Las Piedras river journey

River to your soul

Huesca river tributary, Las Piedras reserve - Giles Crosse

An hour or two upriver from the Lucerna port, the protected reserve in the Las Piedras region of this part of the Amazon comes into force.

It's a remote, isolated, largely untouched and largely unspoiled wilderness, where man's influence has been limited and nature still reigns in the jungle light.

Unsurpassing beauty and calm are at work here. But human encroachments have occurred, as a road enables illegal logging to take place. Empty shotgun shells have been found here by the Fauna Forever team, evidencing the brutality and the cheapness of life that belies this form of existence.

As yet, government officials have taken little or no action to protect the reserve in the form of guard posts or in the form of watch towers or communications. Laws at this stage have no concrete affirmation beyond cabinet rooms or red tape.

Thus it is left to the NGOs and the private businesses in the area with a vested interest in conservation to protect what may be Peru's most vital legacy, both economically in the form of future ecotourism and in the form of the biodiversity that exists here.

Giles Crosse 

Jungle canopy from below - Giles Crosse 

Ancient trees line the riverbank - Giles Crosse 

Las Piedras riverbank - Giles Crosse 

Alternating mud, clay and stone make up the shores lining these waters - Giles Crosse 

 Journeying upriver, people fall silent, preferring the nature around them to conversation. Sounds of a thousand birds, spider monkeys and the myriad species which inhabit this jungle wilderness reverberate and echo amid the canopy enclosing these waters.

It's amazing that such a truly wonderful place as yet affords little concrete protection from its government. Locals rub their fingers together knowingly, commenting, 'el dinero habla.' As in most parts of the world, money talks.

This area is among the least surveyed or studied in the Amazon basin. No one has mapped the river tributary and its species density in the pictures above. Few have even visited; far fewer have studied.

The mysteries here might one day serve up a million new medicines, species, plants and surprises yet unimaginable to those of us standing on these river beaches. There is a real sense of the majesty of nature when you become aware you're treading on unspoilt beaches, unstudied or sullied by human intervention.

Research  vessels must respect this ecosystem - Giles Crosse 

The very isolation of this place shines a light on how carefully we must avoid impacting on these areas whilst trying to protect them. Ecotourism, conservation and study all inevitably alter and change the environment within which they operate.

Perhaps the question is how we may successfully deliver the resources that can help save this part of the world, while respecting and enabling this precious ecosystem to manage and maintain itself, as it has already for so many millenia.