FACTORTIERRA

Its strategic location at the Eastern Pacific turns it into a peculiar shelter.  Photographs by Giuseppe Aguinaga . PAITA, Peru - It seems to be a stone-&-sand berg from La Islilla Beach, a huge natural breakwater keeping a fishers cove on the southwestern side of La Silla de Paita (The Paita's Chair, approximately 350 meters or 1150 feet altitude). However, it is a natural milestone of two big marine ecosystems for the science. Foca Island is far the South-American continent just 800 meters or half a mile to 1 kilometer or 0,6 miles of water, and according to the book Piura, Áreas prioritarias para la conservación de la biodiversidad (Piura - Priority Areas For Conserving the Biodiversity), edited by Nature and Culture International (NCI) in 2014,  is an extension of the Peruvian desert , an arid land reaching to penetrate into Chile toward the south, and the half of Tumbes Region at the north. It is about 92 hectares or 227 acres, what allow it to con...

By Diego Mauricio (Regional Network of Water and Environment)       PIURA CITY, Peru – The Ministry of environment recognized in 2008the economic importance of the Andean páramos for the population depending on this ecosystem. That entitty’s former Natural Resources manager Walter Huamani affirmed that “we recognize that [the páramos] historically do have an economic value and the communities located at the highlands ever used it and know of that value.”   “If they don’t know of bank accounts, that is another issue, but they know [the páramos] have a value, and they use it and they live from it. The ecosystems feed the people, whether native people or surrounding people,” he said.   According to the Chira-Piura Hydrographic Basin Autonomous Authority, there was in 2018 a total of 929,247inhabitants through the basin, that represented 56% of the Piura department’s population. As well, Piura highlands s had a population of 55,889 heads of cow cattle wwhich ...

Photographs Courtesy Fidel Torres.   PIURA CITY, Peru – The highlands of El Carmen de la Frontera District are one of the  most recognized stores of water, food, and even medicine in the world, but one of the less studied discounting its few official protection. With the support of Peru’s Environment Ministry (Minam, as in Spanish), Biologist Fidel Torres continues unveiling the secrets of this place that holds the two key ecosystems of Piura – jalcas or páramos and cloud forests .   Precisely, the investigation is focused in this second space where it’s also latent the investment of Rio Blanco mining company, that wants to extract coopper and molybdenum, what have led it to ask for dialogue to local authorities, and those ones to deny it.   FACTORTIERRA: Why did you do this trip to the cloud forest nearby Henry’s Hill? FIDEL TORRES: It’s about executing the investigation plan of Ethnics-Botanics and Bioactive Substances of Main Non-Timber Species ...

A rural school highlights in science, looks for stopping deforestation.   By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo . Photographs Courttesy Luis Cevallos Jiménez .   This place is 3½ hours from Piura City going up to the east.   CANCHAQUÉ, Peru – Maybe, it’s the last primal dry forest patch in Buitré Mount. Teacher Luis Cevallos Jiménez thinks it’s about 74 acres. According to Soc’cha Alta elders, it was larger, still. Among chamelicos, guayacans, and hualtacos, it was detected anteaters, armadillos, deers , ocelots, peccaries, Barnett's  lanceheads, and blacktail cribos. Soc’cha Alta is a village of Canchaqué District , Huancabamba Province , extending on a slope going from 2756 to2887 feet altitude. It’s part of Bigoté Sub-Basin, a Piura River ’s tributary, and according to Mr Cevallos, it should be declared a protected area once it’s studied scientifically. The also principal of 15458 elementary school, where other two colleagues work and 33 children stu...

Where they say a city drowned, an amazing biodiversity outcrops.  By Nelson Peñaherrera .  Photos by André Baertsch i .  SAPALACHÉ*, Peru – A decade and a half later. The first time we learned about Chinguelas Mount was not in favoring terms. Approximately since the millenium began, mining exploration and exploitation was made in the very same place where another people looked for biodiversity and the western tributary of Amazon River starts.  Is there gold ? Since it was apparently submitted to volcanism in geologic past, the probability exists. But the reference haven by some people of El Carmen de la Frontera District ( Huancabamba County ) went back too a legendary past, indeed… spectral, to be pretty right. It is supposed the city of Chicuate (pronounce “Cheekwatteh”) was located on the same name’s mountain side, and its prosperity was based on gold extraction until a strong earthquake swallowed it down making a lake to emerge despite, what sti...

By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo . Photographs provided by Antenor Orrego Private University.   Photos by Antenor Orrego Private University.   Photo by erick Aquino.   PIURA CITY, Peru – Without intention,Marcela Temple Seminario became one of the most powerful women in earth, she knew how to use  it – the wife of former United Nations Organization’s General Secretary Javier Perez de Cuellar served the poorest people.   Through a prestigious international newspaper, she published a letter asking for solidarity with Timbocttu, Mali, an African country where the kids lived in extreme poverty. She impressed to see the flies putting on the children’s skin.   The post was successful, moved the entire world… or that happened in the 1980s, at least. Few people know Marcela Temple born and raised in Piura. Her family’s house is still in the downtown, inside the so-called Monumental Zone .   It’s one of dozen  of buildings framed in...