Cocaine industry harming birds – BirdGuides

Cocaine trafficking is harming nature, with more than 60 bird species at risk due to deforestation.

A recent study by Cornell Lab of Ornithology found that two-thirds of the areas that are most important to forest birds – including 67 species of migratory species that breed in the US and Canada and overwinter in Central America – are at increased risk from drugs. trafficking activities.

Researcher Amanda Rodewald told the Cornell Chronicle that terrain gets deforested when traffickers create landing strips and roads in remote areas.

Philadelphia Vireo is one species at risk of habitat loss due to deforestation (Jon Mercer).

Deforestation for drugs

“When drug traffickers are pushed into remote forested areas, they clear land to create landing strips, roads and cattle pastures,” said Rodewald, senior director of the Center for Avian Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

“Those activities – and the counterdrug strategies that contribute to them – can deforest landscapes and threaten species.”

More than half of the global population of one in five migratory species inhabit areas that became more attractive to trafficking following peak law enforcement pressure, measured as the volume of cocaine seized. For example, 90% of the world's population of federally endangered Golden-cheeked Warblers and 70% of Golden-winged Warblers and Philadelphia Vireos winter in those vulnerable landscapes.

The largest remaining forests in Central America, which are disproportionately inhabited by Indigenous people, are seeing growing levels of cocaine trafficking.