil disturbance in the area at all,” he said. “We were invited in to work in the area and all the people seemed happy with it.” Fujimori’s decree making parts of the jungle protected reserve areas affects three Amazon regions. Two are located in the central jungle, covering a combined area of 13.6 million acres. The other is a 2 million acre swath of jungle in the far northeastern corner of the country near the border with Colombia.