Peru’s land-use policies have helped to protect the country’s rainforests and slow the degradation and destruction of natural habitats, a new study has shown.
Researchers from the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology studied seven years of satellite data to track the changes that had occurred since the Peruvian government designated set areas for legal logging, while protecting other territories.
The research showed that up to 2005, rainforest damage was well managed, although disturbances close to designated logging roads have increased in recent years.
“We found that only 1-2% of this disturbance in Peru happened in natural protected areas,” said Paulo Oliveira, the lead author of the study.
“However, there was substantial forest disturbance adjacent to areas set aside for legal logging operations.”
More than 40,000 square miles of Peruvian rainforest has been put into long-term timber production, with the study also revealing that government backed forests were four times better protected than those not set aside for conservation.
