David Hill, who reports for The Guardian blog on environmental issues in the Amazon has published an interesting piece on oil pollution in the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve. This is a 2 million hectare swathe of tropical rain forest in between the Rivers Ucayali and Marañon. The spills date from way back, and are due to the activities of oil companies in this protected region and leaky oil pipes. The photographs Hill provides give a graphic illustration of the scale of contamination. The area was originally exploited by Petroperú in the 1970s, but its interests were taken over during the Fujimori period by Pluspetrol from Argentina, working in partnership with China’s National Petroleum Company (CNPC) since 2003. In 2014, over 200,000 hectares were declared an ‘environmental emergency zone’. Pluspetrol has resorted to legal action to protect itself from blame. Meanwhile the people living there, the Kukama Kukamiria, suffer the consequences. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/andes-to-the-amazon/2016/jan/14/look-at-the-oil-spilled-in-the-worlds-2nd-best-place-for-wildlife