Pubdate: Tue, 27 Sep 2005
Source: Florida Times-Union (FL)
Copyright: 2005 The Florida Times-Union
Contact: http://www.jacksonville.com/aboutus/letters_to_editor.shtml
Website: http://www.times-union.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/155
Author: Kim Housego, Associated Press Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

AS COCAINE BLIGHT SPREADS INTO NATURE PARKS, COLOMBIA WORRIES THE 
CURE MAY BE AS BAD AS THE DISEASE

PUERTO ARTURO, Colombia - 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.

But Sierra Macarena is most threatened by cocaine. A recent flight 
over part of its 1.6 million acres revealed a trail of ugly gashes 
and charred trunks of trees felled by coca planters. The intruders 
also have built dozens of makeshift drug labs in the park and in the 
nearby village of Puerto Arturo, bringing in tons of gasoline, 
cement, hydrochloric acid and other toxic chemicals to process the 
coca leaves into cocaine. All of it pollutes the rivers and soil.

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."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman