A mild-looking, bespectacled Catholic priest, born in Portsmouth, educated at Oxford and now working in the Peruvian rainforest, is behind an important victory for local people over the logging companies laying waste to large stretches of Amazonia.
A year ago Father Paul McAuley, now 57, helped some 70 of his parishioners in the little settlement of Mazan, on one of the Amazon's main tributaries, to seek an injunction to protect large swathes of rainforest, containing valuable tropical timber. Last week a court in Iquitos, the capital of Peruvian Amazonia, ordered a halt to the government's sale of 40-year leases of forest land for only 22p ($40 USD) an acre.
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