Conservation
Panguana Conservation Area ACP
After years of efforts and many preparations the territory of the Panguana Biological Research Station was finally declared an official Privately Owned Conservation Area (ACP = Área de Conservación Privada) by the Peruvian Ministry of the Environment at the end of 2011. This important administrative act places the pristine primary forest around the station under official protection from external human interference and, thus, safeguards its future.
The Hofpfisterei company in Munich, Panguana’s main sponsor, had special notice posters produced to mark the Panguana territory along its boundary paths and corners
Panguana signs like this one are posted along all boundaries of the area Moro, Panguana's caretaker, fastening a sign to a tree
To draw up protection concepts, we first have to survey and understand the structure of the Amazonian rainforest ecosystem. We are in the process of communicating this in our public outreach work and joint projects with the local communities and their schools, as:
We can protect only what we have come to know and cherish.
Talks, guided tours through the rainforest, and a brochure on Panguana by Juliane Diller published by the Hofpfisterei company in Munich, help raise people’s interest and sense of responsibility for the Amazonian rainforest as a living environment, especially among the young generations that hold the future in their hands.
The principal of the “Augusto Durand” school in Yuyapichis and Asháninka children in Pampas Verde with copies of the Panguana brochure Photograph at right by Konrad Wothe
In 2014, the current state and conditions in the Panguana Conservation Area were inspected, including on-site reconnaissance, by Peru’s National Service for State-protected Natural Areas (SERNANP). The result was a very positive and satisfactory report.
Mr. Martínez, the inspecting SERNANP engineer, taking photographs to document important elements of the Panguana Conservation Area: at left stilt roots of a giant fig tree, at right a palm swamp.
The most important risk factors in Peru’s Amazonian rainforest are illegal gold extraction using mercury and large power pumps (dragas), slashing and burning, road construction without environmental impact studies or permits, the rapid spreading of oil palm plantations, illegal logging with selective removal of fine wood or timber, oil and gas exploration in a number of areas, and also some reforestation projects that destroy the primary forest and replace it with monocultures of fast-growing trees.
In Panguana’s more distant surroundings too, the growth of the human population (due to immigrant settlers, gold prospectors, merchants from the Andes, etc.) as well as careless use of the natural resources result in increasing pressure on the rainforest. Under these circumstances it is all the more important to extend the area under protection and create stable buffering zones against human impact from the outside.