GC Mission to the Amazon to deploy Global Park Defense in Sierra del Divisor, Peru’s newest and largest national park

Global Conservation's February 2019 mission to Sierra del Divisor National Park in the Peruvian Amazon had a number of strong outcomes including delivery of a fully-working Satellite Communications Network for the park authority and ranger teams, meetings with key government officials to discuss tourism development, and formation of a workplan to deploy Global Park Defense for park and wildlife protection.

Hosted by Tom Bewick of Rainforest Foundation Peru, and Marie Elena Diaz, Director of Sierra del Divisor National Park SERNANP, Global Conservation had our first planning meetings and readiness assessment, and began to deploy new systems and technologies including the InReach satellite communications network, enabling park rangers and community leaders to communicate from anywhere within the 1.4 million hectares and beyond with park management, police and military.

Sierra del Divisor National Park is one of the greatest refuges for biodiversity on Earth, with thousands of species of wildlife and flora, storing more than 500 million tons of carbon dioxide. This is equivalent to over half the annual 1 Billion tons of CO2 emissions from cars in the USA.  The region comprising Sierra del Divisor is home to around 20 indigenous communities and provides food and water for more than 230,000 people.

Sierra del Divisor National Park is a great asset for Peruvian development and will be a major contributor towards's Peru's efforts to reduce carbon.

Protecting Sierra del Divisor is an important task given its vast territory of 1.3 million hectares — equivalent to 1.5 times the size of Yellowstone -  and it contains approximately 165 million metric tons of above-ground carbon, which contributes significantly to reducing greenhouse emissions.

Global Conservation supported community-based patrolling in 2017 to enable surrounding villages to protect their own lands and the park from illegal logging and land clearing by coca producers.

Global Conservation is planning to support Sierra del Divisor with a multi-year park and wildlife protection program – the Global Park Defense system and methodology - to assist under-resourced national park rangers and local communities to protect their endangered forests and wildlife.

The InReach Satellite Communications network uses smartphones to provide real-time communications deep within the forests to enable joint patrols and calls in time of urgency such as ambushes or medical emergencies.

Handoff of Inreach Satellite Communications equipment to Sierra del Divisor National Park.

Meetings with Governor and Director of Tourism.

See video here - Invasion of Coca in the Forests of Sierra del Divisor.

Peru faces massive deforestation due to land clearing for coca production and illegal logging even deep within the national park. While much progress has been made establishing the new national park in 2015 and involving the military in sweeps to eradicate large scale coca growing in the park, wildlife poaching and illegal logging continue to take their toll.

Global Conservation’s Global Park Defense program builds on the investment of the Ministry of Environment, and National Service of Natural Protected Areas (SERNANP), along with Amazon Andes Fund which donated $1 million over five years to setup park infrastructure according to the management plan.

Rainforest Foundation Peru worked with gateway local communities with funding from Global Conservation in 2017, and The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, to set up GPS-based patrolling and forest monitoring, as well as UAV Drone monitoring, resulting in large areas of native forests under coca cultivation to be reclaimed with the support of military and environmental police. See Video here. 

Proposed Global Park Defense Program

Global Conservation is working to deploy Global Park Defense  to protect Serra del Divisor National Park in Peru [“Watershed Mountains”), a newly-established 3.3 million-acre national park protecting an immense expanse of Amazon rainforest from illegal logging, coca plantations, mining and wildlife poaching.

The Global Park Defense program will be focused on the Northern Sector and Southern Gateways to the national park, including ranger training, surveillance cameras on rivers and trails in the park, SMART Ranger Patrols, aerial and UAV drone surveillance, and targeting patrols based on satellite and aerial monitoring to increase the effectiveness of forest and wildlife protection.

With our Partners in Conservation - Rainforest Foundation Peru and SERNANP National Parks Peru - Global Conservation will be focusing on 5 areas in deploying the Global Park Defense program to protect the forests and wildlife of Serra del Divisor National Park:

1.         Systems and Equipment

2.         Surveillance and Monitoring

3.         Training and Capacity Building

4.         Community Guardians

5.         Carbon for Forests – Sustainable Financing

The new national park is larger than Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks combined — and strategically secures the final link in a 67 million-acre Andes-Amazon Conservation Corridor, forming one of the largest contiguous blocks of protected areas in the Amazon. 

Serra del Divisor National Park is situated along the Peru-Brazil border in the heart of the Amazon Basin and is vital to protecting one of the planet’s last remaining strongholds for wildlife biodiversity and indigenous communities.

