[1] Ninety-four percent of the land of Megantoni District is protected for conservation or allocated to indigenous people.

The majority of this land is "almost untouched" tropical rainforest and Peruvian Yungas characteristic of the Amazon Basin and the eastern flanks of the Andes.

[2] Protected lands include the Pongo de Mainique, a scenic water gap where the Urubamba River cuts through the Vilcabamba mountain range on the southern border of Megantoni.

According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, "the lowland rainforests and mid-montane cloud forests within a radius of five miles (8.0 km) of the Pongo possibly comprise the single most biologically-diverse site on the face of the Earth."

"Inevitably," in the opinion of one scholar, a road will be built to connect Megantoni to the rest of Peru and stimulate an influx of farmers, miners, and drug traffickers who will encroach on the forests and indigenous people of the district.