The days of the Spanish conquistadors are long over, but the jungles of Peru are still being plundered. Illegal loggers are seizing the wealth of the forest: big leaf mahogany trees that soar 120 feet tall and bring as much as $100,000 each by the time they are crafted in the United States. Conservation groups estimate that 80 percent of mahogany is logged illegally. Illegal loggers steal into the Amazon, extract trees from the forest web, hunt monkeys and birds, and leave behind clearings soon filled by settlers, road builders and farmers.

If this illegal destruction continues, wild places like the Tahuamanú Rainforest will be lost forever. Resting on the eastern slopes of the Andes, the Tahuamanú is home to some of the last remaining concentrations of old-growth mahogany trees in Latin America. The forest's towering trunks are laced with vines and eerily beautiful orchids. Spider monkeys skitter through their branches and brilliant red and turquoise macaws swirl in their shade. Their crowns stretch above the Tahuamanú canopy, overlooking a wild land peopled only by indigenous tribes who have had little contact with the outside world.

But with American consumers clamoring for more mahogany, the invasion of the Tahuamanú by loggers may empty the forest and rob its native people of their remaining land. In violation of domestic and international laws, U.S. border control agencies have refused to stem the passage of millions of dollars worth of illegal Peruvian mahogany through our ports each year. BioGems Defenders sent tens of thousands of messages telling the Bush administration to take immediate action to stop these illegal imports. As part of that same effort, we are now urging the Peruvian government to put new policies in place to ensure that export mahogany has been logged legally.

Tell the Peruvian government to do its part to curtail illegal mahogany exports.

Photo credits: River at sunrise, © Anne Labastille. Squirrel monkey, © Gerry Ellis.