Mexican drug cartels, Salvadoran drug gangs and Chinese-backed groups are ravaging portions of the Selva Maya forest, which spans the borders of Guatemala, Mexico and Belize, according to Yale 360.
Mexican drug cartels, Salvadoran drug gangs and Chinese-backed groups are ravaging portions of the Selva Maya forest, which spans the borders of Guatemala, Mexico and Belize, according to Yale 360.
This trio of new threats joins the list of usual tropical forest threats, such as illegal loggers, fires and commercial hunters. They are concentrating their efforts in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in northern Guatemala. The Mexican cartels clear the forest to build airstrips for drug trafficking, the Salvadoran gangs carve out large cattle ranches through which they launder drug money, and the Chinese-backed organized crime groups establish illegal logging networks in order to transport prime tropical hardwoods to Asia, according to environmental reporter William Allen.
As a result, the Selva Maya has effectively been split in two. The western half, which borders Mexico, is under siege, while the eastern half of the reserve is lush and intact. "The story of the Maya Biosphere Reserve has increasingly become a tale of two reserves: one of conservation successes and one of failures," Roan McNab, director of the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society's (WCS) Guatemala program, told Allen.
Trouble started to arrive in the region in the 1960s when roads were built to access oil and timber. About a decade ago the criminals intensified efforts of clearing forest to make room for airstrips and cattle ranches. All this has prompted some in Guatemala to coin the term "narcoganaderia"-a combination of the Spanish words for drugs and cattle ranching-for what is going on.
