Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE THREAT TO THE FOREST
Although the
forests
of the Beni can appear endless when you fly over them by plane or
pass through by boat, in fact, they're disappearing at an alarming rate. In such a vast area
no one can tell exactly how fast the forests are disappearing, even with satellite monitoring,
but latest estimates suggest that Bolivia is losing about three thousand square kilometres of
forest a year, one of the highest rates worldwide; much of it is in the Beni, with catastroph-
ic consequences for the region's unique ecosystems.
The causes of this deforestation are various. The most obvious culprits are
timber com-
panies
, ranging from small gangs with chainsaws to major commercial operations. Rather
than clear-cutting the forest, they concentrate on valuable hardwood species such as ma-
hogany and Spanish cedar. But for every tree they extract several others are damaged, and
the trails they cut into even the most remote areas open the way for
colonists
who are re-
sponsible for even greater destruction.
Successive Bolivian governments have seen the comparatively empty lands of the
Amazon as a solution to poverty and land shortage in the highlands, encouraging the mi-
gration of poor farmers from the Andes, who have moved down into the lowlands, clearing
the forest to plant food and cash crops. Every year towards the end of the dry season the
skies above Bolivia are obscured by thick smoke from thousands of fires set to clear the
forest for
agriculture
and
cattle pasture
, a process known as
chaqueo
. Yet when the forest
cover is slashed and burned on a wide scale, nutrients are quickly leached away by rain,
and within a few years soil fertility declines so much that the land becomes useless for ag-
riculture.
Having finally recognized the potential biological value of the country's rainforests, the
government has now established extensive
national parks
and other protected areas in the
Amazon, as well as recognizing large areas as indigenous territory (arguably the most ef-
fective way of protecting the rainforest) and introducing new laws to limit logging and
forest clearance. Bolivia, moreover, is now the unlikely world leader in
forest certifica-
tion
, with more than two million hectares of forest certified. Yet the immense scale and
remoteness of the region makes enforcing legislation almost impossible, and many of the
protected areas exist only on paper.
ARRIVAL AND GETTING AROUND: RURRENABAQUE AND
AROUND
By plane
Of all Bolivia's flight paths, the busy route between La Paz and Rurrenabaque is
by far the most spectacular, and if you're going to splash out on any internal flights, this is
the one to go for. The majority are operated by Amaszonas (Comercio and Santa Cruz; 03
8922472,
amaszonas.com
)
, whose nineteen-seat, twin-prop planes ensure a condor's-eye