- The new park spans 1.3 million hectares of largely primary forest, and contains unique wildlife habitat and uncontacted indigenous communities.
- The declaration comes after nearly 10 years of struggle by conservation groups, scientists, and local communities for national park status for the region.
- National park status will confer more protection to Sierra del Divisor, stymieing the illegal logging, coca cultivation, and gold mining that has been growing stronger in recent years.
For nearly a decade, conservationists have pushed for increased protection of Peru’s Sierra del Divisor Reserved Zone. This weekend, their dream became a reality, with official declaration from the Peruvian government making Sierra del Divisor the world’s newest national park.
In true modern fashion, the news came in a tweet.
“The creation of the Sierra del Divisor National Park is a historic event,” wrote Peru’s Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal on Friday. “It is a confirmation of the Peruvian government’s commitment to conservation, sustainable development and the fight against climate change.
On Sunday President Ollanta Humala officially designated the national park to much fanfare in the Nuevo Saposoa indigenous community, which is near Sierra del Divisor.
The new park spans 1.3 million hectares (5,470 square miles), making it significantly bigger than Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. and four times the size of California’s Yosemite National Park. It is located in eastern Peru along the country’s border with Brazil and contains vast tracts of undisturbed rainforest.
Conservationists are lauding the transformation of Sierra del Divisor from Reserved Zone to National Park as one of the biggest achievements in rainforest conservation in recent times. They say the additional protections conferred by national park status will help safeguard the region’s plants and animals, as well its indigenous communities – several of which are not in contact with the outside world. Sierra del Divisor’s forests contain one of Peru’s largest carbon storehouses, so proponents say their protection will also help hedge against climate change.
“We want to preserve this geographic area as an important part of the lungs that allow us to purify the air of the world and, moreover, to save it from illegal activities such as illegal logging, drug trafficking and other activities that deforest our jungles,” said President Humala as quoted by Peru Reports.
The importance of Sierra del Divisor
Sierra del Divisor is characterized by rugged geography and lowland volcanic mountains found nowhere else in the Amazon, which is generally very flat. The range’s striking “cone peaks” and arcing sandstone ridges and plateaus protrude from the relatively uniform surrounding forest. The ranges twist and block the effects of storms in this part of the Amazon, leading to stretches of damp forest alongside dry scrubland. In addition to its unique geological formations, its intact forests give rise to major rivers that feed one of the Amazon’s primary tributaries, the Ucayali River.
“Sierra del Divisor protects the only mountain chain in the lowlands of the Amazon rainforest. This mountain chain goes from Peru to Brazil, and the Brazilian part has already been properly protected by a national park since the early 1990s,” said Lelis Rivera of CEDIA – the Centre for Amazonian Indigenous Development.
This unique landscape creates an assortment of distinctive microclimates and habitats, according to Paul Salaman, CEO of the Rainforest Trust.
“The region is home to an impressive collection of large neo-tropical mammals that are still found in healthy numbers,” Salaman said in an interview with Mongabay. Of the 38 medium and large mammals species confirmed to live in Sierra del Divisor, 20 are listed as Threatened by the IUCN.
Surveys into the then-reserve indicated that Sierra del Divisor harbors very high levels of biodiversity. One such survey, called a Rapid Biological Inventory (RBI) and led by the Field Museum of Chicago, was conducted in 2005 to take stock of the life the forest supports.
The RBI uncovered many plants and animals – some possibly unknown to the outside world.
“One of the most remarkable features of [Sierra del Divisor] is the high concentration of rare and range-restricted species,” the researchers wrote in their report. In less than three weeks, a study of key parts of the Sierra del Divisor unveiled “several dozen species of plants, fishes and amphibians potentially new to science.”
The researchers said the area exhibited “remarkable species richness” even for the Amazon. In what they call their “most outstanding record,” they found an endemic bird called the Acre antshrike (Thamnophilus divisorius), which was previously thought to live only on a lone ridge in neighboring Brazil. The RBI revealed that the bulk of this species’ population actually lives in Peru.
