Editorial, El Deber: A clandestine and deforesting bridge An investigative report by journalist Roberto Navia discovered that, without government authorization or any environmental impact study, more than 200 Mennonite families built a 150-meter bridge over the Parapetí River, at a cost of approximately half a million dollars, in the middle of the forests of the…
Tag: environmental damage
Drug factories multiply in the depths of protected areas – Se multiplican las fábricas de droga en las entrañas de las áreas protegidas
Silvana Vincenti, El Deber: Historical data between 2017 and 2021 from the Special Force to Fight Drug Trafficking (Felcn) shows an increase in drug factories within protection zones, forest reserves and indigenous territories “Payroll: Calicha, Negro, Adam, Maira; 4,956 (Kg)”, says the notebook found in May of last year by agents of the Special Force…
Drug trafficking: owner of Bolivia? – Narcotráfico: ¿dueño de Bolivia?
Editorial, El Deber: The powerful drug clan that no one saw Day after day, new revelations emerge about what appears to be a powerful clan around drug trafficker Omar Rojas Echeverría, whom in Colombia, where he is being held pending extradition to the United States, they call “Bolivian Pablo Escobar.” The most recent thing that…
In Bolivia, Indigenous groups fear the worst from dam project on Beni River
by Iván Paredes Tamayo on 11 January 2022 | Translated by Max Radwin, Mongabay: More than 5,000 Indigenous people would be impacted by flooding from the construction of two dams in Bolivia, according to Indigenous organizations and environmentalists. Successive governments have mulled the Chepete-El Bala hydroelectric project for more than half a century, and the current administration of…
‘Only the rains will stop it’: Bolivia forest fires hit protected areas
by Yvette Sierra Praeli on 7 January 2022 | Translated by Sydney Sims, Mongabay: In the first 10 months of 2021, forest fires in Bolivia razed nearly 2.5 million hectares (6.2 million acres) in the department of Santa Cruz alone, exceeding the figure for the whole of 2020. In Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s biggest department, 58% of the burned…
Forests for Sale: How Land Traffickers Profit by Slicing up Bolivia’s Protected Areas
by Eduardo Franco Berton Shortly after Bolivia’s Bajo Paraguá Municipal Protected Area was established in February 2021, authorities began receiving reports of invasions and deforestation in and around the new protected area. Local sources say land traffickers are illegally buying up plots of protected land to resell, often repeatedly, to third parties. Mongabay spoke with one…
Bolivian Thoughts | Pensamientos Bolivianos (Bilingual/Bilingüe) 