The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, September 28, 2005, Page 5, Image 5
As cocaine production enters nature parks, Colombia worries cure may be as bad as disease
Him Housego
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUERTO ARTURO, Colombia
— 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
weedkiller 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 worlds
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 cat 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 tom 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
right-wing paramilitary
factions, who refine the paste
into cocaine. Both groups have
infiltrated Colombia’s national
parks.
I
Fernando Vergara / 7Xe Associated Press
An anti-narcotic police officer cuts coca plants at the Sierra
Macarena National Park, one of the world’s most bio-diverse
regions and a refuge for cocaine producers.
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
. i
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
reduced overall cocaine
production in Colombia last
year by 13 percept.
Environmentalists insist the
solution is for government
workers to destroy the crops
with machetes — a method that
has worked in mountainous
areas beyond the spray planes’
reach.
But the Sierra Macarena and
many other national parks are
occupied by rebels who threaten
to kill anyone involved in
manual eradication, officials say.
The Counternarcotics Police
recently took politicians, judges
and journalists on a helicopter
tour of Sierra Macarena, where
Colombia’s grasslands meet the
Amazon jungle about 90 miles
south of the capital, Bogota.
“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, many whose members
live in national parks, vow to hit
the streets in 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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