Only from the air is it possible to make out the scale of three illegal logging roads which have been carved into Peru’s eastern Amazon, while local authorities in the jungle Ucayali region seemingly turn a blind eye.



Huddled in a twin-engine Cessna 402, the Guardian saw as many as 20 lorries carrying tree trunks plying their way up and down three dirt roads, each estimated to measure up to 32 miles. Dotted by stockpiles of logs and workers’ camps, the roads led to barges on a dock on the Ucayali river, a major tributary of the Amazon, a few dozen miles from the regional capital Pucallpa.

Up to 75m board feet of tropical hardwood may have been illegally harvested and transported in this illegal operation during the past two months, according to a source at Peru’s forestry inspection service Osinfor. The local value of the wood exceeds $30m (£20m), the source added, and much of it could have been laundered and sold onto international markets.

The three illegal logging roads as seen from the air in Peru’s eastern Amazon forest. Photograph: Ronald Reategui

“These images show us what we knew was happening, but could not see. This is the real illegal logging that feeds the laundered timber that Peru is still exporting,” Julia Urrunaga, Peru director for the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) told the Guardian.

“What we need now is for the relevant authorities to take action: to stop the trucks, to seize the illegal timber, to identify the network of organised crime behind it, and to effectively and publicly prosecute all of the actors involved, private and public,” she added.

Customs officials have seized 1.5m board feet of wood from the illegal operation which was bound for the riverside sawmills of Manantay, outside Pucallpa. But the seized wood remains in a legal limbo as authorities in Ucayali’s regional government may be able to produce the fake paperwork to rubber-stamp its origin, say sources.

Seven months into his new posting in Pucallpa, Jose Guzman, an environmental prosecutor, who took part in the fly-over, says he is swimming against the tide. He and an official from Peru’s recently formed High Commission Against Illegal Logging signed an affidavit attesting to what he saw from the air.

Trucks, seen here in the bottom right of the image, ply illegally logged wood out of Peru’s eastern Amazon forest. Photograph: Ronald Reategui

“Here, the economic activity is wood and of course it’s unregulated: they don’t pay taxes, they’re using false information to launder the wood. This is what we’re up against,” he said.

“This isn’t a road which was made in a month or two, these roads which are more than a hundred of kilometres long have been constructed over years and the authorities must have known about them. But we haven’t seen any action to punish or restrict this activity, or even to report it.”

The EIA detailed the laundering of timber in Peru in a 2012 report. In the same year, the World Bank estimated that illegal logging accounts for approximately 80% of all logging carried out in Peru.

A convoy of trucks ply illegally logged wood from the forest. Photograph: Ronald Reategui

This estimate was corroborated by a three-month operation called Amazonas last year in which Osinfor and Peru’s tax office (Sunat) found 78% of the wood inspected had been transported and exported with documents, but came from an illegal source. Losses estimated at $250m are 1.5 times in excess of the value of Peru’s legitimate timber industry.

Beyond the economic losses and environmental destruction, the illegal trade has led to murder and fosters impunity. Prominent anti-logging campaigner and indigenous leader Edwin Chota and three companions were murdered last year by illegal loggers. Last month, his village was finally granted the land title which could have protected their ancestral land.

Osinfor says the road network points to three powerful men who are known in the local timber business in Pucallpa. The forestry inspector involved in the inspection has left the city for his own protection, it adds.