Apart from mammals like jaguars (Panthera onca), giant armadillos (Priodontes maximus), and South American tapirs (Tapirus terrestris), scientists say creation of the park will also protect – for the first time – the habitat of two threatened primates: the red Uakari monkey (Cacajao calvus) and Goeldi’s monkey (Callimico goeldii). According to Salaman, it is also home to 365 bird species and as many as 300 fish species.
“Although the area has yet to be thoroughly studied by scientists, we already know that it is home to some of the highest levels of primate biodiversity in the western Amazon,” Salaman said. “Much more plant and animal life remains to be discovered.”
The region comprising Sierra del Divisor is also home to around 20 indigenous communities and provides food and water for more than 230,000 people, according to the Peruvian NGO Instituto del Bien Comun (IBC). In Sierra del Divisor’s deepest reaches live several “uncontacted” indigenous groups totaling 300 to 400 people living in isolation from the outside world.
Moreover, Sierra del Divisor National Park is an important carbon sink, holding the second-highest storehouse of above-ground carbon in Peru. Research from the Carnegie Institute for Science indicates the region’s forests contain 165 million metric tons of carbon — which is roughly equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide emissions released every year by more than 127 million cars, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Sierra del Divisor at risk
Although Sierra del Divisor is located in an isolated region of Peru, human activity is still taking a toll, with surveys showing incursions into the protected area. According to satellite imagery from the organization Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), an unauthorized logging road encroached to the edge of the 1.47-million-hectare Reserved Zone earlier this summer. Data from Global Forest Watch, an online forest monitoring platform, show Sierra del Divisor lost more than 2,500 hectares of tree cover from 2001 through 2014.
“It is terrible to see how what was once a forest has become a very wide road” of 20 to 40 meters in places, said the Chief of Sierra del Divisor, Maria Elena Diaz. She added this most recent discovery of the road’s incursion on the then-reserved zone made the designation of Sierra del Divisor as a national park “extremely urgent.”
“The threats of illegal logging have increased with the construction of the road,” she said. Diaz is also concerned that logging may lead to illegal coca cultivation and the invasion of indigenous community lands.
Candy Vilela, spokesperson for CEDIA, said members of a coalition that includes representatives from native communities had been imploring Peru’s government to use the recent United Nations Sustainable Development Summit as a platform to announce the new national park to the world. “They’ve been waiting for nine years, and they think that’s too long,” she told Mongabay in October.
In June of this year, MAAP scientists analyzed high-resolution satellite images of Sierra del Divisor and found evidence of human activity inside the park, which CEDIA representatives said was likely coca farming. Ecologists Matt Finer with the Amazon Conservation Association and Sidney Novoa from the Association for the Conservation of the Amazon Basin, examined, as part of the MAAP analysis, satellite images dating back to 2013. They found new instances of deforestation and roads that have appeared since then – likely the result of coca farming, illegal logging and gold mining.
Through their images and fly-overs, the MAAP team found obvious signs of deforestation, including a huge, 13-hectare clearing in the southeast area of the now-national park. “I saw it with my eyes,” Finer said in a previous interview with Mongabay. “We didn’t even need any high-tech software.”
Finer sought expert advice on what was responsible for the clearing of the dense forest, consulting Rivera, who has studied land tenure, property rights and resource use in Sierra del Divisor.
“This diagnosis showed that the main illegal activity in the area is deforestation for growing coca,” Rivera said. “Coca is normally produced far from the rivers, and there are no settlements in that area [observed on the images] to justify that deforestation [was] for growing products for feeding a family or community.”
Coca has been widely used as a stimulant in South America for millennia, and more recent techniques transform it into cocaine. Research has shown that coca cultivation drives deforestation in these remote areas, threatening rare plants and animals and the indigenous communities that live nearby.
