ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 12, 1990                   TAG: 9005120071
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: IQUITOS, PERU                                LENGTH: Short

INDIAN LEADERS GATHER FOR RAIN FOREST EFFORT

Indian leaders from five South American nations met with international environmentalists in this Amazon River port Friday to plan the preservation of the region's rapidly shrinking rain forest.

Representatives of 1.2 million Indians living in the Amazon River basin in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil are in Peru this week to demand a voice in efforts to preserve the vast Amazon jungle.

"We are the original conservationists. We are the true ecologists. We have been living in the Amazon forever," said Evaristo Nugkuag, an Aguaruna Indian leader from Peru, president of the Coordinating Body for Indigenous Peoples' Organizations of the Amazon Basin.

An estimated 50 to 100 acres of forest is being cleared in the Amazon every minute, according to the Smithsonian Institution. - Associated Press 


 by CNB