Together to combat illegal timber trafficking in Ucayali: State and society join hands to modernize the forestry sector in the timber capital of Peru

Posted on 1 June 2023

The Ucayali Indigenous Forest Conservation project strengthens capacities for Community Forest Management (MFC) and ensures the legal origin of wood promoted by the National Forestry and Wildlife Service - SERFOR - as the governing body of the forestry and wildlife sector.

WWF Peru and other organizations supported the actions within the framework of the project to strengthen the control and surveillance systems through the control module. In addition, this has contributed to the implementation of the “Forest Operations Book” as part of the tools for timber traceability in Peru, in coordination with regional governments.

"They come to our communities with deceit, they take our wood and then the State penalizes us for not having managed our resources well." Hicler Rodríguez is the vice president of the Flor de Ucayali native community, in Callería, one of the most thriving districts of the Coronel Portillo province in the Ucayali region. His community is located seven hours by speedboat from Pucallpa, the regional capital, and is made up of seventy families belonging to the Shipibo-Konibo indigenous people.

Hicler was one of the participants in the Intercultural Program for the Training of Trainers in Community Forest Management (PIFFMFC by its Spanish initials), an initiative promoted by SERFOR with the aim of contributing to the development and strengthening of the technical capacities of indigenous communities regarding the administration and sustainable management of forest resources. The program has been supported by different public and private organizations such as WWF Peru, the Ucayali Wildlife Forest Management (GERFFS), the Aidesep Ucayali Regional Organization (ORAU), the Regional Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon (URPIA), among others.

On one of the edges of the Yarinacocha lagoon, the heart of tourist activity in the Ucayali region, we met with the indigenous leader to gather his insights into what he himself called the “Training of Trainers” school. His community owns 21,800 hectares of forests in a very good state of conservation. “We have enabling titles for our forests,” he says with the certainty of a student that has learned his lessons well, “this means that we can extract wood and commercialize it in the markets in a formal way. Unfortunately, the State was never interested in training us in everything that forest management means and so we were deceived by bad businessmen who take advantage of the lack of knowledge of indigenous peoples.”

Hicler refers to a reality that unfortunately is repeated in the forest regions of Peru. In both Loreto and Ucayali, the native communities that own forest resources are often deceived by unscrupulous loggers who, in exchange for paltry sums of money, offer to deal with wood extraction in their territories. The extractive processes are done for them ignoring the requirements of forestry regulations. This problem penalizes the offending communities with severe fines by OSINFOR, the Agency for the Supervision of Forest Resources and Wildlife.

"They will no longer fool us easily," added Rodríguez, "we have been trained to manage our own forest resources and we have returned to our communities to train our brothers in forest management." Officials of SERFOR, the feared OSINFOR and the Ucayali forestry management, the same institutions in charge of controlling and supervising forestry activity in the region became, by mutual agreement, facilitators of a learning process that tries to return them to their legitimate owners. control over their forests.

Battle Women

OSINFOR has calculated that between October 2017 and August 2018, illegal logging reached 274,000 cubic meters throughout Peru, a volume that is equivalent to that transported by 5,000 trucks. Illegal logging and trade in timber promote tax evasion, devaluation of natural forests, informality, labor exploitation, among other issues.

Tatiana Ruiz Vásquez, a young leader of the Shipibo-Conibo Curiaca del Caco community, was one of the nine women participating in the Training of Trainers program. "I was encouraged to apply for the course,” she told us in the city of Pucallpa, “because I am aware of the loss that the forests of our communities are suffering due to the mismanagement of some leaders in complicity with logging businessmen."

For Tatiana, the women of the Ucayali communities have begun to take an interest in managing and surveilling their forest resources, a matter that, until very recently, was of interest to men. “Times have changed,” she told us, “in the program in which I have participated, we have learned to measure the wood, to prepare forest censuses, to fill out the forms properly, to work orderly with "The Operation's books"; we now know how to act in case of fires, no one is going to deceive us anymore, we are going to stop depending on false consultants and people who feel no affection for our trees”.

The fact that the training has been provided to the officials who usually oversee their work and that these learning processes have taken place in the language they use every day, has been essential according to them. The development of activities that involve the sustainable use of forest and wildlife resources must take place within the current legal frameworks and with the participation of all stakeholders.

Rudder changes

In his modern premises, we met with Marcial Pezo, the head of the Ucayali Wildlife Forestry Management (GERFFS) to talk about the changes that are taking place in the sector he is managing. In 2020, the Regional Government of Ucayali declared as a priority the elaboration of the Competitiveness Plan for the Timber Value Chain in the Ucayali Region, a decision aimed at organizing an industry that concentrates its operations in the regions of Loreto, Ucayali and Madre de Dios in Peru.

"Forests occupy 80 percent of the territory of our Ucayali Region,” he told us while we were touring the Forestry Center for Productive Innovation and Productive Transfer (Forestry CITE) facilities, “hence the importance of the Regional Competitiveness Plan that we are promoting, a tool that seeks to improve legality rates in the use of timber resources in Ucayali and gain the trust of the private sector with a vision until 2030.”

For Engineer Pezo, the ordering of forestry activities was essential to stop the land-use change in the region and to integrate the indigenous communities into a business that, properly organized and under well-prepared management plans, has the necessary conditions to raise the living standard of Ucayali residents. At the CITE premises, two courses were given for forest regents and representatives of logging companies that operate mainly in indigenous communities. In addition, a virtual course was created to train on forest census and a campaign was launched to promote native forest species that are underused to reduce pressure on overexploited forest species.

The pace of work is frantic at the Forestry CITE Ucayali. The CITE that the State established in the city of Pucallpa aims to contribute to the productivity and competitiveness of the micro, small and medium entrepreneurs that make up the wood value chain, the most important economic activity in the region and perhaps in the Peruvian Amazon.

For the forestry authority, it is an effort by all the actors in the region's timber production process to improve and make sustainable an industry that should promote the development of Ucayali.

This is how things are in Ucayali, the forestry capital of Peru. On the one hand, indigenous communities and forestry entrepreneurs join hands to improve their operations; on the other, a public sector interested in defeating the scourge of illegal logging with the contribution and determined support of all the actors in the forest production chain.

Conservation of Indigenous Forests

This project seeks to conserve indigenous forests through the Forest Management Technical Units, and is financed by the IKI Project of the German Cooperation, managed by Law, Environment and Natural Resources (DAR by its Spanish initials) and implemented by SERFOR, the indigenous organization ORAU and the Regional Forestry and Wildlife Management of Ucayali.

As part of their action plans, there is the Intercultural Program for the Training of Trainers in Community Forest Management (PIFFMFC), also known as "Forest Guides".

Wildlife and Forests Alliance

The Alliance for Wildlife and Forests is a regional action promoted by the European Union and implemented by WCS and WWF that seeks to combat wildlife and timber trafficking, through the commitment of civil society to strengthen the application of the law and cooperation with and between the authorities of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and tri-border areas with Brazil.

Original version in Spanish