“There is no question that coca cultivation has a severe negative impact on the primary forests of remote areas such as the borderlands,” said David Salisbury, a geographer with the University of Richmond in Virginia and an expert in Amazon borderlands. “These areas would likely still be forested if not for the world’s demand for coca derivatives.” Logging, drug trafficking, mining, petroleum extraction and the illegal construction of roads are some of the most imminent threats to this habitat, Salisbury told Mongabay. “The area is mainly under threat by selective logging and removal of high-value timber. This degrades rather than wipes out the forest and thus, the area can still recover if declared a National Park and given the necessary conservation support,” he said.
Subsequent analyses by MAAP found deforestation in the Isconahua Territorial Reserve, an indigenous protected area within Sierra del Divisor. In September, the MAAP team revealed a logging road encroaching on Sierra del Divisor’s northwest boundary, spindles of deforestation radiating outward from it.
In response to MAAP’s findings, the Peruvian National Service of Natural Protected Areas (SERNANP) issued a statement this summer saying they were planning increased monitoring and patrolling of the affected areas in what was then Sierra del Divisor Reserved Zone.
But conservationists and scientists worried that management of the area as a Reserve Zone was not enough, and that the threats to its forests and inhabitants could not effectively be stymied unless the government officially increased its protection status to that of a national park.
The long journey to national park status
The government’s declaration of Sierra del Divisor as a national park this weekend is the long-awaited fruition of a nearly decade-long struggle by conservationists to gain the highest level of protection and recognition for the region.
In 1995, the Data Center for Conservation of the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina (CDC-UNALM) and the Peruvian Foundation for the Conservation of Nature (ProNaturaleza) included Sierra del Divisor as one of 28 Priority Conservation Areas in Peru. In 1999, that inclusion was officially recognized, with the region formally identified as a Priority Conservation Area by the agency that is now SERNANP.
From 2000 through 2005, biological assessments were conducted through The Nature Conservancy (TNC), ProNaturaleza, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Field Museum. Based on their results, these and other organizations involved in the region formally petitioned for protection of the area as a Reserved Zone in 2005.
On April 11, 2006, Sierra del Divisor Reserved Zone was officially declared by decree of the Ministry of Agriculture – with a temporary designation status. An advisory committee comprised of representatives from the government and the private sector was assembled to determine its ultimate status. This committee determined that the region deserved national park status, and in 2012 a campaign ensued to make it so. ProNaturaleza and the Moore Foundation, along with SERNANP, started crafting the way towards this goal. In 2014 and 2015, the campaigned gained strength with the help of CEDIA, the Rainforest Trust Fund, Andes Amazon Fund (AAF), and other organizations.
Sierra del Divisor’s status as a reserved zone was a temporary designation for possible protection that could be altered, degraded or removed, according to Salaman.
Local indigenous communities have been legally consulted and have given their consent to the creation of the park, Salaman said. These communities are thoroughly engaged and will help develop and maintain management plans for the new park. Individuals from these communities will also support protection efforts and serve as park guards whenever possible.
“They will be given legal rights to territorial lands and a ring of indigenous reserves will border the reserve on its western border,” he said. “This means that loggers and other intruders will be forced to trespass through indigenous lands before entering the park. This will set up a very considerable hurdle to development that is not present now.”
Local communities had a direct role in the campaign for national park status. The Huambisa, Shipibo, Conibo, Matsés, Ashéninka, and Isconahua communities worked with non-profit groups to promote the transition, according to representatives from the Moore Foundation, which has been supporting conservation efforts in the region. A local delegation even visited Lima to push for the park.
“What has impressed us the most, is the tenacity demonstrated by the indigenous organizations in pressing the government to make a final decision,” said Avecita Chicchón from the Moore Foundation. “It is not common to see such social support for the creation of a national park.”
The campaign for Sierra del Divisor National Park has gone on for nearly a decade. Andes Amazon Fund biologist Enrique Ortiz says that the exhaustive process included consultation with local communities and land rights analysis, “but perhaps the most important factor was creating the confidence at different sectors, including the government – national and regional, indigenous peoples, and extractive industries” that protecting this area is good for the country.
