According to a new study, the cocaine trade not only harms the environment, but also threatens habitats important to dozens of species of migratory birds.
Two-thirds of the areas most important for forest birds – including 67 species of migratory birds that breed in the US and Canada and winter in Central America – are at increased risk from cocaine smuggling activities, according to the study. Intersection of Narco-Trafficking, Enforcement and Bird Conservation in the Americas,” published June 12 in Nature Sustainability.
“When drug traffickers are pushed into remote forest areas, they clear land to create airstrips, roads and cattle pastures,” said lead author Amanda Rodewald, senior director of the Center for Avian Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “These activities – and the anti-drug strategies that contribute to them – can deforest landscapes and threaten species.”
In the study, scientists from four universities, as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, combined measurements of several landscape features and concentrations of migratory birds in Central America to highlight the unexpected link between a widespread social problem and biodiversity.
More than half of the world’s population of one in five migratory species lives in areas that have become more attractive to human trafficking due to intense pressure from law enforcement agencies, measured by the amount 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 these vulnerable landscapes.
In the largest remaining forests in Central America, disproportionately populated by indigenous peoples – known as the Five Great Forests – the cocaine trade is growing.
“US drug policy in Central America focuses on the supply side of the story, and law enforcement pressure plays a major role in the movement of trafficking routes and sites of narco-deforestation,” said co-author Nicholas Magliocca, associate professor at the University of California. University of Alabama. “After forty years, that approach has not worked. In fact, the cocaine trade has only expanded and become a global network. In the past, cocaine simply passed through Central America, but now it has become a hub of global transshipment.”
This study builds on previous ethnographic and modeling work by Magliocca and a core group of researchers examining the land use conditions and decisions of the traffickers themselves based on perceived risk and gain.
“This research provides an even more complete understanding of the harm caused by drug trafficking and the way we are currently combating it,” said Magliocca. “The adaptive behavior of human traffickers must be taken into account. You must do more than reactively pursue the drug traffickers, who have virtually unlimited money and power in the region. It is without a doubt a complex, fluid and dangerous situation.”
“Including measures that increase the capacity of local communities and governments to monitor and protect their forests, grow alternative livelihoods and resolve unclear land ownership would be a major step forward,” Rodewald said. “Our study reminds us that we cannot address social problems in a vacuum, because they can have unintended environmental consequences that undermine conservation.”
This research was conducted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, University of Alabama, Ohio State University, Northern Arizona University and the US Fish & Wildlife Service with funding from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University and NASA.
