Illicit Crops and Bird Conservation Priorities in Colombia MARIA D. ÁLVAREZ Columbia University MC 5557, 2960 Broadway, New York, NY 10027–5557, U.S.A., email [email protected]

Abstract: Over the last 5 years the amount of land in Colombia planted in illicit crops, such as coca and poppy, has grown an average of 21% per year and may account for half the total area deforested in 1998. I conducted a geographic analysis of the distribution of illicit crops relative to standing forests and areas of conservation priority for birds. Municipalities where illicit crops have been detected were overlaid on a forestcover map of Colombia and two types of conservation priorities for birds were plotted: distributions of threatened species and minimum-area sets for conservation of all species. The sites of the highest conservation priority affected by illicit crops were in the southern Andes, the northern West Andes and adjacent Darién lowlands, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Serranía del Perijá, and the Serranía de San Lucas. The largest forested areas threatened by illicit crops were in Amazonia and the Amazonian foothills of the East Andes, sites of low conservation priority. Given current trends in the expansion of illicit crops and the narrow endemicity of some bird species, the conversion of forests for illicit-crop cultivation may result in the extirpation of several bird species from affected regions. To impede this, those involved in illicit-crop eradication and alternative development should give high priority to the protection of existing forest reserves and parks from the planting of illicit crops. Such efforts should also extend to areas proposed for conservation based on the diversity of threatened and endemic birds that are currently unprotected. The conservation of threatened and endemic birds in Colombian forests may hinge on successfully curbing incentives for deforestation, including the international trade in illicit drugs. Cultivos Ilícitos y Prioridades de Conservación de Aves en Colombia Resumen: En Colombia la tierra sembrada con cultivos ilícitos, como la coca y la amapola, ha crecido un 21% anual en los últimos 5 años y podría dar cuenta de la mitad del área deforestada en 1998. Realicé un análisis geográfico de la distribución de cultivos ilícitos en relación a bosques restantes y áreas de prioridad para la conservación de aves. Los municipios donde los cultivos ilícitos fueron detectados han sido sobrepuestos en un mapa de cobertura forestal de Colombia, sumados a dos tipos de prioridades de conservación de aves: las distribuciones de aves amenazadas y los conjuntos de áreas mínimas para la conservación de todas las especies. Los sitios de más alta prioridad para la conservación afectados por cultivos ilícitos estuvieron en el sur de los Andes, la parte norte de la Cordillera Occidental y las tierras bajas adyacentes al Darién, la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, la Serranía del Perijá y la Serranía de San Lucas. Los bosques de mayor área amenazada por cultivos ilícitos se encuentran en la Amazonia y en el piedemonte amazónico de la Cordillera Oriental, sitios con baja prioridad de conservación. Dadas las tendencias actuales de expansión de estos cultivos y el alto endemismo de algunas especies de aves, la conversión de bosques a cultivos ilícitos podría provocar varias extinciones locales. Para impedir esto, los involucrados en la erradicación de cultivos ilícitos y programas de desarrollo alternativo deberán dar alta prioridad a la protección de reservas forestales y parques contra la siembra de cultivos ilícitos. Estos esfuerzos también deberán extenderse a a las áreas de conservación propuestas con base en la diversidad de aves amenazadas y endémicas que actualmente no

Paper submitted December 13, 2000; revised manuscript accepted September 5, 2001.

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están protegidas. La conservación de las aves amenazadas y endémicas en los bosques colombianos dependería del control exitoso de los incentivos a la deforestación, incluyendo el comercio internacional en drogas ilegales.

Introduction Colombia currently harbors almost 49,000,000 ha of tropical lowland, montane, and dry forests (Etter 1998), almost 80% of which is nominally protected in natural parks and indigenous and Afro-Colombian forest reserves (Rodríguez & Ponce 1999). These remaining forests are priorities for conservation because they are the last repositories of a highly diverse and endemic biota (McNeely et al. 1990; Stattersfield et al. 1998; Myers et al. 2000). Governmental and nongovernmental conservation efforts are limited, however, by de facto administration of many territories by guerrillas and paramilitaries. Of the remaining forests, 33% are in municipalities with medium to high activity by armed groups, and 20% of them are in municipalities where both guerrillas and paramilitaries are present. The obstacles to conservation arising from the belligerence of armed groups have been discussed by Álvarez (2002). In this paper, I focus on the expansion of illicit cash crops, most of which is taking place in forested areas where armed groups wield their power. In 1998, Colombian authorities reported that approximately 101,800 ha was planted in coca (Erythroxylum novogranatense and E. coca), from which cocaine is derived, and 7466 ha was planted in opium poppy (Papaver somniferum), from which heroin is extracted (United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention [UN-ODCCP] 1999). An estimated 85% of poppy cultivation takes place in newly deforested montane areas (Cavelier & Etter 1995). Similarly, coca growers in Peru and Bolivia prefer newly deforested lands on Andean slopes and Amazonian lowlands (Dourojeanni 1992). Deforestation caused by illicit cultivation is not limited to the area planted with illicit crops. Abandoned fields, forest cleared for future illicit crops and/or subsistence crops, and airstrips amplify deforestation by a factor estimated at 2.5–3 times the area of the illicit crop alone (Cavelier & Etter 1995). So far, government-sponsored eradication has been futile: total illicit crop cultivation has multiplied 4.5 times since 1986, despite an 80-fold increase in fumigation with herbicides over the same period (UN-ODCCP 1999). It would then be safe to assume that at least 60% (as opposed to 85%) of illicit crops are grown in newly deforested land, that growers clear at least twice the surface of cultivation, and that area under illicit crops is not cumulative thanks to eradication (UN-ODCCP 1999). If

