Biodiversity and Conservation 10: 69–78, 2001. © 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
The San Lucas mountain range in Colombia: how much conservation is owed to the violence? LILIANA M. DÁVALOS Center for Environmental Research and Conservation – Columbia University and Mammalogy – American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York, New York 10024-5192, USA (fax: 212 769 5239; e-mail:
[email protected]) Received 12 August 1999; accepted in revised form 29 February 2000
Abstract. The imminence of forest conversion in the northern Andean region requires a careful evaluation of the social, political and economic context in which environmental efforts take place in order to achieve conservation. Through its socioeconomic effects violent conflict can result in threats pertinent to both conservation and resource management schemes. A survey of the San Lucas mountain range, at the northern tip of the Colombian Central Andes, is presented as a case study of factors associated with violent conflict that may hinder or enhance conservation in this complex social and political setting. Instability in land use and tenure associated with armed conflict were identified as major pressures associated with further conversion of tropical forest habitats; while low rates of settlement and measures enforced by armed rule were very effective in preserving certain tracts of forest. War certainly alleviates demographic pressure from settlers, but contemporary patterns of colonization in San Lucas suggest that armed conflict is detrimental to conservation purposes and to key members of the biological community. Key words: biodiversity conservation, Colombia, forest conversion, violence Abbreviations: FARC – Colombian Armed Revolutionary Forces; ELN – National Liberation Army; NGO – Non-governmental organization; ERP – People’s Revolutionary Army
Introduction Forests in the northern Andes are currently one of the major conservation priorities on a global scale due to their fragility, biological richness, high rates of endemism and multiple anthropogenic threats (Olson and Dinerstein 1997). The northernmost part of the Andes, mostly located in Colombia, is subdivided into three mountain ranges that generate a very complex geographical pattern of exceptional biological diversity (Stattersfield et al. 1998). The Colombian Andes also correspond to the most densely populated areas in the country (CIESIN 1998). Thus, the last remnants of Andean forests are priorities in the national (IVH 1997) and international conservation agenda (WWF 1996). Recently, the relevance of violent conflict as a critical factor in biodiversity conservation has been examined; with contrasting results for specific circumstances – contemporary Rwanda vs. 19th century North America – (Kanyamibwa 1998; Martin
70 and Szuter 1999). Despite a well-documented history of widespread and localized violent conflict, the implications of war for biodiversity conservation in Colombia have not been studied. This paper reviews forest conservation and armed groups in Colombia in an attempt to analyze in detail the environmental effects of the current social and political scenario in San Lucas (Bolívar, Colombia). The analysis is based on direct observations from sites visited during a reconnaissance survey conducted in the summer of 1998 that intended to negotiate scientific permits with local authorities. Available documents and press coverage of the subsequent evolution of the conflict in San Lucas have also been used.
Background Forests as strategic scenarios in guerrilla war The modern history of Colombian guerrilla warfare officially starts with resistance to the government attack on Marquetalia (Caldas) in 1964 by Manuel Marulanda-Vélez AKA Tirofijo, and his band of liberal guerrillas (Behar 1986). These guerrillas have attained international notoriety in the last two decades as the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC – Spanish acronym). Areas currently under FARC control match subtropical forest remnants including the East Andes/Llanos interface, the Macarena mountain range, the low Sierras rising from the north Chocó, the upper Caquetá and Putumayo river basins, parts of the Pacific slope of the West Andes in Cauca and Nariño. Additionally, FARC distribution includes lowland forest in the Darién and Urabá, the lowlands of the middle Magdalena river, and the Guaviare river basin. The second largest guerrilla group in Colombia, the National Liberation Army (ELN – Spanish acronym), started as an urban student communist movement conducted by Fabio Vásquez-Castaño inspired by Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s ‘guerrilla foci’ policies. From its original attack in Simacota, this group retreated into the San Lucas mountain range targeting the nearby petroleum extraction infrastructure as a military objective. Considerably smaller than the FARC, the ELN’s area of influence is limited to several foci throughout the middle Magdalena valley, the northern Llanos, and the mountains of San Lucas as stronghold and headquarters. The non-forested regions where either or both guerrillas rule correspond mainly to frontier and degraded farmland zones of insufficient economic development and near-absence of institutional infrastructure. These forested and non-forested areas under guerrilla rule (all but the wettest Chocó lowlands) are also heavily dependent on illegal activities such as contraband and drug growing, processing and trafficking. So, what are the environmental effects of the state of belligerence? Clearly, this is a question that must be addressed to understand the unique considerations entailed by conservation in Colombian forests that lie beyond the conservation efforts of both government and non-government organizations (see Figure 1).
