- Colombia lost 1,070 km² (413 mi²) of forest in 2024, according to data from the country’s environment ministry, representing a 35% increase from 2023.
- Illegal agriculture is thought to be the main driver behind this increase, with cattle ranching spreading inside national parks.
- The environment ministry notes that despite the increase in deforestation last year, the 2024 figure is still one of the lowest in the past 23 years.
- However, experts fear that the increase will continue in 2025 and that armed groups will continue to strengthen their hold over the Colombian Amazon, hindering the progress of conservation strategies with communities.
The prediction came true: deforestation in Colombia increased in 2024 after two years of decline, just as the environment ministry had warned since April last year. The ministry announced that Colombia lost 1,070 square kilometers (413 square miles) of forest in 2024, a 35% increase from 2023, when deforestation hit 793 km2 (306 mi2).
Former environment minister Susana Muhamad, who left office on March 3, said the increase was highly influenced by the restructured peace negotiations between the government and armed rebel groups in Colombia’s northern Amazonian region.
“What we’ve seen in 2024 is an increase in medium-sized deforestation patches involving operations paid for with vast sums, which have to do with organized crime and not the actions of rural farmers,” Muhamad said. She added that conservation agreements have been signed by nearly all households in rural areas in the Amazon.
Environment ministry data reveal that the Amazon is the region most affected by forest loss in Colombia, accounting for 63.6% of total deforestation in 2024, and home to 22 of 28 deforestation hotspots that year.
One the worst-hit of these hotspots, in Solano municipality in the department of Caquetá, is also the site of an active conflict between authorities and former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Four other critical hotspots are in the Llanos del Yari Yaguará II Indigenous Reserve (in Guaviare department), Cuemaní in Cartagena del Chairá (Caquetá), and Sierra de la Macarena and Tinigua national parks in Meta department.
“We’ve seen deforestation in the Sierra de la Macarena and Tinigua parks again,” Muhamad said.
Environment ministry figures show around 130 km2 (50 mi2) of deforestation in Sierra de la Macarena National Natural Park, and 140 km2 (54 mi2) in Tinigua National Natural Park. Combined, the two protected areas accounted for around a quarter of Colombia’s total deforestation last year.
A 2024 report on the state of the country’s national parks, the latest in a series published annually by a group of civil society organizations, shows 1,257 km2 (485 mi2) of deforestation in national parks between 2013 and 2023. Almost 77% of the total deforestation during this period was concentrated in five protected areas, with Tinigua and Sierra de la Macarena as the parks most affected.
While Muhamad said that farmers aren’t to blame for the increase in forest loss in the Colombian Amazon overall, others dispute this when it comes to the national parks. The report “A Path to Accountability: Why Colombia Needs a Cattle Traceability System,” published by U.K.-based watchdog Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) in February 2025, found that in 2023 alone, more than 24,000 head of cattle were reported grazing in more than 180 farms within these two parks, as well as in Cordillera de los Picachos National Natural Park, despite livestock ranching being prohibited within national parks in Colombia.
“The data are clear: livestock farming is devastating Colombia’s national parks and fueling deforestation in the Amazon,” said Susanne Breitkopf, deputy director of EIA’s U.S. forests team. “These parks are not only home to extraordinary biodiversity, but they are also critical in the fight against climate change.”
Satellite data from forest monitoring platform Global Forest Watch show Tinigua lost 32% of its primary forests between 2002 and 2023, more than half of that loss occurring in the period between 2018 and 2022. Preliminary data for 2025 show deforestation continuing to eat away at the park’s remaining habitat.
“EIA’s analysis of the data reveals the existence of 10,453 head of cattle in the park in 2023 in more than 50 ranches, contributing to its record forest loss. Four of these ranches held at least 500 head of cattle each,” the EIA report says.
Muhamad also highlighted the municipality of Mapiripán, in Meta department, where she said the government has observed heavy machinery carving roads through rainforest for the transportation of crops such as palm oil and coca, from which cocaine is made.
She also said there’s been an increase in land grabs and agricultural expansion that may be linked to money laundering in the Yaguará II Indigenous reserve. She stressed the need for criminal investigations into these activities driving deforestation.
“If impunity continues for those funding this deforestation, it will only encourage the continuation of this crime because there are no consequences,” the former minister said.
Rodrigo Botero, director of the NGO Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development (FCDS), said forest loss is concentrated in areas where governance has increasingly been lost to armed groups that exercise authority and make decisions over land use.
“The country is currently facing a territorial mismanagement, where land-use planning is tied to the interests of armed groups, their social base and their investment partners,” Botero said.
Muhamad said that despite the increase in deforestation last year, the figures for 2023 and 2024 for the country as a whole are still the lowest in the past 23 years.
Manuel Rodríguez, another former environment minister, said the reduction in deforestation rates over this period marks a major step forward and shows the country is heading in the right direction. He said the environmental commitment of President Gustavo Petro’s administration is very ambitious in terms of its goals to halt deforestation in the Colombian Amazon region and restore 7,580 km2 (2,927 mi2) of the country’s degraded ecosystems, with an emphasis on forests.
However, Rodríguez cautioned that such gains should not be taken for granted, saying that “if the significant success of reductions seen in previous years is reversed, we could likely reach deforestation rates similar to those we’ve had in the past.”
Banner image: A part of Putumayo rainforest showing areas of deforestation. Image by Natalia Pedraza Bravo.
This story was first published here in Spanish on March 5, 2025.
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Colombia’s cattle traceability bill awaits approval as deforestation spikes