Sepahua

That pocket denotes a tiny patch of legally loggable land sandwiched between four natural reserves, all rich in mahogany and accessible from the town. "Boundaries are on maps," says a local logger, "maps are only in Lima," the capital. | In 2001 the government egged on by WWF, a green group, tried to regulate logging in the relatively small part of the Peruvian Amazon where this is allowed. | Sepahua, a ramshackle town on the edge of Peru's Amazon jungle, nestles in a pocket on the map where a river of the same name flows into the Urubamba. | It abolished the previous system of annual contracts. | Instead, it auctioned 40-year concessions to areas ruled off on a map, with the right to log 5% of the area each year. The aim was to encourage strict management plans and sustainable extraction.