Peru stalling new national park for unique Amazon mountain range

Over one million hectares, flora, fauna and people at risk from government failure to act

The Sierra del Divisor region in the Peruvian Amazon was identified as a biodiversity conservation priority back in the early 1990s. More than 20 years later and Peruvians are still waiting - some more desperately than others given all the narco-traffickers, illegal loggers and gold-miners in or near the region.

What's so special about the Sierra del Divisor? It's the "only mountainous region" anywhere in the lowland rainforest, according to Peruvian NGO Instituto del Bien Comun (IBC), while The Field Museum, in the US, describes it as "a mountain range" rising up "dramatically from the lowlands of central Amazonian Peru" and boasting "rare and diverse geological formations that occur nowhere else in Amazonia." Its most iconic topographical feature is "El Cono", an extraordinary peak visible from the Andes on a clear day.