“At some sectors of the government, there is the concern that the declaration will give wrong signal for foreign investments,” Ortiz said. “Some still have the idea that protected areas are not instruments or agents of development. There are some in the government that have not realized the contribution of protected areas to Peru’s present and future. That could not be more wrong.”
For the last three years, the approval of President Ollanta Humala and his Council of Ministers was all that remained for Sierra del Divisor to become Peru’s thirteenth national park. The administration in Lima had declined to complete the final step of putting the park on the agenda and signing the paperwork. Many involved thought the declaration was going to come after a Council of Ministers meeting in October — but once again, the announcement was not made.
Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior under U.S. President Bill Clinton and a member of the Amazon Conservation Association’s Board of Directors, issued a statement in October saying there is an abundance of scientific evidence that clearly and robustly supports the efficacy of Peru’s national parks.
“National Parks in Peru and elsewhere in the Amazon do an excellent job of preventing deforestation. Deforestation rates even in the most remote, difficult to staff frontier regions [are very low] compared to the areas outside these parks,” the statement reads. “Creation of Sierra del Divisor National Park will lead to excellent protections of a [vast] area of high biodiversity and carbon-rich forest vital for the flora and fauna, as well as the indigenous people of the area. The Sierra Divisor is a Peruvian Yellowstone… It urgently needs protection as a national park.”
And then, on Sunday November 8, President Humala travelled to the indigenous community of Nuevo Saposoa, where he signed the official decree – and Sierra del Divisor National Park was born.
The world’s newest national park
“This has been very emotive, we were crying… all the people that [were] involved in this, it’s been really a victory for us,” Vilela said as she described the reaction of CEDIA to the announcement. She travelled to Nuevo Saposoa near Sierra del Divisor over the weekend, where President Humala made the announcement to the community.
“I’ve witness[ed] the smiles of joy, the hugs of recognition and fellowship,” Vilela continued. “As soon as Humala arrived at Nuevo Saposoa, in the middle of the rain, the Shipibo people received him with traditional songs and in a very effusive way, they carried him! They were, extremely happy, the first time a [president] came to their place, and we believe it was the first time he visited a Shipibo-Conibo community.”
Vilela described how Humala was taken to a stage made out of desks from the local school, surrounded by community members and SERNANP officials clapping, jumping, and yelling in celebration.
“He signed the “Decreto Supremo” there in this stage in the middle of the jungle! They also had the opportunity to show the president their problems and claims.”
National park status will be accompanied by a slew of additional protections not given to Reserved Zones, according to Salaman.
“Protecting the Sierra del Divisor as a national park would provide the area with permanent protection,” he said in October, adding that “establishing a legal framework in which the Peruvian government, via its national park service, could begin to provide financial and technical assistance.”
By declaring Sierra del Divisor a national park, government presence will be increased. Additional guards will be brought into the area, as well as a formal management committee. This should, conservationists say, more effectively control illegal logging.
However, one area of Sierra del Divisor will not be included in the national park.
“Toward the Park’s northern border, there is an oil block, which is one of the reasons that the park took so long to declare,” said Paulina Arroyo of the Moore Foundation. “The oil block was removed from the park’s limits and any future oil extraction in the park’s buffer zone will have to adhere to higher socio-environmental standards.”
Proponents of the park also say this status change is an important step towards Peru’s fight against climate change.
“Numerous studies support that protected areas, as well as indigenous territories, are the most effective barriers to Amazon deforestation. So they are to stop the advance of mining and illegal logging and the expansion of coca for drug-trafficking,” Ortiz said in a statement. “But more importantly, and perhaps not so obvious, is the role of the Amazon forests and protected areas as climate regulators.” The arrival of El Nino will remind us that we must protect our forests, he said. “To do this, a pending step is the creation of the Sierra del Divisor National Park, [which was] inexplicably stuck in the Council of Ministers.”
The designation will improve Peru’s international reputation as a leader on climate change issues, Ortiz believes. CEDIA’s Vilela said that protecting such a resource also presents a good opportunity for Peru to show its commitment to the pact it made with Norway and Germany in 2014 to reduce deforestation in over 70 million hectares of its forest lands in return for $300 million through 2021.
