- Bolivia’s Tucabaca Valley Municipal Wildlife Reserve has been beset by clearing and fires over the past several years.
- Now, mining, infrastructure development and land trafficking are adding to the pressure faced by the reserve.
- Residents of nearby communities have formed an association called Movement in Defense of the Tucabaca Valley.
- In June, a delegation from the Movement visited the Tucabaca reserve to assess the damage.
Tucabaca Valley Municipal Wildlife Reserve comprises more than 2,640 square kilometers (1,020 square miles) of semi-arid forest and tropical savannah in the heart of southern Bolivia’s Chiquitania region. However, this protected area and surrounding habitat is being lost to industrial agriculture and associated fires and infrastructure development.
The Tucabaca (also referred to as “Tucavaca”) reserve was the first of its kind in Bolivia when it was created 24 years ago and is situated in the municipality of Roboré in the department of Santa Cruz, near the border with Brazil. It acts as a refuge for wildlife of the Chiquitano dry forest ecosystem, which connects South America’s two largest biomes: the Gran Chaco and the Amazon rainforest.
Tucabaca is also inhabited by several Indigenous communities, who for millennia have protected and relied on its wetlands and rivers, forests and grasslands.
But today, Tucabaca’s natural wealth is in danger.
Roads and a bridge in the midst of a protected area
Eder Santibáñez, coordinator of the Movement in Defense of the Tucabaca Valley, told Mongabay Latam that on June 23, he and a delegation of 10 others carried out an inspection of the Tucabaca Valley and reserve, which yielded discouraging results.
The delegation’s first stop was in the area surrounding the Mennonite colony of El Roble. There they were confronted with a scene they described as alarming: piles of felled trees and dry leaves ready for burning. Santibáñez said that part of the plant material had already been burned and that there was a whole field of ashes.
“We are very concerned,” Santibáñez told Mongabay Latam. “New threats have emerged, not only in the Tucabaca Valley, but also in the Tucabaca UCPN reserve, which is a very sensitive area that should be protected. We received images [in June 2024] that show that the Mennonites have made inroads into the protected area. We are talking about a stretch 800 metres long and eight metres wide. All this suggests that they want to take water from the Tucabaca River to irrigate their crops inside the protected area.”
The delegation also found a bridge over the Tucabaca River made of wood, metal and concrete. Santibáñez could not find a sign or plaque indicating that it was a municipal, departmental or national project, but said he believed it was built by Mennonites.
“We realized it wasn’t a project of the municipality or the [Santa Cruz] government,” said Julio Zeber, also a member of the Movement in Defense of the Tucabaca Valley. “The structure has been there a year and a half and was built by the Mennonites. Does it have an environmental permit? Was an environmental impact assessment carried out, considering the size of the structure and its location inside a protected area?”
Santa Cruz government officials visited the area following the delegation’s inspection and verified it was not constructed with government approval. They elaborated that the project did not acquire an environmental permit nor carry out an environmental impact assessment (EIA), both mandatory requirements in Bolivia for large structures.
Zeber said the flow of the Tucabaca River had been greatly reduced, which he blamed on diversion for irrigation of Mennonite sorghum and soy plantations. A team from the Santa Cruz Environmental Quality Service (SDCAM) confirmed that the bridge had also contributed to contamination and reduced flow of the Tucabaca River. They said local residents told them that Mennonite colonists were responsible for its construction.
Mongabay Latam contacted Mennonite colonies in the area for comment, but received no response.
Mining and ‘ghost communities’
In addition to infrastructure development, deforestation and water exploitation, Tucabaca is facing another threat: gold mining.
During a visit on June 23, the delegation of the Movement in Defense of the Tucabaca Valley found evidence of mining activity inside the protected area.
“We could see mining was being carried out seven kilometres from the community of Aguas Calientes, inside the [Tucabaca] protected area,” Santibáñez told Mongabay Latam. “There have been reports of miners coming into the area since 2023.”
The team from the Santa Cruz government also acknowledged the mining activity and said that the case would be referred to the relevant authority.
Mauro Mendoza, a resident of Santiago de Chiquitos, a municipality near Tucabaca Valley, was among the delegation. He said he was beside himself when he saw the deforestation that had taken place inside the protected area.
“We did the inspection and saw extensive felling of trees in the valley, but also inside the protected area,” Mendoza said. “[In June, we were] experiencing a water crisis as a result of the deforestation being carried out by the Mennonites and ranch owners.”
