Colombia

Colombia: Colombia Cites Ecological Damage from Drug Trade     CARTAGENA, Colombia, April 7 (Reuters) - Drug traffickers have destroyed lush rain forests and other areas of Colombia, covering more than twice the size of the U.S. state of Delaware, to plant illicit drug crops, President Andres Pastrana said on Wednesday. Citing what he described as "immense ecological damage" from the drug trade, Pastrana said drug lords had cleared vast tracts of jungle and mountain cloud forests to plant both coca, the raw material for cocaine, and opium poppy.
    Pastrana gave no specific time frame for the destruction that he said had been wrought across Colombia, including in many of its parks and nature reserves which he described as "unique." But he said a total of more than 4,145 square miles (10,750 sq km) had been irreparably damaged by traffickers, who dump what he said was an estimated 316,000 gallons (1.2 mln litres) of dangerous chemicals into Colombia's ground and waterways every year to cultivate and process their drug crops.
    Pastrana, who spoke at the start of a two-day international seminar on the cocaine trade in this Caribbean port city, did not refer in his speech to the environmental cost of Colombia's U.S.-backed drug crop eradication programme.
    But environmentalists have long complained about collateral damage and potential health risks to humans from the herbicides used in the aerial spraying of the country's drug crops. Colombia supplies an estimated 80 percent of the world's cocaine and has the most extensive illicit drug plantations in Latin America, covering more than 196,000 acres (79,500 hectares), according to U.S. drug experts.

Source: REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 07Apr1999

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