Here's a little bit about my first trip to Peru a few weeks back. All the photos were taken with my film Pentax K1000SE. Forgive the layout and writing style- this is roughly adapted from a trip report I wrote. This was my first trip to South America and it was great- beautiful, interesting, etc. I wish I had time to describe the general layout of the geography, economy, what we're working on doing conservation-wise, etc- but as you can see by the paucity of posts over the past year- I rarely get around to putting my thoughts down to the keypad. Hope this excerpt at least gives a bit of a feel for the place.
Travel route: flight from Lima to Cusco; drive from Cusco to Villa Carmen via Urubamba; day trip through Block 76 to NuevoEden. Manu NP marks the southern entrance to Manu National Park near Tres Cruces.
Lima was beautiful. Three days of meetings. No photos.
Scenes from Cusco: a native woman resting at the cathedral, terraced street, ruins of Sacsayhuamán
Cusco was beautiful. Two days of meetings, couple of photos. Hilly streets, cobblestones, Spanish colonial architecture built atop foundations of ancient Inca constructions. Guinea pig, llama, and trout were staple proteins on the local menus. Potatoes-rellenos, (a meat and cheese stuffed potato dish), were a lovely local favorite as well.
From Cusco we travelled to the Urubamba valley via Chinchero. The drive was exquisitely beautiful across highland pasture and agricultural areas, though this of course raised questions about how heavily grazed and cultivated these highlands should be if watershed health is to be maintained. In Urubamba we spent one day surveying the valley, local buildings, and building projects with an architect who is of interest to us in renovating and expanding a research station in the Amazon.
Elevation profile from Cusco to Urubamba via Chinchero
Upland pasture, wheat, and varied cultivation in the highlands between Cusco and Urubamba. Many slopes are cultivated or grazed all the way to the summit, regardless of steepness. This is part of the headwaters region of the Amazon basin, and land management practices here are important to ecosystem health downstream.
Moving on from Urubamba, we crossed the last expanse of high-elevation agriculture and pasturage before reaching the edge of the Andes. This was a dry and dusty trip with more reminders that these are working landscapes and not just the hallowed upper reaches of the Amazon watershed: cultivation on the steepest of slopes, grazing of any lands left uncultivated. Even in Manu National Park there were a number of cattle grazing illegally. Buses and vans full of tourists indicated the presence of an alternative economy here, but it is questionable how much of that revenue reaches the homes of the peasants tilling these lands by hand. With strategic management of tourism revenue, implementation of payments for ecosystem services, and use of hydro-carbon development offset funds- perhaps the parks could get the resources they need to effectivley protect and manage their lands, if not expand protection to some of the more critical slopes in the upper watershed.
Elevation profile from Urubamba to entrance of Manu National Park. This is high, arid country, but surprisingly heavily populated, grazed, and cultivated.
Highland economies and land management between Urubamba and Manu National Park: grazed upland meadow inside the park boundaries; cultivated plots near 4,000 meter pass; woman herding sheep at about 4,000 meters; woman preparing pork at a small town market
At the entrance to Manu National Park, questions of land management were temporarily eclipsed by the wonder of seeing a pie crust of cloud rolled up along the ridgeline from one end of the horizon to the other. Out of the dust-covered truck, we stepped into cool, moist breezes shooting up from the basin below. This was it- the drop off point on the critical grandient from Andes to Amazon that holds the promise of refuge for tremendous biodiversity in the face of climate change. The road ahead of us descends nearly 10,000 feet in only 50 miles, plunging from arid grassland through cloud forest to dripping jungle. Beyond that, the Amazon Basin stretches unwrinkled for almost 2,000 miles to the Atlantic Ocean. If this ribbon of land – only half a percent of the width of the basin- can be effectively protected, it holds one of the greatest potentials for conservation in the world.
View of cloud cover over the Amazon Basin from Tres Cruces, Manu National Park
A second view of the basin from Tres Cruces
Elevation profile from Manu National Park to Hacienda Villa Carmen. Steep gradients soaked with cloud cover and rainfall and packed with biodiversity- these are the climate change refugia that we are working to protect.
