As the Amazon burns, Colombia's forests decimated for cattle and coca

[Judi Lynn]

A new deforestation analysis shows a disturbing trend of forest loss inside national parks such as Sierra de la Macarena, Tinigua, Chiribiquete and Nukak.

BY ANTONIO JOSÉ PAZ CARDONA ON 26 SEPTEMBER 2019 | TRANSLATED BY ROMINA CASTAGNINO
Mongabay Series: Global Forests

The last few weeks have been critical for the Amazon in Brazil and Bolivia. Fires in August razed thousands of hectares of forest and drew the attention of the international community.

Neighboring Colombia hasn’t been spared either. Although the fire season here usually occurs in January and February, there has been a surge in deforestation, especially in the country’s northwestern Amazon region. Protected areas of vital importance to indigenous communities and the Andes-Amazon-Orinoquía ecological corridor have also been affected.

Deforestation has strongly impacted national parks such as Sierra de la Macarena, Tinigua, Chiribiquete and Nukak, according to the latest report from the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), an initiative of the Amazon Conservation Association (ACCA) in collaboration with the Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development (FCDS) in Colombia.

Colombia lost nearly 200,000 hectares (almost 500,000 acres) of forest in 2018, according to the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (known by its Spanish acronym IDEAM). And while that figure is down 10 percent from 2017, national parks are still in danger. The municipality of La Macarena, for example, registered the greatest surge in deforestation in the whole country (an increase of 26 percent), with almost half “occurring inside Tinigua park,” says Rodrigo Botero, director of the FCDS.

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https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/as-the-amazon-burns-colombias-forests-decimated-for-cattle-and-coca/