these assumptions are correct, then 131,119 ha of forest would have been cleared for illicit crops and activities associated with them in 1998. Given that 262,000 ha are deforested in Colombia annually (Food and Agriculture Organization 1997), then illicit crops would account for at least 50% of all deforestation. Thus, the expansion of illicit crops is a significant cause of deforestation in Colombia and an enormous threat to forest-dependent biota even in protected areas. My study is the first geographic analysis of the distribution of illicit crop cultivation in Colombia relative to standing forests and areas of conservation priority for birds. This is the only taxonomic group for which detailed geographic information for conservation priorities within Colombia is available (e.g., Wege & Long 1995; Stattersfield et al. 1998; Brooks et al. 1999). I sought to illustrate how fragmentation from illicit crops threatens Colombian forests and forest-dependent avian fauna. My ultimate objective was to highlight the biological importance of sites where illicit cultivation is taking place, particularly in protected areas, to the conservation community and to those who will be undertaking crop eradication.

Methods Forest Cover I summarized the forest-cover data in the “Mapa General de Ecosistemas de Colombia 1: 2,000,000” (Etter 1998) into three categories: Andean, Chocó, and Amazonia. In the following, numbers in parentheses refer to Etter’s forest classification. Andean forests comprise sub-Andean humid (14), Andean humid (16), high-Andean humid and “cloud” (18a), high-Andean dry (18b), Andean oak (18c), and dry and humid páramos (19–20). Tropical dry forests of the middle Magdalena (1 m, 3 m) and Caribbean forests (23) were lumped in the Andean category because these remnants amount to  1% of the total. Chocó forests comprise tall, dense Pacific forests (2c, 3c, 7), flooded Atrato and Pacific forests (46–48a), and hyperhumid mangrove (50). Amazonian forests comprise tall, dense Amazon and Orinoco basin forests (1a, 2a, 2b, 2d, 3a, 3b, 4, 5a, 5b, 6), submontane, montane, and cloud forests of La Macarena (24–26), tall and dense Amazonian forests (42, 43), and middle-dense Amazonian (44) and gallery forests of the Orinoco basin (45).

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Illicit Crops I used the “intersect” command in the “Geoprocessingwizard” function of Arcview 3.2 to map the overlap between the three forest composites and the maps of municipalities where illicit crops have been detected (Reyes 1999). Because the entire municipality was marked as affected by cultivation regardless of the extent of illicit crops it contained, and because municipalities in Chocó and Amazonia are very large, forests highlighted in municipalities where illicit crops have been detected greatly overestimate the extent of cultivation in these regions. Because political divisions are much smaller in the Andes, forests in municipalities where illicit crops have been detected will overestimate the extent of illicit crops there less than in the Chocó and Amazonia. I obtained the exact number of hectares under illicit crop cultivation from the Mapa Localización de Cultivos Ilícitos en Colombia, Censo 2000 (United Nations Drug Control Programme [UNDCP] 2000), total illicit crop figures from Global Illicit Trends (UN-ODCCP 1999), and the areas under official protection from the Global Protected Areas Database ( World Conservation Monitoring Centre 2000). Plain Bird Data Brooks et al. (1999) published a database of ranges of “birds at risk” in Latin America. Birds at risk are those listed in the World Conservation Union (IUCN) categories of threatened, near-threatened, or data-deficient on the world list of threatened birds (Collar et al. 1994), “conservation priority 1–3” of Parker et al. (1996), or global ranks G1–G3/4 by The Nature Conservancy (Brooks et al. 1999). To plot distributional ranges, Brooks et al. (1999) digitized range maps from Ridgely and Tudor (1989, 1994) on a 15-minute grid. These maps include both verified observations and rough inferences of species ranges based on vegetation maps and climatic variables. The number of at-risk species (called threatened hereafter) present in each 15-minute cell was used to assess priority areas for conservation (number of threatened species/cell  indicated priority). J. Fjeldså (personal communication) generated a map of priorities for the conservation of bird species in 15minute cells corresponding to two sets of areas where all species are represented in the smallest possible area: one minimum set and one near-minimum set. The methods used to establish these priorities are explained in detail by Fjeldså (2001) and Fjeldså and Rahbek (1998). The J. Fjeldså database includes distributions of all nonmarine birds resident in South America in a 1  1 grid and in the Andean region and adjacent lowlands in a 15  15 grid. The data set most precisely defines ranges of highland birds (above 2500 m elevation), because these are constrained by topography and local habitat gradients, and that of rare and range-restricted

