Pubdate: Sat, 01 Oct 2005
Source: Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
Copyright: 2005 Sun-Sentinel Company
Contact:  http://www.sun-sentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/159
Author: Kim Housego, The Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Colombia
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

COCAINE WASTING PARK LANDS

Growers Begin Using Areas Protected by Law

PUERTO ARTURO - Cocaine is killing the great nature parks of Colombia.

Government spraying of coca plant killer is driving growers and
traffickers out of their usual territory into national parks where
spraying is banned. Here they are burning thousands of acres of virgin
rain forest and poisoning rivers with chemicals.

Now the government faces a painful dilemma: to spray weed killer would
be devastating, but the impact of coca-growing is increasingly
destructive. The question is, which is worse?

Colombia is home to about 15 percent of all the world's plant species
and one of its most diverse arrays of amphibians, mammals and birds.
Dozens of species that populate its jungles and Andes mountains exist
nowhere else on the planet. One of the richest is the Sierra Macarena
National Park, where monkeys clamber across the jungle canopy and
seven species of big cats prowl in its shadows.

But Sierra Macarena is most threatened by cocaine.

A recent flight over part of its 1.6 million acres revealed a trail of
ugly gashes and charred trunks of trees felled by coca planters. The
intruders also have built dozens of makeshift drug labs in the park
and in the nearby village of Puerto Arturo, bringing in tons of
gasoline, cement, hydrochloric acid and other toxic chemicals to
process the coca leaves into cocaine. All of it pollutes the rivers
and soil.

So far only a small fraction of Sierra Macarena has been affected, but
the spread of cocaine operations is alarming.

The amount of acreage under coca cultivation has more than tripled to
9,600 acres since 2003, according to the Counternarcotics Police.

Overall, 28,000 acres are being cultivated in Colombia's 49 national
parks, compared with 11,000 acres only three years ago. But the
destruction is worse than the figures would indicate; for every acre
of coca planted, an average three acres are torn down.

"The national parks offer perfect havens for traffickers," police Col.
Henry Gamboa said as his Black Hawk helicopter swooped over a cocaine
lab in the Sierra Macarena. "There is virtually nothing we can do
about it. Our hands are tied."

The coca is planted by peasant farmers who process it into paste and
sell it to rebels or paramilitary factions, who refine the paste into
cocaine. Both groups have infiltrated Colombia's national parks.

The government says it is studying whether to lift the ban on
spraying. If it doesn't, growers are bound to plant more crops in the
reserves. But Indian tribes and environmental advocates contend that
spraying would be harmful to the animals and their
surroundings.

The United States has provided billions of dollars over the past five
years for spraying Colombian drug fields, a move the United Nations
says helped reduce cocaine production in Colombia 13 percent last year.

Environmentalists insist the solution is for government workers to
destroy the crops with machetes.

But the Sierra Macarena and many other national parks are occupied by
rebels who threaten to kill anyone involved in manual eradication,
officials say.

"We would like to carry out manual eradication," Environment Minister
Sandra Suarez told The Associated Press. "But in some regions of the
park ... access is clearly difficult."

Suarez and other top Colombian officials say aerial spraying may be
the only option.

National Police chief Gen. Jorge Daniel Castro, who supports spraying,
says "We're waiting for the order" to send in the planes.

If that happens, Indian groups, and many who live in national parks,
vow to protest.

"Fumigation is not the answer to the drug problem in Colombia," said
Nilson Zurita of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia. "It
destroys the environment and sickens animals and people. Another
solution must be found." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake