C O N S E R V I N G A M A Z O N T R E A S U R E S
Young male jaguar: his mother was shot, her skin sold for $50.
Clearcut area. The only surviving tree is a Brazil nut tree, which one is not allowed to cut down: setting seeds, however, only happens with the right insects around, so inside a pristine forest.
On a balsa raft on his way to a local market.
Illegal gold mining inside the forest.
Illegal slash and burn: oil roads, if organized without good care, open the forest to this sort of activities.
The impact of the western world on young children.
Our Rio Azul expedition 1995.
Caterpillar, carefully hiding during the day in the opening he ate himself during the night.
Rio Azul 2011: investment in clean oil

A beautiful rainforest region in Peru has caught the attention of the western oil industry. Not so long ago this would have meant environmental destruction & the end of the culture of the indigenous people of the area. Nowadays such a disastrous outcome can be prevented legally. Oil extraction can be combined with respect for nature and people. It takes your financial support to ensure that if oil extraction is done, it is done according to the wishes of the indigenous people & that all legal procedures are followed.

Three times we walked down the Rio Azul in southeastern Peru. To get to that river one has to leave the Shintuya road, which parallels the Rio Madre de Dios, with the well known Manu National Park on the opposite bank. Pristine tropical rainforest awaits once you are a ridge away from civilization. The area is set aside for its indigenous tribes: the Harakmbut, Yine & Machiguenga & is known as the Amarakeiri Communal Reserve. It obviously functioned like that when we met a group of three generations. The boys had some weeks off from the local Shintuya school, where they are taught how to read and write; now their fathers and grandfathers were teaching them about the forest. A big turtle was simmering over a fire in its own shell. A day earlier  a small sidestream had been blocked with reeds. This was evidence of fishing with barbasco, a traditional method used by the local people. Barbasco is a plant-derived toxin that stuns or kills fish, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DW40ygGwVQ. Although officially forbidden, we didn’t have the impression that this traditional barbasco fishing was harming the ecosystem. A jaguar agreed with us: his footprints were all over the place. A bit farther downriver we surprised him during his afternoon nap on the beach. Our week in the forest ends where the Rio Azul joins the Rio Madre de Dios. With local river transport we reach Colorado, the absolute opposite of beautiful forest. The Rio Colorado area is a moonscape: total destruction caused by mostly illegal gold mining. No jaguars, macaws, monkeys or tapirs in this area. Gold is found in the rivers & in the banks, washed down from the mountains. First, the forest is cut down & then it takes hard work and mercury, a potent toxin, to liberate the gold from the river sand. Our Peruvian soles are accepted in the shops. But we see other men using pure gold to settle their bills.

This is Peru, the most beautiful country on earth. We wanted to keep this secret to ourselves. No reason to introduce anybody else to our private wilderness experience. But things have changed. Our Rio Azul region is no longer in a fragile balance between natural resilience and threats like illegal hunting, illegal slash and burn agriculture, illegal logging, and the still mostly river-bound illegal gold mining. Oil exploration has entered the picture. The protected status granted by law proves less than fragile. Extractive industries (logging, mining, fossil fuels) are permitted under Peruvian law in lands set aside for the indigenous people. This is only if the people want it & if proper legal procedures are followed. The challenge is to make sure that these conditions are met. It is believed by many that money & alcohol have been offered to tribal elders by the oil companies in an effort to circumvent these conditions.

Now, this could easily be another sad story about how beautiful the planet used to be, wasted by our greed. But we hope to be part of a more positive end to all this. The world is changing. Nowadays Peru’ has good environmental laws and, moreover, they also have the awareness, the lawyers and the magistrates to enforce them. If oil will be taken out (the issue is unresolved at this point), it should be done in a proper way, respecting nature, local people and their culture. This is possible. Court cases like these have had positive results in Peru’ over the last few years! The problem is that a legal struggle takes money. We aim to assist the local native federation FENAMAD (www.fenamad.org.pe/home.htm) by raising money for this purpose: not to fight the laws, but to get the laws implemented. Donations will be used to cover the costs of the legal procedures and also to enable the FENAMAD elders to regularly visit the eight communities involved, to inform their people and to let them know they have outside support.
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Bob Helmer,
a pharmacist  from the United States. He is an enthusiastic outdoorsman, with a deep love for nature and a keen interest in traditional medicines.

Piet van Ipenburg,
a Dutch biology teacher. He started out as a rainforest guide in 1987 at Explorer’s Inn in southeastern  Peru’, a biodiversity hotspot. Since then he has guided many visitors to rainforests all over the world, both from lodges and during expeditions in remote areas. He keeps returning to Peru’: “For nature lovers the most beautiful country on earth.”

"Bob and Piet ran into each other in Amazonian Ecuador, 1990. Ever since then they regularly meet somewhere in the world for another rainforest  expedition. They have made their expeditions either together or with a small party of friends for an ultimate wilderness experience, anywhere from Peru’ to New Guinea."


Harpy eagle: the chain at his leg guarantees the hotel owner that this bird does not take off.