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Figure 1. Forest cover and guerrilla control in Colombia (Redrawn from Echand´ia 1999). Outlined grey areas are currently forested, although some may be fragmented and degraded (Bryant et al. 1997). Grey shadows correspond to areas under guerrilla domination, beyond the conservation efforts of governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGO). See text for detailed accounts of guerrilla distribution.
The San Lucas mountain range Geography, history and development policies, or absence thereof The San Lucas mountain range encompasses 2 million hectares of tropical and subtropical forest, it is forested if compared with its surrounding lowlands, and its biological diversity has not been documented. Isolated from surrounding elevations by at least 100 km and the Cauca, Magdalena and Nechí rivers, it would be an area of
72 endemism and the last forested refuge of a considerable number of threatened species (IVH 1997). San Lucas looms largely in the Colombian media as part of that no man’s land better known as the Magdalena Medio. Santa Rosa del Sur is the main town in these mountains. Founded in the latter half of the 1800s, Santa Rosa is the spearhead of colonization into the mountain range and its lively economy supports an exceptionally large commercial district. Regarded by its native and adopted inhabitants as an expansive and progressive town, Santa Rosa is the crossroads of the network of dirt roads and mule trails that today support a gold and coca boom economy, as well as a smaller, more traditional market of bean and maize crops. Although gold is not a new source of profit for the region, the gold trade was rather unimportant over the course of the century and Santa Rosa remained a relatively obscure mountain settlement. It wasn’t until the price of gold soared in the 1990s from US $35 per ounce in 1990 to its current US $300 (Jacobson 1998) that Santa Rosa attracted its bustling gold market. Almost simultaneously, another very lucrative commerce blossomed in Santa Rosa: the coca processing laboratories that dot the Colombian forests and countryside, made no exception of this large tract of forest. The growth and spread of frontier agriculture, most of it exploiting coca as cash crop, has permanently affected the eastern, more accessible half of these mountains. Little is left now of the full forest cover visible in aerial pictures from 1995 (IGAC 1995). Deforestation has been particularly extreme along the roads that reach into the mountains out of Santa Rosa. The national and local government and their resources have been largely absent from the colonization process in San Lucas. Since artisan gold mining is a shifting activity whereby gold miners constantly track new lodes, only makeshift settlements sprout wherever a new mine is discovered. Agriculture has expanded throughout the region in the past 10 years, as demand for fresh products grows, fuelled by the scores of would-be and actual miners recruited in the havoc of violence-related displacement from the surrounding lowlands (Giraldo 1996). Infrastructure to support the burgeoning population has lagged behind the recent colonization of the montane forests of San Lucas. The roads and trails that lead from Santa Rosa to the mines are strenuous strips of clay. Even relatively stable settlements, e.g., San Pedro Frío, are removed from the closest health centre by a 12-h journey by mule and jeep, and children must walk for hours to the nearest elementary school, run by a teacher who has not received a high school diploma. Settlements west of San Pedro are even further removed from these basic public services. Effects on the local environment Reagents for gold exploitation and coca processing constitute one of the most outstanding environmental hazards in the region with mercury, sodium cyanide, petrol, acetone and formaldehyde runoff draining untreated into the streams that nurture the
73 Magdalena, and (less so) Cauca rivers. No overall figures are available, but at the mule post that connects the road with a trail to San Pedro–La Punta, 1625 m elevation – 2000 kg of sodium cyanide and 325 kg of mercury were dispatched in one day on to mules headed for the settlements. Biologist William Díaz was commissioned by Ecofondo – an internationally funded environmentalist NGO – and the local mining co-operative to measure traces of pollutants in the rivulets around San Pedro. Although the budget ran short before the chemical analyses were carried out, the absence of freshwater fauna noted in his unpublished results may attest to the devastating effects of the pollutants in this ecosystem. Settlement along the access routes that crisscross the east slope of San Lucas, a by-product of mining, has resulted in increased conversion to agriculture, leaving only small (
