IN THE Amazon rainforest of Peru, on a dusty, unpaved road through villages of palm-thatch houses, trucks thunder by in an endless procession, scattering the round river rocks brought in to fortify the road.
A cement marker proudly recounts the road鈥檚 brief history: built in 2004, this thoroughfare was part of a US-funded incentive programme intended to help local people find economic alternatives to growing coca, the plant from which cocaine is produced.
Four years later, the road is the sucking end of a global vacuum through which timber is whisked from the Peruvian rainforest to China, now the world鈥檚 number one timber importer. Some of the wood will be polished into luxury parquet flooring for high-rise homes in Shanghai and Beijing. More will be processed in Chinese factories and dispersed as patio furniture, decking or flooring to North America and Europe.
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Further along, down muddy tracks leading into the old-growth forest known as monte alto, local farmers have begun to take advantage of the sunny openings in the forest canopy created by logging to grow a variety of subsistence food crops such as cassava, sweet potatoes, bananas and plantains. They also plant a few cash crops, including coffee and cacao, to cover such essentials as school fees and medical bills.
As a tree ecologist and student of the timber trade, I am here to study a species of Dipteryx known in the region as shihuahuaco (it鈥檚 international trade name is cumaru) and to track its movements from Amazonian forest to Chinese factory.
While shihuahuaco is not particularly high profile, ecologists call it a 鈥渒eystone鈥� tree because its large seeds are an indispensable food source for forest herbivores in the dry season, while its hollow places are used by nesting parrots and macaws. It is so sturdy that local people use big shihuahuaco trees as shelter when powerful storms bring down lesser trees.
My journey started in the company of a jolly group of loggers from the sawmill town of Pucallpa. A two-day journey into the forest brought us beyond the end of the road to a community called Esperanza, or 鈥淗ope鈥�. There, in the middle of a flourishing chacra 鈥� an agroforestry farm typical of the area 鈥� was a temporary logging camp.
The chacra belonged to an enterprising family I鈥檒l call the Medinas who, in addition to their productive farming, provided refuge for birds, wild piglets and primates rescued from logged areas. From there, I walked with my logging friends for 10 days through the monte alto, which they were soon to cut.
The adult trees were giants, up to 50 metres tall and 1.3 metres thick above their giant buttresses, which spread up to 5 metres around the main trunk. There were just one or two such trees per hectare, and most were headed for the long voyage across the Pacific. Although we found about 250 seedlings and saplings, there were only two juvenile trees that had reached the canopy and could therefore expect to grow into adults.
I try not to be sentimental about trees. Even so, sitting near the campfire on one of my last nights there and explaining my initial findings to Pedro, the logging company鈥檚 chief woodsman, there must have been a heaviness in my tone that prompted him to reassure me. 鈥淲ell,鈥� he said, 鈥渁t least there are the Medinas鈥� arbolitos.鈥� 鈥淲hat, little trees?鈥� I asked. 鈥淭omorrow, let鈥檚 have a look around,鈥� he replied.
The next morning, we walked up a hill and Pedro stopped in front of a bushy and very healthy-looking shihuahuaco juvenile growing in full sun. 鈥淪ee?鈥� he said. We counted 47 thriving young trees in just 2 hectares, planted within the previous two years. Around them grew diverse food and cash crops. When we asked why he had planted shihuahuaco, Medina said: 鈥淚 like them. They have beautiful leaves.鈥�
鈥淎nd when do you expect to harvest them?鈥� I had to ask. Like many hardwood species, they can take a good generation to mature, and I hoped he wasn鈥檛 expecting to profit from them in a few years.
鈥淲ell,鈥� he pondered for a moment, 鈥渢hey鈥檙e not for me. They鈥檙e for my children.鈥