Peru’s Amazon Highway Puts Uncontacted Tribes At Risk
New Amazon Highway ‘Would Put Peru’s Last Lost Tribes At Risk‘
Eco-campaigners clash with developers over plan to build 125-mile road through rainforest
June 30, 2012
The Observer
Members of the uncontacted Mashco-Piro tribe photographed through a telescope late last year
A fierce row has broken out over a controversial plan to drive a road through pristine Amazon rainforest, imperilling the future of some of the world’s last uncontacted tribes.
The 125-mile (200km) road would pass through the Alto Purús national park in Peru, connecting a remote area to the outside world but opening up the most biologically and culturally important area of the upper Amazon to logging, mining and drug trafficking. Opponents of the plan fear it will threaten the existence of uncontacted tribes such as the Mashco-Piro. The first detailed photographs of members of the tribe made headlines around the world earlier this year after they were spotted on a riverbank.
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Leonardo di Caprio, Ed Norton and Al Gore Pay Ecuador Not to Extract Oil
Leonardo DiCaprio in a Bridgestone “Ecopia” Tire Ad, a tire that reduces your carbon footprint. He is also part of the Yasuni National Park “crowd-funding” initiative in Ecuador.
World pays Ecuador not to extract oil from rainforest
Governments and film stars join alliance that raises £75m to compensate Ecuador for lost revenue from 900m barrels
The Guardian
An alliance of European local authorities, national governments, US film stars, Japanese shops, soft drink companies and Russian foundations have stepped in to prevent oil companies exploiting 900m barrels of crude oil from one of the world’s most biologically rich tracts of land…
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Soybean Consumption in China Endangers Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest
Last year, Brazil registered a 27% increase in Amazon rainforest destruction from the previous year, much of that due to increased production of soy beans for China
China’s Interest in Farmland Makes Brazil Uneasy
May 26, 2011
NYT
URUAÇU, Brazil — When the Chinese came looking for more soybeans here last year, they inquired about buying land — lots of it.
Officials in this farming area would not sell the hundreds of thousands of acres needed. Undeterred, the Chinese pursued a different strategy: providing credit to farmers and potentially tripling the soybeans grown here to feed chickens and hogs back in China…
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Amazon Dam Sting, James Cameron Fought Against Gets Go-Ahead from Brazil Government
Chief Raoni, a Kayapo Indian, has been a central figure in fighting against the dam
Brazil court reverses Amazon Monte Belo dam suspension
March 3, 2011
BBC
A court in Brazil has approved a controversial hydro-electric project in the Amazon rainforest, overturning an earlier ruling.
Last week a judge blocked construction of the Belo Monte dam, saying it did not meet environmental standards.
But a higher court on Thursday said there was no need for all conditions to be met in order for work to begin.
Critics say the project threatens wildlife and will make thousands of people homeless…
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Trans-Amazon Highway Nears Completion in Peru
Peruvians brace as superhighway unfolds
The 3,400-mile Transoceanic Highway from Brazil to Peru has long been a pipe dream, but as it finally nears reality many along its long path worry that a way of life and livelihoods are in danger.
October 31, 2010
Los Angeles Times
Puerto Maldonado, Peru
The road crashes through the jungle like the fevered dream of the indomitable Fitzcarraldo, who schemes to transport a steamship overland through the Peruvian tropics in a cult film celebrating demented ambition…
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Discovery of Sacred Inca Stones Linking The Heavens With Earth
The Famous Intihuantana, or “Hitching Post of the Sun,” a sundial that also measured the equinoxes at Machu Picchu)
Peru: ‘Sensational’ Inca Find For British Team In Andes
Discovery of Sacred Ancestor Stones Has Archaeologists ‘Dancing a Jig’
Dec 5, 2010
The Guardian
A British team of archaeologists on expedition in the Peruvian Andes has hailed as “sensational” the discovery of some of the most sacred objects in the Inca civilisation – three “ancestor stones”, which were once believed to form a precious link between the heavens and the underworld.
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BP Oil Catastrophe Mirrors Texaco-Chevron Amazon Disaster
A pool of oil in Lago Agrio, an Ecuadorean town in the Amazon where Texaco is accused of having dumped millions of gallons of contamination in local rivers and lakes in order to save the company money. Chevron later purchased Texaco, and has inherited Texaco’s legal troubles
Disaster in the Amazon
By Bob Herbert
June 4, 2010
BP’s calamitous behavior in the Gulf of Mexico is the big oil story of the moment. But for many years, indigenous people from a formerly pristine region of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador have been trying to get relief from an American company, Texaco (which later merged with Chevron), for what has been described as the largest oil-related environmental catastrophe ever…
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Anglo-French Oil Company Perenco Plans Amazon Invasion
A group of Waorani Indians in Ecuador with blow pipes
( Note: At a time when oil is gushing unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico, despoiling one of the richest ecosystems in the Americas, another oil company, Perenco, moves closer to building an oil pipeline through one of the remotest areas of the Amazon, in northern Peru, with the risk of oil workers making a potentially deadly contact with one or more uncontacted Amazonian tribes. Oil workers and illegal loggers have been invading indigenous territories–with often deadly consequences for native peoples–for the last one hundred years–Kim MacQuarrie)
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Climate Change Affecting Andes Mountain Villages in Peru
The Bolivian ski resort of Chacaltaya, stranded like a beached whale once its 18,000-year-old glacier disappeared permanently in 2009
(Note: Since the early 20th century, glaciers around the world have been retreating, presumably as a result of humans burning greater and greater quantities of oil and coal, rampant deforestation, and the raising of livestock, which create greenhouse gases that absorb more sunlight and thus heat the atmosphere. Mt Kilamanjaro’s glacier in Tanzania, for example, which has been around for 12,000 years, is expected to completely disappear by 2020… (more…)
Brazil Creates 20,000 Square Miles of New Indigenous Reserves
December 23, 2009
On Monday, Brazil decreed nine new indigenous reserves covering 51,000 square kilometers (19,700 square miles) of the Amazon rainforest, an areas larger than Denmark or Switzerland, reports the AFP…
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