- Amboró National Park and Integrated Management Natural Area is located in the Santa Cruz department of central Bolivia, at the confluence of three different ecosystems: the Amazon, the northern Bolivian Chaco and the Andes.
- Amboró has been losing forest cover to illicit activities such as the cultivation of coca crops for the production of cocaine.
- National and departmental officials say Amboró authorities aren’t doing enough to keep encroachers out of the park.
- But rangers in Amboró say they don’t have enough resources to effectively enforce regulation.
In 2020, a Mongabay reporting team visited Bolivia’s Amboró National Park and Integrated Management Natural Area and found that portions of its protected forest had been cleared and replaced by illegal coca crops. Coca is a plant native to South America and is used to produce cocaine.
Satellite imagery and data show that deforestation has increased in Amboró since then. However, Vice Minister of Social Defense and Controlled Substances, Jaime Mamani, told Mongabay and El Deber reporters that authorities had eradicated some 443 hectares (1,094 acres) of coca crops in the park as of October 2023.
Global Forest Watch recorded some 256,000 deforestation alerts between November 2021 and November 2023 in Amboró. Each of the alerts represents the loss of 30 square meters of tropical forest (98.4 square acres). Many of these alerts coincided with fire activity in the park.
Román Vitrón, an environmental expert who has worked in the National Service of Protected Areas (known by its Spanish acronym, Sernap) and is familiar with the issues affecting Amboró, said it is highly likely this recent deforestation was done for the purpose of coca cultivation.
“Do you think someone interested in planting banana or papaya will go into the park to clear [areas] given how hard it is to get here by foot?” Vitrón told reporters.
Vitrón added that coca leaves can be harvested up to four times per year, which makes the crop highly profitable.
Andreína Tolavi, former Amboró park director, announced the presence of coca inside the park in October 2023, prompting government minister Eduardo del Castillo to accuse forest rangers of failing to report the coca crops earlier.
“There are park rangers and people in theses spots,” del Castillo told local media. “How is it possible that they are growing 20 hectares of coca and these people didn’t notify it before?”
A park ranger interviewed by Mongabay, and who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, objected to del Castillo’s rebuke.
“The minister [Eduardo del Castillo] accused us of not informing that there was coca in the natural reserve. Just so he knows, we completed the respective reports that point to and inform about the coca plantations,” the ranger said. “We complied with the procedure and issued reports to the then-director [Andreína Tolavi] and she communicated them to Sernap, which is our highest authority.”
Official park documents viewed by Mongabay and El Deber reporters referenced the presence illegal activities and clearing in Amboró in February 2023 — eight months before the findings were announced by former park director Tolavi. These documents mention an illegal aircraft landing strip and roads carved into the forest, as well as coca plantations.
A report submitted to Sernap by the director’s office of Amboró references five main deforested portions inside the park, along with two more just outside the park’s boundary.
Vice Minister Mamani said that authorities have eradicated more than 400 hectares (988 acres) of coca crops from inside Amboró since 2021, and that the Bolivian Special Force to Fight Drug Trafficking has conducted two interventions within the park.
“We found a lab for cocaine crystallization which we destroyed and burned in the presence of the prosecutor of controlled substances,” Mamani said.
However, after the last intervention in 2022, deforestation inside the park hasn’t stopped. Satellite imagery and data from Global Forest Watch show 12 new portions of Amboró were cleared between January and October 2023, amounting to a total of 35 hectares (86 acres) of deforestation. Global Forest Watch data show yet more forest loss in late 2023 and early 2024.
Amboró National Park and Integrated Management Natural Area is one of 22 national protected areas in Bolivia and encompasses some 636,000 hectares (1.57 million acres). It is uniquely located in the confluence of three different ecosystems: the Amazon, the northern Bolivian Chaco and the Andes.
The region is home to trees such as mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) and peach palm (Bactris gasipaes), along with jaguars (Panthera onca), Andean bears (Tremarctos ornatus) and with other mammal species, plus around 800 different bird species.
The Mongabay and El Deber reporting team visited the Integral Management Natural Area area of Amboró, where local communities are allowed to engage in sustainable forest activities. One of these communities is Jardín de las Delicias.
Residents of Jardín de las Delicias told reporters that it’s very hard to stop outsiders from going into the park to grow coca and other crops, establish cocaine purification labs and transport logged timber.
Residents said that, in 2013, two buses arrived full of people who allegedly intended to encroach into the protected area.
“We got organized and confronted them until we managed to get them out,” said a community leader who requested anonymity for safety concerns.
“Amboró park is very big,” said María,* a resident of Jardín de las Delicias. ”They tried to settle here but we didn’t allow it. They wanted to grow corn. They’d cleared part of the forest. We got organized and stopped the settlements. Beyond that is what’s terrible. There is coca, there are illegal plantations. But it’s hard to get there, it’s very far to get there by foot.”
Limber Vargas, Amboró’s new park director, said that Comarapa, another municipality inside the protected area, is also threatened by criminal organizations linked to drug trafficking. In October of 2023, Comarapa residents, park rangers and the mayor’s office were reportedly attacked while they were in the process of eradicating coca and marijuana crops.
Vargas told reporters that he will be addressing encroachment by coordinating with municipalities, as well as with national and departmental government agencies.
Milton Cortés is the president of the Social Management agency of Amboró, which comprises representatives from the nine municipalities that inhabit the protected area, along with other authorities of Santa Cruz department. He said he has urged the national government to step in and help stop encroachment into the park.
“The settlers arrive from the Cochabamba department. These settlements, unfortunately, are growing in different locations,” Cortés said. “We saw old settlements where there is coca and new settlements where they exploit timber. We reported it and asked for more control.”
Vice Minister of the Interior Regime, Johnny Aguilera, said the national police force plans to conduct interventions in the park. He also blamed continued encroachment on a failure of response by regional and local authorities.
“I want to point to the forest guard, that answers to our governorship [of Santa Cruz], as responsible because, unfortunately, there have been settlements and coca plantations. This park should never have been encroached,” Aguilera said at an October 2023 press conference.
Cortés objects to blame laid on Amboró authorities. He said this puts the responsibility of protecting 636,000 hectares (1,5 million acres) in the hands of 11 park rangers who are ultimately overseen by Sernap, which is part of the national Environment Ministry, and who don’t have access to enough resources to effectively enforce regulations and stop encroachment.
Cortés said rangers don’t have access to telecommunications equipment, and they lack fuel for their only working multi-person vehicle.
Reporters reached out to Sernap director Jiménez Cobo for comment, but didn’t receive a response before this story was initially published.
One of Amboró’s park rangers, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said that in spite of limited resources he and his colleagues risk their lives to care for the park.
“We can’t face coca growers or drug traffickers on our own because they’d simply kill us,” he said.
*Name changed to protect identity.
Banner image of the entrance to Amboró National Park by Iván Paredes.
This is a translated and adapted version ofa story that was first reported by Mongabay’s Latam team and published here on our Latam site on November 29, 2023
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