This April 18, 2015 aerial photo shows the Nanay River winding through Peru’s Amazon jungle near Iquitos. PHOTO BY RODRIGO ABD/AP PHOTO
Yaguas National Park’s designation contrasts with moves in the U.S., where Donald Trump has made a priority of scaling back national monuments
Joanna Klein, The New York Times — The rain forests in Peru’s remote northwest corner are vast — so vast that the clouds that form above them can influence rainfall in the western United States. The region contains species, especially unusual fish, that are unlike any found elsewhere on Earth. Scientists studying the area’s fauna and flora may gain insights into evolutionary processes and into the ecological health and geological history of the Amazon.
Now the region has become home to one of the Western Hemisphere’s newest national parks. Yaguas National Park will protect millions of acres of roadless wilderness — and the Indigenous people who rely on it — from development and deforestation.
“This is a place where the forest stretches to the horizon,” said Corine Vriesendorp, a conservation ecologist at The Field Museum in Chicago, one of many organizations that worked to win the national park designation, Peru’s highest level of protection. “This is one of the last great intact forests on the globe.”
The designation stands in contrast to moves in the United States that may weaken protections for wilderness. President Donald Trump has made a priority of scaling back national monuments like Bears Ears in Utah, and many advisers to the National Park System recently quit, citing concerns about the administration’s commitment to environmental protections.
Peru’s new park, on the other hand, joins a network of parks and reserves recently created to preserve territory in South American countries, including Ecuador, Chile and Colombia.
“Nowadays we’re trying to think big,” said Avecita Chicchón, who leads the Andes-Amazon Initiative, part of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. “You need these large areas to be connected.”
In Peru and elsewhere, political leaders, bolstered by strong civil society initiatives, are recognizing the effects of climate change and their role in mitigating it. They are setting aside large parcels of land in part to fulfill commitments made as part of the Paris climate agreement. And local and Indigenous groups, finally getting a legal say in the process, have also provided critical support.
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