"This is a serious worry for us," said Alvaro Masquez Salvador, a lawyer who helps the program for Indigenous Peoples at Peru's Legal Defense Institute.

Masquez also said the change is worrying because it makes land private that Peru's constitution says belongs to the country. He added that forests are not private property; they belong to the nation.

People who support the law, which started in March, believe it will make farming in Peru more stable and give farmers more legal security.

The Associated Press asked several people from Peru's farming industry and Congresswoman Maria Zeta Chunga, who strongly supports the law, for their comments. Only one person from the farming industry answered, saying they did not want to comment.

Peru has the second biggest area of Amazon rainforest after Brazil, with more than 70 million hectares, which is about 60% of Peru's land. This area has many different types of plants and animals, and over 50 groups of Indigenous people live there, some of whom live separately from others. These communities are important for protecting the environment, and the forests they care for help control the world's climate by taking in a lot of carbon dioxide, a gas that causes climate change.

The first law about forests and animals, created in 2011, said you needed government permission and environmental checks before changing how forest land was used. But recent changes have made these rules weaker. The newest change lets landowners and companies avoid getting that permission, and it even makes deforestation that happened in the past legal.

A court in Peru supported a change to the law after some lawyers argued against it. The court removed some parts of the law but kept the last section, which says that past illegal changes to land use are now allowed. Experts believe this is the most risky part of the law.

In its decision, the court said that local communities should have been asked about changes to the law and confirmed the Environment Ministry's job in planning forest areas.

Environmental lawyer César Ipenza explained it this way: "The court agrees the law went against Indigenous rights and that tribes should have been asked, but it still supports the worst part."

This reform is similar to changes made in Brazil under former President Jair Bolsonaro. In Brazil, politics and business worked together to reduce environmental rules to help large farms. In Brazil, strong, organized businesses pushed for this. In Peru, the group supporting the changes is less organized but still powerful.

In Peru, support comes from large farming businesses, people who illegally take land, and people linked to illegal mining and selling drugs. Small and medium farmers who are worried about protecting their land have also been included.

Vladimir Pinto from Amazon Watch, an environmental group, said that legal and illegal interests are coming together.

Julia Urrunaga, who works for the Environmental Investigation Agency in Peru, warned that the Peruvian government is now wrongly claiming that the changes are needed to follow the European Union's rules. These rules will soon make companies that import products like soy, beef, and palm oil show that their goods did not come from land where trees were cut down illegally.

She said that if products from illegal deforestation are made legal and sold later, it will make rules like those in the EU less effective.

Urrunaga said this sends a bad signal to international markets and makes it harder to stop deforestation by limiting trade.

Olivier Coupleux, who is in charge of the EU's Economic and Trade Section in Peru, said that the recent changes to the law have nothing to do with the EU's rule about stopping deforestation.

Coupleux told Peruvian reporters that the rule is meant to stop buying things connected to cutting down forests. He added that it doesn't need new laws, but instead requires knowing where products like coffee, cocoa, and wood come from and making sure they are produced in a way that doesn't harm the environment.

Since they have no more legal options in their own country, these groups are getting ready to bring the case to international courts. They warn that this decision creates a risky example for other countries that might try to ignore environmental laws by saying they are making changes.

Many Indigenous leaders believe the law directly threatens their lands, communities, and traditions.

Julio Cusurichi, who is on the board of a group that helps the Peruvian Rainforest, said this new rule will make it easier for people to steal land and make it harder to look after the environment in areas that are already at risk.

Cusurichi said, "For a long time, our communities have protected our lands and the planet."