Loggers in Peru jungle town protest new law
Date: 28-Jun-02
Country: PERU
"We're trying to keep the violence under control," a police official in the jungle town of Puerto Maldonado, some 500 miles (850 km) east of Lima, told Reuters, requesting anonymity.
He said one man died, but it was not immediately clear when he died or under what circumstances.
Loggers this week burned the agriculture ministry's office and other government buildings in the humble jungle outpost of 40,000 people, near the Bolivian and Brazilian borders.
At the heart of the conflict is a new system for dealing out state forestry concessions that prioritizes groups of loggers rather than individuals, whom government officials say can be exploited by big companies.
Officials promise the new law will protect the environment and help boost a nascent forestry industry.
"The new system helps conserve forests and increase productivity," Matias Prieto, head of Peru's natural resources institute INRENA, told Canal N cable television.
Prieto said that while most loggers supported the new regime, some had begun a strike last Tuesday in Puerto Maldonado demanding access to rich ecological reserves. The loggers oppose conservationists, who say the areas are home to native groups with little or no contact with the outside world.
"We are not trying to get into protected areas. We just want areas where we can ... earn a living. The town could rise up and blood could flow," Rafael Rios, president of a regional loggers association, told CPN radio.
He also denied that isolated indigenous tribes existed.
Peru's largest conservation group, Pro Naturaleza, whose offices in Puerto Maldonado were burned in the disturbances, said protesters were angry because years of a shady forestry racket had come to a crashing halt with the new system.
The new forestry system included management plans to halt over-exploitation, said Pro Naturaleza's director of conservation policy and institutional relations, Micha Torres.
"It's more modern and low-impact," she said.
Prieto said the new plan would help Peru exploit its vast forestry potential - nearly two-thirds of this 496,222 square-mile (1.28 million sq km) country is forested.
Under the plan Peru could boost annual forestry exports in the near future to $2.5 billion from $110 million now, he said.