“I think the declaration [of national park status] would be the most effective way to guarantee the participation of Peru in fighting climate change,” Vilela said. “This is the time to do it.”
With the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP21) coming up in less than a month, Rivera believes the move is timely.
“As a country, the commitment of this government with this declaration is a concrete strong sign that will position Peru in an important place for the COP21 in París,” he said in a statement.
The agreement also requires Peru to set aside millions of hectares for indigenous communities.
Sierra del Divisor is home to at least one uncontacted tribe – the Isconahua – who wish to remain isolated from the outside world. The region’s declaration as a national park and the implementation of a legal management plan, Ortiz believes, will assure the survival of indigenous communities. He said it will also “attract international attention and funds for developing a management plan and its implementation by SERNANP.”
Conservationists say the move to a national park will also help the Saweto, an indigenous community near Sierra del Divisor that has long struggled with illegal logging and consequential violence. In October, the Saweto finally received formal title to 80,000 hectares of their ancestral land after fighting for it for ten years. However, illegal activity still threatens the community and their forest.
“We strongly believe that with the national park’s presence, increased government presence will begin to dissipate illegal logging,” Chicchón told Mongabay. “We will continue to support other communities to secure land titles in the Park’s southern region. Securing land titles and creating parks are short-term strategies to regulate land use and detain illegal resource extraction. In the long term, communities need to have the capacity to manage their lands and protect them from illegal activities.”
Moreover, formalizing the region’s protection at a national park will also form a massive binational protected area, often called a “peace park,” contiguous with the similarly-named Serra do Divisor National Park in Brazil. Salisbury believes the peace park will help preserve the livelihoods and heritage of native communities. “We know very little about these people who still roam through these broken mountain ranges and across the border into Brazil,” he said.
However, while the declaration of Sierra del Divisor as a national park is a big step, it is not the last one. Management and the deterrence of threats related to illegal mining, coca cultivation, and logging are the next big challenges, according to AAF. And CEDIA’s Vilela says communities will need to secure their land rights with titles.
Conservation organizations are preparing to help the government with the process of changing the region from a Reserved Zone into a National Park. For instance, AAF says they have committed $1 million to support the park. CEDIA is also planning projects on the ground in the region.
“In the following months we will continue with the process of legalization of property in the surrounding area of Sierra del Divisor, supported by institutional agreements signed with the regional governments of Loreto an Ucayali,” Rivera told Mongabay. “We will also support the communities in the elaboration of Life Plans (document of the organization and planning of their communities in different issues of their life and interaction with other parties), the identification of natural resources with potential for management and the implementation of [these] management plans.”
CEDIA, in partnership with Rainforest Trust and AAF, is also working to establish White Sands National Reserve near Sierra del Divisor, as well as a buffer zone around the reserve and park.
“Hopefully [declaration of Sierra del Divisor National Park] leads to added resources to deal with the growing threats facing the new park,” said Matt Finer of the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), which documented several threats to the now-park from illegal logging and coca cultivation. “We now hope SERNANP is better able to protect its borders and even establish an effective buffer zone.”
The Moore Foundation is working with SERNANP to facilitate effective management for Peru’s entire park system and Sierra del Divisor is one of the top key areas for this project, Chicchón told Mongabay. In the short-term, their attention will be focused on getting the park up and running, and mitigating threats in the region until proper management is established.
But for now, those involved in the process seem content celebrating their victory. Along with Sierra do Divisor National Park next door in Brazil, and neighboring indigenous and natural reserves, Sierra del Divisor National Park will add a big boost in protection to a massive conservation corridor comprising more than 20 million hectares.
“Peru’s new Sierra del Divisor National Park forms a major stronghold of planetary importance for nature and indigenous people,” AAF Executive Director Adrian Forsyth said in a statement.
“Thank you to Peru’s President, Minister of the Environment, and SERNANP for such a critical gift to Peru and to the world.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that President Humala signed the decree in Pucallpa, when he actually signed it in the community of Nuevo Saposoa.
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