From Manu we made our way downward through everything that the previous landscapes were not: moist, well-watered, forested slopes cut through here and there by waterfalls. We stopped to walk trails and check conditions at a site just below the park entrance. Even here the effects of cattle grazing could be seen- cleared land on slopes opposite the park property, stray cattle rummaging through the forest of the private reserve. The patchwork quilt of protected areas is a great start, but will need firming up- through expansion, improved management, and strengthening the regulatory and enforcement powers of environmental agencies. A little further down we stopped at the Wayqechas research station for lunch. Here the wondrously dynamic nature of the cloud forest was on full display- during a half hour meal the vista went from clear and sunny to completely whited out in cloud. Dropping the last stretch from Wayqechas to Hacienda Villa Carmen, we could feel the temperature rise with every few minutes of travel- yet another palpable demonstration of the effects of topographic and moisture gradients.
Changes in landscape: lush vegetation, tropical birds, and waterfalls made the basin floor an entirely different world than the highlands only 50 miles away.
At Hacienda Villa Carmen, I worked with the site manager on plans for the research center, while Enrique worked with park managers, local officials, and ACCA staff on resolving illegal squatting at the property. Issues addressed with the site manager included building and renovation plans for dorms, labs, library, and service areas; development of ecotourism at the site; and arrangements for biochar and bamboo work.
Block 76, (outlined in green), and the area identified by Hunt Oil for seismic testing (in orange)
From Villa Carmen we travelled through Block 76, the Hunt Oil concession that could hold up to 11 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (compare to between 8.8 and 18 TCF at Camisea). This area is home to the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve (see next map), whose inhabitants have been reported as protesting against Hunt Oil’s exploration of the block. We were looking at the current state of forest degradation, population levels, as well as for the protesting Amarakaeri and signs of the oil company, who has recently advertised with Repsol for partners to develop the fields. If the fields really do produce the kind of natural gas that they are expected to, this could mean big changes for the region, and our interest is to steer development in a low-impact, high conservation yield direction.
Block 76 (maroon), seismic testing area (yellow with crosshatched exploration lines) and the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve (central, dark green area). Peach and Lavender blocks represent 14 other native communities wholly encompassed or partially intersected by the block.
Bouncing along the dirt road toward Nuevo Eden, there was clearly no sizeable squatter presence, nor major development of any kind. Many logging tracks spread from the main road and dozens of trucks loaded with timber plied the dusty carretera, but wood extraction seemed to go only a short distance into the forest. We did not see a Big Oil presence and observed only a small indigenous presence. The lack of visibility of the oil company was not entirely surprising as it is only seismic testing that has been carried out so far. More surprising was the lack of visible Amarakaeri presence in the communal reserve. Instead, we encountered villages and small clearings where settlers (many of them highlanders who have been in the area for some time) were scraping out a living through illegal logging and cultivation of bananas. We rolled onward to the very end of the carretera Manu to the small settlement of Nuevo Eden, from which travel only continues by boat down the Rio Alto Madre de Dios. Here trucks filled with rough cut boards and un-ripe bananas awaited small motorboats to carry their cargo downstream to Puerto Maldonado. No oilmen, few tribesmen. Only a meager living to be made.
Illegal lumber and bananas grown on cleared forestland await shipment downriver at Nuevo Eden, the settlement at the end of the road running from Hacienda Villa Carmen through the Amarakaeri Native Community and the Hunt Oil concession (block 76).
The opportunistic clearing and cultivating of land is not yet severe, but what will happen when large-scale gas exploitation begins? The only areas out of the question for hydrocarbon development are the national parks, two of which bound Block 76: Manu and Bahuaja-Sonene. The undeveloped expanse of the oil concession acts as a natural extension of the parks, what will be the impacts of a boom here? Perhaps the best bet for pressuring development in the block is through the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve that overlaps a majority of the exploration area.
Making the most of our time, we split up for the day-long trip back to Cusco. I headed out early with an entomologist from the University of Kansas and a couple of Wake Forest PhD students who were working on transect studies across the altitudinal gradient of cloud forest from Tres Cruces downwards. We spent the whole day talking about research, climate change, and the prospects for both human and natural systems to adapt.
Back in Cusco late Wednesday evening, we had one last meeting with a local anthropologist. After a quick farewell to the office staff in the morning, we flew back to Lima for a day and a half more work with grantees and potential partners. Highlights in Lima included working on organizational and strategic planning with an indigenous land titling organization, and meeting with a Brazilian construction firm to discuss a joint project to offset the impacts of infrastructure development.
All in all, it was a good trip- yet still only a survey of the issues and actors involved in the work. Future trips this year will serve to deepen the work started on this trip, as well as to introduce additional geographies where our company is working in Peru.
Assorted pics:
Meadow pasture above Cusco; Cave paintings; Native woman going to market at Paucartambo; a nice stone wall in the highlands.
