A BRITISH missionary and environmental activist has been found burned to death at a youth hostel he ran in the Amazon jungle.

Paul McAuley, 71, had lived in Peru for more than 20 years and worked to help indigenous tribes in the battle to protect the rainforest from oil and gas drilling.

His campaigning saw him clash with the Peruvian government, which tried to boot him out of the country.

Brother Paul, as he was known to locals, was found dead at a shelter he ran for indigenous youths in Iquitos, deep in the Amazon basin.

A student who found the body told news outlet El Comercio he believed the Briton had been murdered.

He said: “Yesterday we were talking together and today we see this painful scene.

“We want to investigate because he, who has taken us for so many years and has given us everything, has been murdered.”

Oxford-educated McAuley, born in Portsmouth to Irish parents, was a lay Catholic brother with the De La Salle teaching order.

The group said in a statement last night he had been burned to death.

Authorities are questioning six indigenous youths who lived in the hostel.

What tough news. A great man who did a lot for indigenous communities, their rights and the forests.

Julia Urrunaga, The Environmental Investigation Agency
McAuley travelled to Peru in 1995 where he founded a school in the impoverished Puente Piedra district of the capital Lima.

His charity work won him an MBE. But in 2010 he told The Guardian he would have sent the award back to the Queen in protest at British companies drilling in the Amazon, had he not already given it away.

By then he had moved to Iquitos where in 2004 he founded the Loreto Environmental Network, a group that works with indigenous tribes.

His group fought then-President Alan Garcia's moves to open up the Amazon to unprecedented mining and oil exploration.

In 2010, the government tried unsuccessfully to strip McAuley of his residency for allegedly inciting unrest.

Local media in Peru called him a "Tarzan activist", "a incendiary gringo priest” and a "white terrorist" at the time.

However he won his right to stay through the courts and continued his campaigning.

Environmental activists mourned his death and paid tribute to his work.

The Environmental Investigation Agency, a non-profit group, said he “fought peacefully for indigenous rights and forests in Peru.”

It added: “His death should be investigated. Rest in peace, Brother Paul, we will continue the fight.”

The group's Peru programs director Julia Urrunaga tweeted: "What tough news. A great man who did a lot for indigenous communities, their rights and the forests."

Peru's Episcopal Conference said: "Paul McAuley was a well-known defender of the environment, identified with the reality of Loreto and the problems of indigenous peoples

Fighting against logging and drilling in the rainforest is a dangerous business.

In recent years with bandits have murdered forest protection officials and even torched vast swathes of the jungle to conceal their pillage, reports Nat Geo.