This story is a collaboration between La Nación and Mongabay Latam. It is the first installment of a five-part series about illegal deforestation for marijuana production in eastern Paraguay. Read the second, third, fourth and fifth parts.

CAAGUAZÚ, Paraguay — Stretching between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, the Upper Parana Atlantic Forest is one of the most biodiverse ecoregions on the planet. A single hectare can host 450 different tree species, and more than 90% of its amphibian species and 50% of plants are endemic, meaning they’re found nowhere else in the world.

The Upper Parana is also one of the world’s most endangered forests. The ecoregion has been almost entirely cleared in Brazil, and Argentina holds the largest remaining areas of connected habitat. In Paraguay, studies estimate less than 10% remains, mostly as fragmented forest islands scatted across a largely unprotected, denuded landscape.

The Upper Parana is part of the greater Atlantic Forest, which is considered one of the most diverse and biologically rich forests in the world and is home to 264 known species of mammals and 936 species of birds. The Atlantic Forest encompasses 15 ecoregions that originally covered more than 1.3 million square kilometers (502,000 sq miles) of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina. But decades of deforestation have taken a toll, and less than 13% remains today.

Agriculture is the driving force of deforestation in Paraguay, with much of the country’s forests cleared legally to make way for cattle, soy, corn and sugar cane fields over the past half-century. On average, almost 8,000 hectares (19,768 acres) are destroyed annually for these purposes, according Paraguay’s National Forestry Institute.

But illegal deforestation is also a problem in the country, one to which even the country’s few protected areas aren’t immune. A joint investigation by Mongabay and La Nación found plots recently cleared for marijuana cultivation in several national parks and reserves that hold some of Paraguay’s largest remnants of Upper Parana Atlantic Forest.

A persistent threat

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), 9,107 hectares (22,503 acres) have been deforested in Bosque Mbaracayú Reserve, San Rafael National Park, Morombí Reserve and Caazapá National Park since 2004, at least 2,350 hectares (5,806 acres) of which are now marijuana plantations. According to the National Anti-Drug Secretariat (SENAD), 81,871 kilos (180,494 pounds) of marijuana were seized and 797 parcels were destroyed in Paraguay’s portion of the Upper Parana Atlantic Forest between 2015 and 2020.

In February, SENAD agents conducted an intervention in Morombí, where they discovered and destroyed 202 hectares of marijuana crops, 23 drug trafficking camps and 70 stoves used to convert felled trees to charcoal.

“It’s getting out of control,” said Rodrigo Zárate, director of Atlantic Forest-focused conservation organization Guyrá Paraguay.

According to researchers, the first marijuana plantations in Paraguay were established in the 1980s by Brazilian traffickers who fled their country due to tight police and military control over the land.

“They brought the seed and provided the money,” said Vladimir Jara, a journalist who writes about the drug trade. “They had no pressure because they knew the plant could grow even with minimum care. Then they returned to take the finished merchandise.” Jara added that “there was no way the villagers would turn down working on the marijuana plots as cultivators and foremen” as they earned much more than what they would with legal crops.

Jara says the first reference of government intervention in marijuana plantations dates back to 1989, months after the overthrow of Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner.

“According to the National Narcotics Directorate – today known as the National Anti-Drug Secretariat (SENAD) – various hills in Pedro Juan Caballero [a Paraguayan town] were fumigated using a small aircraft,” Jara told Mongabay.

1992 was a key year. During the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, General Andrés Rodríguez, then Paraguay’s president, presented a project to protect forests through the creation of national parks as well as public and private reserves. This initiative gave rise to the approval in 1994 of Law 354, which created Paraguay’s Protected Area System.

On paper, the country seemed to be moving towards greater protection of its forests. However, reality on the ground was very different. Optimal growing conditions and valuable timber lured farmers and loggers willing to skirt the law to make some cash. In 1994, when the Protected Areas Law was enacted, eastern Paraguy had about 43,000 sq km (16,600 sq mi)) of forest cover, according to the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MADES). Today, 27,000 sq km (10,400 sq mi) remain, according to National Forestry Institute data. In other words, the region lost around 38% of its forest cover over the past 26 years despite government efforts to protect it.

“We are really on the edge,” said a representative from the Ministry of the Environment who wished to remain anonymous.

Protection and impunity

Currently, 64 park rangers are tasked with monitoring all Upper Parana protected areas in Paraguay and are overseen by the Biodiversity Protection and Conservation arm of the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development (MADES). This number is woefully inadequate, according to MADES director Darío Mandelburger, who says the ideal number of people on the ground should be around 500 and include forest monitors and specialized guides in addition to rangers.

“In reality, we are very far from those numbers,” Mandelburger told Mongabay.

Protecting these areas is a dangerous job. Park rangers report receiving threats from drug and timber traffickers, and some resorted to wearing bulletproof vests after three rangers were shot to death by intruders allegedly linked to drug trafficking.

“Threats and intimidation happen almost every day,” one park ranger told Mongabay. “The problem is that we are from the area, they know us, we know each other, sometimes that can be an advantage but sometimes not. Nobody wants to be a martyr.”