- In the last five years, at least 15 threats have been reported against the park rangers who guard the protected areas of the Colombian Amazon. Other issues include the transfer of personnel due to violence, the burning and looting of five control checkpoints and several deaths between 2008 and 2011.
- By overlapping data from the organization Indepaz about the presence of illegal armed groups and the locations of protected areas in the Colombian Amazon, it was determined that these groups are present in 35 of the 39 municipalities that include protected areas. In some cases, FARC dissidents ordered park rangers to leave and declared them “military objectives.”
- In four Amazonian protected areas, almost 2.5 tons of cocaine were seized between 2017 and 2022, after the signing of the peace agreement.
“In this park, there are many complications, because if an official begins environmental work with a community leader for some time, no one knows whether he will be able to continue because he might be murdered or have to leave the area,” said a local source who is very familiar with the work in the Amazon’s protected areas. In this article, the identity of this source is being kept anonymous for security reasons. Testimonies like this are repeated in many of the parks and reserves in the Colombian Amazon, where constant threats have caused the first line of defense of the country’s biodiversity to retreat from the territory.
In fact, the violent events make it impossible for the park rangers to travel through at least 21 national protected areas, including 14 in the Amazon. “The armed groups and illicit economies that promote and finance deforestation remain in the territory, which puts personnel at risk,” said the National Natural Parks System of Colombia to Mongabay Latam in response to a request for information.
The park rangers who protect the Colombian Amazon’s most emblematic ecosystems can only monitor very specific places. Dissidents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group, split into different illegal armed groups that are in dispute, have declared several of these officials to be “military objectives.” This implies that if they set foot in the area where they operate, they will be killed.
One team of journalists that traveled to La Paya National Natural Park encountered an armed checkpoint held by the Comandos de la Frontera, or “Border Command,” along the Putumayo River. Dressed in green and armed with rifles and other military attire, members of the group were quick to leave a message: It is not they who are deforesting, but rather, those from the Carolina Ramírez Front, another group of ex-FARC dissidents. This declaration is one bit of evidence of the illegal armed groups’ current fight for this territory. These disputes often occur in and around Indigenous reservations, with the forest as the only witness.
A 2022 pamphlet from FARC-EP dissidents prohibiting park rangers and environmental officials from entering the area around La Macarena. » …
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