In Colombia, a national park’s expansion announced as deforestation progresses

BOGOTA, Colombia – “I ordered Minister Murillo to return to Guaviare tomorrow with Mindefensa (Ministry of Defense) and Prosecutor’s Office to control deforestation outbreaks,” President Juan Manuel Santos wrote on his Twitter account upon his return from Chiribiquete National Park, where he had just made a crucial announcement for the future of the sanctuary located in the heart of the Colombian Amazon.

The announcement came in late February 2018.

In an improvised press conference on top of shrub-covered rocks with an impressive range of rocky mountains in the background bordered by a precipice full of trees, Santos said that the studies for the 1.5 million hectare expansion of the Chiribiquete are ready.

He said he hopes to turn this gem of nature, which still remains intact, into one of the most important protected areas in the world with a total area of ​​4.3 million hectares.

But the news lost relevance in front of the panorama that could be seen during the trip from San José del Guaviare to El Chiribiquete. From the helicopter, the president and his delegation: Luis Gilberto Murillo, the Minister of Environment, Julia Miranda, the director of Natural Parks, businessman Alejandro Santo Domingo, and the Duke of Wellington accompanied by his wife, observed the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

Huge patches without trees, and in most cases converted into empty pastures in the middle of a forest carpet, dominated the landscape. But the most impressive thing was the dense smoke of at least 40 fires, signaling that the tragedy was happening in real-time.

While the president announced the expansion of Chiribiquete, a monster advanced devouring the jungles around it.

In this video, one can see what is currently happening in Tierra Alta, in the municipality of El Retorno, near San José del Guaviare, the capital of the department. This area is located north of the Chiribiquete National Park.

The forest of Guaviare is burning. Hundreds of fires are devouring that part of the Colombian Amazon by the action of people who light the fire to ‘clean’ the land of trees and turn them into pastures. Many times, as Environment Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo says, with the sole purpose of hoarding the land and waiting for its value to appreciate.

San José del Guaviare is located north of the Chiribiquete and is the closest city to the protected area. The capital of Guaviare, together with nearby municipalities such as Calamar and Miraflores, is included among the sites with an early deforestation warning which were issued each quarter of 2017 by the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (also known by its acronym in Spanish, IDEAM). In 2016, San José del Guaviare was the sixth municipality most deforested with 11,456 of the 178,597 hectares of primary forest that disappeared in the country.

According to Omar Franco, director of IDEAM, one of the main causes of deforestation in that area is the construction of the highway between Calamar and Miraflores. “Although it is incipient, it can become a new front of expansion of the agricultural frontier,” Franco said. However, the illegal hoarding of large areas has become the true engine of the accelerated deforestation.

This was acknowledged by Minister Murillo himself when asked about the issue during the Chiribiquete event before President Santos ordered him to return to address the issue via Twitter. “We are working with the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of Defense because deforestation is taking place due to the illegal appropriation of land” Murillo said. “People cut the forest and wait for the land’s value to appreciate.”

Rodrigo Botero, director of the Foundation for the Sustainable Development of the Amazon – who provided technical advice for the Chiribiquete expansion studies –holds the same view. “There is an uncontrolled land grabbing phenomenon that is almost purely speculative because they do not even use the land. Roads, coca, livestock, cocoa and palm crops are also causing a great impact in that area.”

However, Botero says that the expansion of the Chiribiquete is a step forward in protecting ecosystems throughout the country. “In the newly expanded area, the Chiribiquete will be connected to the La Macarena Park and the Sumapaz, that is, we will achieve the integration of the Amazon region with the Andes. It is like having a corridor between the south of Bogotá and the heart of the Amazon,” he said.

The news of the expansion was accompanied by the announcement of an investment of $500 million dollars for conservation, restoration and environmental recovery of the country from the environmental compensation scheme paid by companies. In addition to the resources and expansions, which undoubtedly are important, the government must be able to ensure the governability of the territories. Without that, several experts agree, Chiribiquete will be a protected paradise surrounded by cleared land.

Cover photo courtesy of Semana Sostenible.

This story was reported by Mongabay’s Latin America (Latam) team and was first published in Spanish on our Latam site on February 22, 2018.