Shamans, lumberjacks, and hunters: who will save the amazon?

THE AMAZON BASIN remains relatively intact, having lost only 20 percent of its original forests. That fact may sound reassuring; after all, many critical ecosystems around the globe already have lost more than 70 percent of their native environment. The Amazon's apparent stability can be misleading due to its vast size; it loses more than 17,000 square kilometers to deforestation each year.

Last summer I made a trip up the Amazon basin in Peru. My traveling companions: four students from the University of San Francisco. Our mission: Find out how to save the Amazon from destruction.

Three Peruvians, who rely on the natural wealth of the rain forest for their livelihood, became our teachers. A local shaman introduced us to its biological treasure. The Amazon is home to more than 40,000 plant species, with nearly three-fourths Of those species found nowhere else on the globe. With machete in hand, the shaman carved a virgin path through the rain forest, stopping periodically to hold up a plant and explain its medicinal properties. When a nasty wasp stung two of us, the shaman congratulated us, saying it Would help mitigate the future contraction of arthritis.

While corporate logging interests represent a large threat to the rain forest, the massive influx of small farmers who stake their claim in the rain forest is even more problematic. Most farmers harvest timber as part of their income; the cumulative effect is significant. We cringed as one "lumberjack" showed us the environmental impact of logging on his parcel of rain forest. He explained that the timber sales enable him to buy clothes and send his children to school. Any environmental movement seeking to conserve the rain forest has to come up with an alternative for this lumberjack, along with the hundreds of thousands like him.

For most of our stay, we camped on the property of a man who hunts to provide meat a couple of times a week for his family. Along with other hunters in the region, he participates in an animal conservation program. The community monitors how many tapir, for example, have been killed in a month, and they voluntarily stop hunting tapir once a cap is reached. These hunters show the capacity to connect their survival to the vibrancy of the rain forest. Such wisdom and courage will be demanded of all of us--north and south of the equator--to save the Amazon.

--David Batstone

David Batstone, a founding editor of Business 2.0 magazine, is executive editor of Sojourners.