Photograph by Alex Webb

A mahogany sculpture in a park in the timber hub of Pucallpa symbolizes the tree’s importance.

Photograph by Alex Webb

An agent from Peru’s park service hand-measures the width of a section of an illegally cut mahogany. A logger with a chain saw can topple a centuries-old tree like this behemoth in less than half an hour.

Photograph by Alex Webb

A tug on the Ucayali River churns past downtown Pucallpa to deliver logs to one of the port’s dozens of sawmills. The booming timber port is strategically situated at the intersection of this major Amazon tributary and a highway that allows trucks to carry lumber across the Andes to the Pacific coast.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Men off-load capirona—a dense wood used in construction—outside Pucallpa. Much of Peru’s timber is cut without proper permits, then sold with forged documentation. The rain forest is slowly succumbing to operators large and small.

Photograph by Alex Webb

A park service guard (at left) and an Ashéninka guide size up an old-growth mahogany, highly valuable to criminal loggers. Because individual trees can’t be protected, this giant is almost certainly doomed.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Amid flying wood chips and sawdust, a chain saw operator lays into a mahogany tree in an indigenous community logging tract along the Alto Purús River.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Ashéninka women and children gather in their remote settlement of Nueva Bella. Unscrupulous loggers target such communities, taking their timber at rock-bottom prices and stealing mahogany from nearby reserves that protect isolated tribes.

Photograph by Alex Webb

As early morning mist hangs over the Alto Tamaya River, Ashéninka Indians from the community of Saweto prepare for a journey upstream to confront a band of illegal loggers. For years their forests have been plundered for choice timber. Now they’ve decided to act.

Photograph by Alex Webb

An electric guitar in the village of Dulce Gloria sounds the reach of consumer culture into the Amazon. Local people often acquire goods through loans from loggers, many of whom violate permits by cutting trees outside community boundaries.

Photograph by Alex Webb

An Ashéninka woman crosses a basketball court in the village of Dulce Gloria. The Ashéninka are at the forefront of efforts to curb illegal logging in Peru’s Amazonian region.

Photograph by Alex Webb

The day’s laundry provides a makeshift playground for children in Puerto Breu, a frontier town that’s a few hours’ boat ride upriver from Brazil.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Women of the Culina tribe create dramatic designs with face paint on special occasions. Their mahogany-rich homeland also provides the red and black berries used to make their face paint.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Worlds collide in the frontier town of Puerto Esperanza on the Alto Purús River, where consumer goods such as blue-eyed dolls from China and enameled plates are brought in from afar.

Photograph by Alex Webb

A kapok log dangles from a crane on the Ucayali River outside Pucallpa. Soaring giants draped with orchids, kapok trees provide rich habitat for primates, birds, amphibians, and insects. They’re also in high demand for pulp and plywood.