How Columbia Regulators Became Purveyors of Illegal Wood

In Santander, Colombia, timber traders corrupted regulatory, police and judicial systems on their way to trafficking untold amounts of wood from the state. At the end of 2013, an official from the Yariguíes National Park contacted the Attorney General’s Office. The official told prosecutors that settlers were deforesting parts of the natural reserve to plant coca, the raw material used to make cocaine, and that loggers were illegally harvesting and selling the wood. The department of Santander, where this natural reserve is located, has three million hectares of land, 800,000 of which are natural forests like those in Yariguíes. There are laws designed to manage these areas within national parks and along their so-called buffer zones, or what are referred to as Special Handling Districts (Distritos de Manejo Especial). Still, so much of the state has been deforested already that some scientists say the erosion of forest cover is causing water shortages in areas of the department.