Sierra del Divisor is home to the highest levels of primate diversity in the western Amazon, as well as an estimated 300 species of fish and 3,500 plant species. The region is a stronghold for large mammal species such as jaguars and tapirs that are in decline throughout their range. It will also provide protection for the Iskonowa, an indigenous tribe living within the new park in voluntary isolation.

Serra del Divisor National Park is lies in an area that has some of the highest levels of biodiversity ever recorded on the planet. Over 550 bird species, 120 mammals, and nearly 80 amphibians have been documented within the borders of the reserve and is thought to contain many more species likely yet unrecorded or undiscovered. Several rare or endemic species including red uakari monkeys, jaguars, South American tapirs, Goeldi’s monkey and specialized plant communities living on jungle massifs.

“El Cono” (“The Cone”) is a striking, solitary peak towers more than 1,600 feet above the vast plain of Amazon forest surrounding it.

Largely unexplored with remote ranges that is one of the Amazon’s last true wildernesses, the area contains diverse habitats including plunging waterfalls, wild rivers, pristine forests and dormant volcanic cones that rise out of the jungle.

Logging concessions open up roads into previously intact forest areas enabling illegal logging to flourish. The creation of a Sierra del Divisor National Park adds new, enormous legal hurdles to prevent road construction, protecting millions of rainforest acres from logging. Source: MAAP.

Threats to Sierra del Divisor

The Sierra del Divisor faces imminent threats from wildlife poaching, hunting, land clearing for coca production, and illegal logging. Unchecked, these threats could destroy the area in a matter of years.  The Peruvian Amazon has lost over 1 million hectacres of forest in the past 15 years.

Once protected by its remote location, the Sierra del Divisor is now besieged by a variety of threats that could destroy it forever. Neighboring areas already devastated by mining and logging highlight the urgent need for permanent protection.

According to satellite imagery from the organization Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), an unauthorized logging road encroached to the edge of the 1.47-million-hectare Reserved Zone earlier this summer. Source: Rainforest Foundation Peru.

Land clearing along roads into the park and nearby forests open up the area to rapid explotation and land clearing. Photo: Rhett Butler.

Illegal logging removes valuable species from within the national park.

Illegal logging continues throughout the area, with thousands of logs floated downstream in the wet season.

Unregulated wildlife poaching and hunting jeopardize native animal populations. The area attracts poachers since it’s a sanctuary for many exotic and rare species.

Although Sierra del Divisor is located in an isolated region of Peru, human activity is still taking a toll, with community and ranger patrolling finding incusions, land clearing and coca growing into the protected area.

President of Peru celebrating creation of Sierra del Divisor National Park in Peru in 2015.

See Video of the amazing experience of visiting the Amazon with local communities.

Quotes on Sierra del Divisor National Park

“It is terrible to see how what was once a forest has become a very wide road” of 20 to 40 meters in places, said the Chief of Sierra del Divisor, Maria Elena Diaz. She added this most recent discovery of the road’s incursion on the then-reserved zone made the designation of Sierra del Divisor as a national park “extremely urgent.”

“The threats of illegal logging have increased with the construction of the road,” she said. Diaz is also concerned that logging may lead to illegal coca cultivation and the invasion of indigenous community lands.

“In the Amazon, there’s just deforestation everywhere. Super-large, remote areas with minimal logging are increasingly rare.”

         -   Matt Finer, PhD, Amazon Conservation Association

“National Parks in Peru and elsewhere in the Amazon do an excellent job of preventing deforestation. Deforestation rates even in the most remote, difficult to staff frontier regions [are very low] compared to the areas outside these parks. Creation of Sierra del Divisor National Park will lead to excellent protections of a [vast] area of high biodiversity and carbon-rich forest vital for the flora and fauna, as well as the indigenous people of the area. The Sierra Divisor is a Peruvian Yellowstone… It urgently needs protection as a national park.”

   - Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior under U.S. President Bill Clinton

 “The creation of the Sierra del Divisor National Park is a major environmental milestone for Peru and complements its leadership in the climate change negotiations. The park has an immense wealth of plant and animal species many of which are unique to this region of the rainforest.”

      -  Luis Miguel Castilla, Ambassador of Peru to the United States

“SERNANP personnel must have the resources to deter threats from illegal mining, logging and coca cultivation. The logistical cost of good governance in such a remote area is high.” 

      - Enrique Ortiz, Program Director, Amazon Andes Fund

Videos on Sierra del Divisor National Park and Local Communities

Ecotourism in Sierra del Divisor National Park

Sustainable Tourism in Local Communities

Saposa Native Communities Fight Back Against Illegal Logging and Land Clearing for Coca Growing

Coca Growers Invade Sierra del Divisor National Park