Let me tell you a story about illegal logging pushing tribal families to extinction.

The story begins a few days ago, when a colleague emailed me a YouTube video documenting the discovery of the Tsohon-djapa, a previously uncontacted tribe in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. Standing next to their grass huts, with bodies painted red and black in preparation for war, the Tsohon-djapa are shown shooting arrows up at the airplane, hoping to bring it down. As Jose Carlos Mireles, the one responsible for discovering the tribes, says, “They probably thought our plane was a giant bird.”

The futility of this effort brings home the point. When it comes to the mounting pressures of the industrialized world, these tribes have no defense.

With demand for luxury wood products in the United States on the rise, illegal loggers are pushing further and further into the rainforest in search of mahogany and cedar, and into the areas tribes like the Tsohon-djapa call home. The illegal loggers bring with them violent conflict, introduce deadly disease, and destroy the ecosystems upon which the tribes depend.  In contrast, the plane that took these pictures is the least of their worries.

The Tsohon-djapa are but one story. There are many others. By some estimates, there are 100 such tribes left in the world, most of them in the Peruvian and Brazilian Amazon. In the remote Peruvian rainforest alone, the last families of the Mascho Piro, Yora, Matsigenka, and Amahuaca are threatened.

When we talk about extinction, it’s often in the context of protecting an endangered species. But this is a story about endangered families. It reminded me – as I hope it does for you – of the need to protect human diversity.

In countries like Peru and Brazil, all of the market incentives reward deforestation. Increased consumer demand from the United Stated – the wood from one large mahogany tree alone is worth more than $100,000 when used in furniture and luxury wood products - has driven illegal loggers further into the rainforests, and the areas these tribes call home.

William Laurance, a tropical biologist with the Smithsonian Institution, was quoted on Dot Earth as saying: “The new roads open up the frontier for waves of unplanned and illegal logging, land colonization, and land speculation that is nearly impossible for the government to control... It’s a formula for environmental and social chaos.”

The problem of tropical deforestation has received increased attention recently.  The cutting of forests in tropical countries accounts for about 15-25% of all of the greenhouse gas emissions.  There are now discussions of how to use the emerging carbon market to slow deforestation.  However, creating such a market for forest carbon is extraordinarily complicated and will take several years at best.  

If we are to save these uncontacted peoples, we cannot afford to wait.  We have to take steps now to curb illegal logging.  The United States, which alone is responsible for more than 80% of the mahogany exports from Peru, can provide real leadership. Click here to help save the Tahuamanú Rainforest, an NRDC Biogem.

First, consumers here can educate themselves so they can make informed decisions about what wood products they purchase. Click here for a consumer wood guide we published.

Second, the United States Government should make sure that all of mahogany and other timber trade is legal and sustainable. 

Finally, we need to step up our cooperation with Peru and Brazil and other key tropical countries to improve forest governance and to put an end to illegal logging.