THE GUARDIAN: Peru stalling new national park for unique Amazon mountain range

THE GUARDIAN: The Sierra del Divisor region in the Peruvian Amazon was identified as a biodiversity conservation priority back in the early 1990s. More than 20 years later and Peruvians are still waiting - some more desperately than others given all the narco-traffickers, illegal loggers and gold-miners in or near the region.

What’s so special about the Sierra del Divisor? It’s the “only mountainous region” anywhere in the lowland rainforest, according to Peruvian NGO Instituto del Bien Comun (IBC), while The Field Museum, in the US, describes it as “a mountain range” rising up “dramatically from the lowlands of central Amazonian Peru” and boasting “rare and diverse geological formations that occur nowhere else in Amazonia.” Its most iconic topographical feature is “El Cono”, an extraordinary peak visible from the Andes on a clear day.

Sierra del Divisor is home to numerous river headwaters feeding into key Amazon tributaries, eco-systems, and a tremendous range of flora and fauna, some of which are endemic, some endangered or threatened - and some with the most wonderful names. Giant armadillos, jaguars, cougars, Acre antshrikes, curl-crested aracaris, blue-throated piping guans and various kinds of monkeys, including the bald - but very red-faced - uakari, all populate the region. Effectively, it forms part of a vast “ecological corridor” running all the way from the Madidi National Park in Bolivia in a north-westerly direction along much of the Peru-Brazil border.

21 indigenous communities and 42 other settlements would benefit from the Sierra del Divisor being properly protected, states the Environment Ministry, while ultimately over 230,000 people in Peru depend on the region for food and water, according to the IBC. In addition, in the absolute remotest parts, it is home to various groups of indigenous peoples living in what Peruvian law calls “isolation.”

In 2006 Peru’s government established a 1.4 million hectare temporary “protected natural area” in this region called the Sierra del Divisor Reserved Zone. Six years later a government commission agreed it would be converted into a national park, and, all that remains now, after a painful administrative process, several key advances made this year and indigenous leaders lobbying various ministries, is for Peru’s Cabinet to approve it and the president, Ollanta Humala, to sign off on it. That is how it has stood since early May - and still nothing.

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“Nine years have passed while Sierra del Divisor has waited to officially become a national park,” indigenous organisation AIDESEP stated in June. “Once again the government shows signs of having its own particular interests that could cost a lot more than it would otherwise gain, and generate more social conflict.”

“It was indicated on 7 May to the indigenous leaders involved that the issue should be discussed by the Cabinet in the next few weeks, but it still hasn’t been put on the agenda,” Lelis Rivera, from Peruvian NGO CEDIA, told the Guardian. “It was hoped it would be discussed in detail on 22 July, given that in the previous session a photo was taken of Minister [of Environment Manuel] Pulgar-Vidal showing a map featuring the Sierra del Divisor. Unofficially, it transpires that the issue was discussed at the close of the meeting, but we don’t know the details. We’ve written to Vice-Minister [of the Environment Gabriel] Quijandria but we still don’t have a reply.”