Colombia announced on Monday a military offensive against drug trafficking in natural parks. According to the government, armed groups there are responsible for forest fires to deforest and install narco-plantations.
"The police are not going to withdraw from the national natural parks where the criminals pretend to settle," said the Minister of Defense at a press conference. “We are going to toughen the military offensive to get them out of their lairs. "
#NoticiasUno | Esta noche the situación de orden público en La Macarena parece estar agravándose. Su alcalde acaba to confirm that a fire was initiated in the aledaño bosque at Caño Cristales. pic.twitter.com/UQX2d7Fsmz
- Noticias Uno (@NoticiasUno) February 23, 2020"They want to destroy the forests and poison the rivers"
According to the minister, the ex-guerrillas who rejected the 2016 peace agreement would have caused a fire in mid-February which destroyed 700 hectares in the Sierra de la Macarena National Natural Park, a former stronghold of the Farc. The dissidents are said to use the peasants "to commit this massacre against nature".
They are "delinquents who want to destroy the forests and poison the rivers to plant coca", denounced the minister, adding that a special environmental force would be created to defend Colombian natural resources. In 2019, the government launched Operation Artemisa against deforestation, after the destruction of more than 197,000 hectares of forest, mainly in the Amazon.
Besides the indiscriminate cutting of trees for agriculture, illegal mining and coca plantations threaten nature. Almost 5% of the 169,000 hectares of narco-plantations listed in 2018 were in protected areas of Colombia. The former director of the National Natural Parks said that former guerrillas had threatened officials of this organization to force them to leave the reserves.
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- Environment
- Planet
- Cocaine
- Park
- deforestation
- drug traffickers
- Colombia