Rare bird hunt shows how Ecuadorian drug violence hampers investigation

Garzon has been studying the El Oro parakeet for twenty years, working to conserve it and supporting the sustainable management of its habitats – Copyright AFP Rodrigo BUENDIA

Paola LÓPEZ

Biologist Cesar Garzon was searching for a small, endangered parakeet in southern Ecuador when he was alerted that the species might be kidnapped, underscoring the dangers facing scientists in the biodiverse country plagued by drug violence.

“Do your work somewhere else because it’s dangerous here,” he said a man told him in April in the troubled mining town of Camilo Ponce Enriquez.

That night, the city’s mayor was shot dead. Earlier this month, five people were killed in a clash between criminal groups in the city, two of whom were found beheaded and one burned.

Garzon, an ornithologist at the state-run National Biodiversity Institute (Inabio), tried to continue his research in a neighboring town, but the mayor there too was murdered.

Tired of the omnipresent danger, he packed his bags and returned to Quito.

Garzon has been studying the El Oro parakeet for twenty years and is committed to its conservation and the sustainable management of its habitat.

The bird is predominantly green and has a red forehead. It is endemic to Ecuador and has only been recorded in the southwestern provinces of Azuay and El Oro.

It is estimated that there are only 1,000 left. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) considers the species to be critically endangered.

Garzon visited Camilo Ponce Enriquez in the province of Azuay to track down and study the endangered parakeet.

But the gold-rich town is in the grip of the Los Lobos drug gang, which finances its activities through illegal mining.

“We are left with uncertainty and frustration (…) There is a lack of information on that site,” he told AFP.

He said the violence was a blow to conservation because “there could be important areas where endemic or endangered species live and we can’t do anything.”

-‘Windows of Opportunity’ –

Ecuador is sandwiched between Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest cocaine producers. In recent years, however, once peaceful Ecuador has seen an explosion of violence as hostile gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels battle for power.

As the gangs gained ground, Ecuador’s homicide rate rose from six per 100,000 residents in 2018 to a record 47 per 100,000 in 2023.

Mario Yanez, another biologist at Inabio, said his current work is about finding “windows of opportunity” to continue research despite the violence.

Scientists work closely with local communities and authorities, conducting shorter field visits or targeting similar species in less risky areas.

“The level of violence has led to total restrictions in certain parts of the country,” especially on the coast and where mining takes place, Yanez said.

These places carry the “stigma” of violence and that “unfortunately limits international cooperation funds to carry out protection actions,” he added.

The Lalo Loor Private Reserve in southwestern Manabi is one of the last intact remnants of a unique ecosystem in Ecuador, known as a dry coastal forest, which is home to many endemic species.

The province is also a stronghold of drug trafficking. Due to the security crisis, American universities canceled an annual visit of researchers and students to the reservation, a major source of income for Lalo Loor.

Their continued absence could lead to the reserve’s administrative office having to close, said manager Mariela Loor.

Judith Denkinger, a German biologist at the private Universidad San Francisco de Quito, told AFP she has suspended her two-decade study of humpback whales off the coast of the conflict-torn northwestern province of Esmeraldas, bordering Colombia, since 2022.

She has been unable to obtain photographic or acoustic recordings of the humpback whales that come to the equatorial Pacific region to mate and give birth.

She also highlighted the plight of fishermen, with whom she often works at sea.

“Pirates, who are usually drug traffickers, come and threaten them, hijack their boat, steal their engine or kidnap them” to force them into drug trafficking, she said.

Daniel Vizuete, a specialist in social studies of science and technology at Flacso University in Quito, said that research related to the environment “may have been the most eroded, precisely because it takes place … in places where institutions are weaker.”

“That means even the lives of researchers could be at risk,” he added.

He also points to other possible effects of criminal violence on science, such as a ‘decline in terms of female participation’.