Low German Old Colony Mennonites, who have been settling across Latin America for the past 100 years, have cleared 495 hectares (1,223 acres) of rainforest in the Peruvian Amazon so far this year.

The illegal deforestation documented by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) is part of an ongoing expansion in the region by this conservative group associated with the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition.

In a statement released on Dec. 13, the Peruvian Ministry of Environment (MINAM) announced that legal complaints have been filed and measures taken to “investigate, sanction and paralyze the irregular activities.”

“We have now documented the deforestation of nearly 4,000 hectares [9,800 acres] across four new colonies established in the Peruvian Amazon since 2017,” Matt Finer, the MAAP director at the NGO Amazon Conservation, wrote in an email to Mongabay. “This makes the Mennonites the new leading cause of organized, large-scale deforestation in Peru, more than other causes like agribusiness and oil palm.”

Source: Across Latin America, Mennonites seek out isolation at the expense of forests