María René Barrancos, an SDCAM technician, said that during their visit the team observed the clearing of primary forest with high-conservation-value tree species on five properties. Barrancos said that the Forest and Land Authority would be informed so it could take the necessary action.
Rubén Darío Arias Ortiz, a member of the National Coordinating Committee for the Defense of Indigenous Peasant Territories and Protected Areas also expressed concern about the reserve. Arias Ortiz, who lives in the municipality of Roboré, said that land grabs have been taking place in Tucabaca Valley for a decade and are now encroaching on the protected area.
“These men came, divided up the forest and left. They fenced the area with barbed wire, posts and railings,” Arias Ortiz told Mongabay Latam. “They’re people with money. They did this in the buffer zone of the protected area. What I’m afraid of is that they’ll go into the reserve to extract timber; there have already been complaints [from community members] about land grabs inside the protected area.”
Arias Ortiz added that “ghost communities” created in the Tucabaca Valley have now moved into the buffer zone of the protected area. He said two communities in particular are about to expand into the reserve: Túpac Amaru and 26 de Julio.
Ghost communities are communities that enter protected areas or state land to carry out illegal logging and agricultural activities.
Ambiguous legality
The issue is complicated by the fact that encroachment of agricultural communities into the Tucabaca protected area may not be outright illegal, according to Iván Quezada, assembly member of the Department of Santa Cruz.
“The biggest problem is that there are authorizations for settlements inside the protected area [awarded by the National Institute for Agrarian Reform] amounting to 7,000 hectares,” Quezada said. “They haven’t yet entered because there aren’t any roads, but the door is open for them to enter legally.”
Before becoming a departmental assembly member, Quezada was the mayor of the municipality of Roboré and fought against such encroachment while in office. One of these battles was in October 2018, when a group consisting of 33 families deforested 55 hectares of land, under the pretext that they had the support of INRA and the Forest and Land Authority to consolidate their community, which they called Túpac Amaru.
Quezada, together with other members of the Roboré Management Committee, managed to stop this community from going in and causing more deforestation. Despite these efforts, he said that Túpac Amaru is now encroaching into the reserve.
Pablo Sauto, Secretary of Sustainable Development and Environment of the Government of Santa Cruz, said that during an inspection carried out in the area in January 2024, community members told them they had INRA authorization to settle in the buffer zone. He showed Mongabay Latam four certificates awarded by INRA to four people, including three siblings, who were granted 8,000 hectares. In total, according to the government of Santa Cruz, INRA awarded a total of 15,000 hectares.
INRA, however, denied authorizing settlement permits both in the Tucabaca Valley and the municipal reserve itself. In an official statement, INRA urged Sauto to “avoid deflecting attention onto internal conflicts of the government of Santa Cruz, such as the temporary substitution of the governor, and focus instead on the issue of land.”
Quezada said land trafficking is also taking place. He said there is a community called Tamarindos that was granted 17,000 hectares, but not a single person lives there. Quezada said that while visiting the area he found a man clearing plots and digging wells, who told him he had acquired the plots from other community members.
Quezada also said he is concerned about another ghost community called Morales, which appropriated 3,000 hectares, 500 of which are located inside the Tucabaca protected area.
“These land grabs can’t be allowed,” he said. “As long as INRA’s resolutions still stand, we’re going to fight them. We’ll take action, legal measures in the departmental assembly.
Becker Barba Frías is a Tucabaca park ranger and said ghost communities can enter the protected area at any time and illegally extract timber. He also expressed concern about the illegal burning of nearby vegetation to prepare land for agriculture, which causes forest fires that impact the reserve. Satellite data from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) analyzed by monitoring platform Global Forest Watch show fire activity in Tucababa has been “unusually high” in 2024. Many of the fire alerts in the reserve appear to coincide with burning in nearby cropland, indicating they may have spread from fires set to clear land for agriculture.
Zoila Zevallos, former head of the community-based organization Tucabaca Defense Committee, said the reserve was created at the request of local residents a quarter-century ago and is now defended by those same residents.
“We’ve joined with other institutions seeking to defend the Tucabaca Valley, but we have no other support,” Zevallos said. “We don’t want mining to destroy our protected area, we don’t want the Mennonites to destroy our protected area, we don’t want land grabbers to destroy our protected area. We asked for the reserve and we’re defending it ourselves.”
Banner image: The ashes of trees felled and burned in the Tucabaca protected area. Image courtesy of the Movement in Defense of the Tucabaca Valley.
This story is a translated and updated version of a story that was reported by Mongabay’s Latam team and first published here on ourLatam site on July 22, 2024.
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