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Cocaine destroying rainforest parks in Colombia AP September 28, 2005 PUERTO ARTURO, Colombia (AP) -- 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 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 cat prowl in its shadows.
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 right-wing 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 reduced overall cocaine production in Colombia last year by 13 percent. 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.'' the Associated Press U.S. supports fumigating Colombia's nature reserves By Associated Press Monday, October 3, 2005 - Updated: 06:12 AM EST The U.S. ambassador urged Colombia Sunday to spray weed killer inside the country's spectacular nature parks to destroy cocaine-producing crops, insisting the chemicals will not cause widespread damage to the reserves' ecosystems. Harried by eradication campaigns elsewhere, drug traffickers have in recent years streamed into the parks, where spraying is banned. In the parks, they have torn down thousands of acres of virgin rain forest to plant coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine. In response, Colombia's government is debating whether to lift a ban on aerial fumigation in the reserves. ``We don't want the parks and reserves to turn into refuges or sanctuaries for coca,'' U.S. Ambassador William Wood said in an interview in the newsmagazine Cambio. Wood insisted that research shows that the weed killer used in the spraying ``doesn't seep into the soil or contaminate rivers.'' The amount of land under coca cultivation in Colombia's 49 national parks has more than tripled to 28,000 acres since 2003. But the destruction is worse than the figures would indicate; for every acre of coca planted, an average of three acres are torn down. Colombia, the world's biggest cocaine producer, 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. One of the richest areas is the Sierra Macarena National Park, where monkeys clamber across the jungle canopy and seven big cat species prowl in its shadows. ARTICLE CONTENT COPYRIGHT the Associated Press. 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