AN ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST campaigning against the destruction of the Amazon has been shot and killed in the Peruvian jungle in what police suspect was retaliation against his advocacy work.

Hipolito Quispehuaman was killed on Saturday night while driving along a section of the Interoceanic Highway in the southeastern Madre de Dios region, according to the local prosecutor’s office.

Quispehuaman had served as a member of the management committee of the Tambopata National Reserve, a large nature reserve in the southeast of Peru with hundreds of species of plants and wildlife.

“This is a murder with a firearm of yet another defender of the Madre de Dios region,” local prosecutor Karen Torres told reporters.

Activists are campaigning against deforestation of the Peruvian Amazon. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Torres added that the preliminary motive being considered by investigators was that the murder was in retaliation for the advocacy work he was doing.

“I demand justice for my brother’s death. This kind of thing cannot happen,” the victim’s brother, Angel Quispehuaman, told reporters.

Peru’s National Coordinator for Human Rights (CNDDHH) condemned the murder and demanded “the Peruvian state take urgent and effective measures to protect the lives and work of (rights) defenders.”

“Not one more death! Enough with the murders of human rights defenders!” the CNDDHH said on X.

The Ministry of Justice pledged “to work on the legal defense of the victims, so that this crime does not go unpunished,” it wrote on X.

Attacks against environmental activists have risen in recent years in Amazonian areas of Peru, where the presence of national authorities is scarce.

In July 2024, Indigenous environmental activist Mariano Isacama was murdered in the Amazon region of Ucayali, located around 497 kilometres east of capital Lima.

Indigenous people face the growing presence of drug traffickers and illegal mining, which are deforesting the Amazon region.

At least 54 land and environmental defenders have been murdered in Peru since 2012, more than half of whom were Indigenous people, according to NGO Global Witness.

© AFP 2025