Hunting a rare bird shows how the violence of drug trafficking in Ecuador hinders research August 31, 2024

Garzon has been studying the El Oro parakeet for two decades, working for its conservation and supporting the sustainable management of its habitats (Rodrigo BUENDIA)

By AFP - Agence France Presse

Hunting a rare bird shows how the violence of drug trafficking in Ecuador hinders research

Paola LÓPEZ

Biologist Cesar Garzon was searching for a small endangered parakeet in southern Ecuador when he was warned that he could be kidnapped, highlighting the danger for scientists in the biodiverse country plunged into drug trafficking violence.

“Do your work elsewhere because it's dangerous here,” he told a man who spoke to him in April, in the troubled mining town of Camilo Ponce Enriquez.

That night, the town's mayor was shot dead. Earlier this month, a clash between criminal groups in the town left five dead, two of whom were found decapitated and one burned.

Garzon, a bird expert from the state-run National Biodiversity Institute (Inabio), tried to continue his research in a neighboring town, whose mayor was also killed.

Tired of the ever-present danger, he packed his bags and returned to Quito.

Garzon has been studying the El Oro parakeet for two decades, working for its conservation and supporting the sustainable management of its habitats.

Mostly green with a red forehead, the bird is endemic to Ecuador and has only been seen in the provinces of Azuay and El Oro, in the southwest of the country.

With an estimated 1,000 specimens remaining, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies it as endangered.

Garzon visited Camilo Ponce Enriquez, in the province of Azuay, to locate and study the endangered parakeet.

But the gold-rich town is in the clutches of the Los Lobos drug trafficking gang, which finances its activities with illegal mining.

“We are left with uncertainty and frustration (...) There is a lack of information about this place,” he told AFP.

He said the violence was a blow to conservation, because “there may be important areas that harbor endemic or threatened species and we can't do anything about it.”

-'Windows of opportunity

Situated between Colombia and Peru - the world's biggest cocaine producers - the once-peaceful Ecuador has seen violence explode in recent years as enemy gangs with links to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.

As the gangs have gained ground, homicides in Ecuador have risen from six per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to a record 47 per 100,000 in 2023.

Mario Yanez, another Inabio biologist, said his current work revolves around finding “windows of opportunity” to continue researching despite the violence.

Scientists work closely with local communities and authorities and take shorter field trips or focus on similar species located in less risky areas.

“The levels of violence have led to total restrictions in certain areas of the country,” especially on the coast and where there is mining, said Yanez.

These places carry the “stigma” of violence and this “is, unfortunately, limiting international cooperation funds to carry out conservation actions”, he added,

The Lalo Loor private reserve, in the southwest of Manabi, is one of Ecuador's last intact remnants of a unique ecosystem known as coastal dry forest, home to many endemic species.

The province is also a stronghold for drug trafficking. Due to the security crisis, American universities have canceled the annual visit of researchers and students to the reserve, an important source of income for Lalo Loor.

Their continued absence could force the closure of the reserve's administrative office, said manager Mariela Loor.

Judith Denkinger, a German biologist at the San Francisco University in Quito, told AFP that since 2022 she had suspended her two decades of research into humpback whales off the coast of the province of Esmeraldas, in the northwest of the country, which borders Colombia.

She was unable to gather photographic or acoustic records of the humpback whales that come to the equatorial Pacific to mate and give birth.

She also highlighted the situation of fishermen, with whom she often works at sea.

“Pirates, who are usually drug traffickers, come and threaten them, hijack their boat or steal their engine or kidnap them” to force them to traffic drugs, she said.

Daniel Vizuete, a specialist in the Social Studies of Science and Technology at Flacso University in Quito, said that research related to the environment was “perhaps the most eroded precisely because it takes place (...) in places where institutions are weakest”.

“This means that even the lives of researchers could be at risk,” he added.

He also points to other possible effects of criminal violence on science, such as a “regression in terms of women's participation”.

pld/sp/lv/mar/fb/des