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Deforestation in Eastern Honduran protected areas by narco-traffickers. Credit: Robert Hyman
In an article in the journal Science, seven researchers who have done work in Central America point to growing evidence that drug trafficking threatens forests in remote areas of Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and nearby countries.
Traffickers are slashing down forests, often within protected areas, to make way for clandestine landing strips and roads to move drugs, and converting forests into agribusinesses to launder their drug profits, the researchers say.
Much of this appears to be a response to U.S.-led anti-trafficking efforts, especially in Mexico, said Kendra McSweeney, lead author of the Science article and an associate professor of geography at The Ohio State University.
"In response to the crackdown in Mexico, drug traffickers began moving south into Central America around 2007 to find new routes through remote areas to move their drugs from South America and get them to the United States," McSweeney said.
"When drug traffickers moved in, they brought ecological devastation with them."
For example, the researchers found that the amount of new deforestation per year more than quadrupled in Honduras between 2007 and 2011—the same period when cocaine movements in the country also spiked.
McSweeney is a geographer who has done research in Honduras for more than 20 years, studying how indigenous people interact with their environment. The drug trade is not something she would normally investigate, but it has been impossible to ignore in recent years, she said.
"Starting about 2007, we started seeing rates of deforestation there that we had never seen before. When we asked the local people the reason, they would tell us: "los narcos" (drug traffickers)."
There were other indications of drug trafficking taking place in the area.
"I would get approached by people who wanted to change $20 bills in places where cash is very scarce and dollars are not the normal currency. When that starts happening, you know narcos are there," she said.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-01-drug-trafficking-deforestation-central-america.html#jCp
