Colombia tackles narcotics gangs slashing forests for coca plants
THE Colombian militar y wil l step up a n of fensive aga i nst dr ug t ra f f ick i ng g a n g s r e s p on s i bl e f or clearing thousands of hectares of protected national parks for coca plantations, Mi n i s t e r o f Na t i o n a l Defence Ca rlos Hol mes Tr uji l lo Ga rc ia sa id on Monday.
“The police are not going to withdraw from the national parks where the criminals are trying to settle. We are going to harden the military offensive to remove them from their dens,” Trujillo told reporters in Bogota.
The government said some 700ha of forest in the Sierra de la Macarena national park in southern Co l o mbi a h a v e b e e n destroyed by dissidents of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) guerrilla group who rejected a 2016 peace agreement.
It said the dissidents were forcing local peasant farmers to clear the forest and “commit a massacre against nature”, in order to develop coca plantations.
“What h a p p e ne d i n Macarena is a crime against the environment. Those who today promote fires are criminals who want to destroy the forests and poison the rivers to plant coca,” Trujillo said.
A special environmental protection force is to be set up as part of the offensive, he said, in a broad plan to safeguard natural resources in what the UN says is t h e mos t bi o - d i v e r s e countr y in t he world after Bra zi l.
Last year, the government of President Ivan Duque launched Operation Artemisa to counter widespread deforestation, following the destruction of nearly 200,000ha in 2018, mainly in the Amazon.
In addition to the indiscriminate cutting of trees for agriculture, illegal mining and coca plantations pose a threat to the country’s natural resources, according to the government.
Former national parks ser vice director Carlos Castano Gil told Colombia’s Radio W in an interview Monday that former guerrillas had threatened park officials in a bid to force t h e m t o l e a v e t h e reserves.
Around 2,300 Fa rc dissidents continue to operate, according to t he government, funded by drug t r a f f ic k i ng a nd i l l e g a l mining.