LIMA, Peru — Peru's ancient spiral-tailed monkey is losing its tail.

Extensive high-resolution aerial photos of the famed Nazca Lines taken by Peru's air force showed destruction Thursday that conservationists have long feared.

Tire tracks and disregard for the site are irreparably scarring the mysterious lines and animal figures that a pre-Columbian civilization etched into a 56-kilometre stretch of Peru's southern desert centuries ago.

In the first comprehensive aerial photos taken by Peru's government since 1973, one of the most famous animal figures, the monkey, was crisscrossed by tire tracks nearly obliterating the top of its tail. The fish and spider lines showed similar scars in the 180 photos taken last month and published in local newspapers.

Denouncing the damage, Congressman Luis Gonzales said he would urge legislators to take urgent action to protect the site, which was added to the United Nations World Heritage list in 1994.

"This is extremely grave," he said. "When the photographs are presented to the international community, it will unleash a scandal because it involves human patrimony."

Some of the worst damage has occurred since the death in 1998 of German mathematician Maria Reich, who at 95, had devoted five decades of her life guarding the 450-square-kilometre protected zone.

"Over many years, including when Maria Reich lived, they would come and violate the lines inasmuch as it was a place where trucks unscrupulously entered as a short cut," Jesus Cabel Moscoso, director of the National Institute of Culture in Ica, told The Associated Press.

Last year, highway officials had to move a weighing station 16 kilometres north of the zone to stop cargo trucks from cutting across the lines to avoid paying tolls.

In October, the municipality of Nazca was cited for dumping trash inside the protected zone.

From the ground, the site seems little more than a maze of lines. But from the air, figures - among them a hummingbird, a whale, and a condor - can be seen, some spanning 275 metres.

Located 400 kilometres south of Lima, the lines have puzzled scientists and attracted mystics and UFO enthusiasts. Each year, about 80,000 tourists fly over the pictographs.