An ecological Eldorado: Peru's Manu National Park

UNESCO Courier, August-Sept, 1991 by Jose Serra-Vega

MANU National Park in south-east Peru rises from the sweltering fastnesses of the Amazonian forest up through a labyrinth of giddying scarps to an altitude of 4,000 metres on the eastern slopes of the Andes. The two great rivers that flow through the region, the Manu and the Madre de Dios, rush down from the high plateaux to the plain where, slackening their course, they meander along through a succession of different ecosystems and climates, joining up to flow together into the Amazon.

In the west, flocks of vicunas, the occasional guemal (a small American deer) and fearsome mountain lions roam across the frozen peaks and the cold, wind-swept plateaux dotted with black lakes where all that grows is a coarse yellow grass known as ichu. From time to time a spectacled bear can be seen, a species found nowhere else in South America. The mountain forest stretches out further down between altitudes of 3,800 and 2,500 metres, shrouded in thick mist. Lower down the temperature rises and rainfall increases, making for a proliferation of plant and animal life. Manu National Park consists mainly of tropical rainforest whose tangle of giant trees, creepers, plant parasites and orchids, climbing plants and epiphytes, provides a habitat for a huge variety of wildlife. In the vast Amazonian plain down below, the river Manu winds its way through a valley made well-nigh impenetrable by the density of the vegetation, forming in places oxbow lakes-cochas-which teem with aquatic life.

The lure of the unknown

For centuries people have been drawn to the Amazon by the lure of the unknown, a thirst for adventure and the prospect of fortune. The Incas of Cuzco sought to expand their empire in this region and found themselves with no choice but to trade with the warlike tribes of the region in order to obtain the colourful feathers with which they decorated their ceremonial costumes and the hallucinogenic and medicinal plants on which they relied.

Legend has it that Paititi, the lost city where the Incas are believed to have hidden enormous quantities of gold and silver after learning of the murder of their ruler Atahualpa at the hands of the Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro, was located in the Manu region. The Spanish armies, in their search for this Eldorado and its fabulous treasures, penetrated deep into the jungle where they were decimated by disease and hostile Indians. They too ended up by abandoning all attempts to settle there.

For three more centuries it was not known whether the rivers in the Madre de Dios basin flowed northwards or westwards. Some geographers of the time, who embellished their maps with mythical creatures and monstrous caimans, thought that the Amazon's source lay somewhere within it.

The rubber boom in the late nineteenth century attracted thousands of adventurers to the area. For twenty-odd years the tapping of trees for latex was a thriving industry and Amazonia edged its way into the world market, but competition from the British plantations in Asia brought this activity to a sudden end.

Lethargy again descended on the region, only to be shaken off in the 1960s with the development of the trade in furs-ocelot, jaguar, otter, black lizard-and exotic wood--mainly mahogany and cedar. Around the same time people started taking an interest in the exceptional biological resources to be found there. In 1968 the Peruvian authorities organized an expedition into the basin of the river Manu and its tributary the Sotileja. On the basis of the information collected, they declared Manu a national park in june 1973. In 1977 UNESCO recognized it as a biosphere reserve and since 1987 it has been on the World Heritage List.

The core of the biosphere reserve is Manu National Park, which has an area of 15,328 kM2 from which all economic or touristic activities are barred. It is bounded in the east by a buffer zone measuring some 2,500 kM2 where the aim is to preserve the forest while allowing limited tourism and scientific research. Further south is a transitional zone covering 900 k M2 inhabited by a few settlers and by Indian communities which continue to practise their traditional activities, within set bounds.

The Cocha Cashu biological observatory was established in 1969 beside a cutoff of the river Manu. Its laboratories and research facilities can accommodate about twenty researchers. The work done there has helped to provide a fuller picture of the forms of life present in the reserve and of tropical forest ecosystems in general. Another observatory is being built outside the national park so that certain studies can be carried out which are not allowed in the park itself. But there is a huge amount to be done. The forest harbours countless mysteries. We know little about its aquatic forms of life and virtually nothing about the tropical montane rainforest or the grasslands of the high plateaux or punas.

In a sense, then, the legendary treasures of Eldorado do exist in the form of the sixteen ecosystems present within the 18,800 km[.sup.2] of the reserve, which have remained practically intact since the dawn of time.