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species, whose distributions are well recorded (see Collar et al. 1992). These birds include most of the “endemic” species (sensu Stattersfield et al. 1998). The ranges are less well defined for widespread lowland birds. Of widespread species, only birds within the 25% lowest range-size classes are included. The complete data set comprises nearly all birds currently classified as threatened (BirdLife International 2000). I identified one “minimum set” and one “near-minimum set” of target areas for conservation through a heuristic search option for complementarity of areas and a redundancy back check ( Williams 1996). Complementarity explicitly describes the degree to which an area contributes otherwise unrepresented taxa to a set of areas targeted for conservation (Williams et al. 1996). A minimum set is the smallest number of cells that will cover all taxa, by definition the most area-effective approach for conservation planning. A near-minimum set of areas is the smallest number of cells that will cover all taxa, given a particular area restriction (e.g., if the areas in the minimum set are not available). The results of such analyses determine priorities with great precision in areas of strongly aggregated endemism (i.e., the Andes), but in regions where most species are widespread (e.g., Amazonia) there will be great flexibility in choice of areas. Hence, the method is best at identifying key areas for conservation of endemic species.

Results The most important forested areas for conservation of threatened and endemic birds affected by illicit crops were the southern Andes (all three ranges), the northern West Andes and adjacent Darién lowlands, and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Serranía del Perijá, and Serranía de San Lucas (for nomenclature see Fig. 1). The highest concentration of threatened (110–140; Fig. 2) and endemic (28) bird species was found along the western slopes of the southern West Andes. The UNDCP (2000) has reported 2800 ha of illicit crops in or around three protected areas in the region: Puracé, Munchique, and Nevado del Huila (Table 1; Fig. 3). The total extension of the parks is 285,000 ha, meaning that illicit crops (mostly poppy) grow on almost 1% of their surface (Table 1). The northern West Andes and the Darién lowlands have 40–80 threatened species and up to 10 endemic species. In this region there are two national parks, Katíos and Paramillo, accounting for 532,000 ha of protected land. The UNDCP (2000) reports 2250 ha of coca in the area, or 0.4% of the total area (Table 1; Fig. 3). The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Serranía del Perijá showed concentrations of 30–50 threatened species, with a maximum of 21 and 14 endemic species respectively. Fields planted with illicit crops were found in five protected areas in the region: two parks, Sierra Nevada and

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Figure 1. Remnant forests of Colombia summarized from Etter (1998). (a) Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta; (b) Serranía del Perijá and Motilones; (c) Serranía de San Lucas (Central Andes); (d) Darién lowlands; (e) Nudo del Paramillo (West Andes); ( f) Chocó lowlands; Cordilleras of the Andes: (g) West Andes; (h) Central Andes; (i) East Andes; and ( j) Amazonia. Catatumbo, and three indigenous reserves, Sierra Nevada, Barí, and Motilonia (Fig. 3). According to the UNDCP (2000), these protected areas collectively have 9500 ha of illicit crops, 84.3% of which are planted with coca. Another area threatened by illicit crops, the Serranía de San Lucas and its lowlands, had 20–50 threatened species (Fig. 2) and up to 7 endemic species. The UNDCP (2000) reports 6500 ha of illicit crops (mostly coca) in the Serranía de San Lucas and 2000 ha in the surrounding lowlands (Table 1). Threatened and endemic birds were concentrated along the Andes. In this region the threat of deforestation from illicit crops (Figs. 2 & 4) is overestimated, but roughly proportional to the extent of crops detected therein. Illicit crops have not affected all Andean forests, however. None have been reported in the northeastern East Andes, with 30–50 threatened and up to 23 endemic species; parts of the Central Andes, with 20–60 threatened and 17 endemic species; and along parts of

the eastern slope of the West Andes, with 20–60 threatened and 16 endemic species (Fig. 2). The largest concentration of illicit crops was in Amazonia and the Amazonian foothills of the East Andes, with 20 and 30 threatened species, respectively (Table 1; Fig. 2), and no endemic species, as reflected by the absence of minimum-area cells (Fig. 4). There are three protected plots where significant areas of illicit crops have been detected: Picachos at the foothills of the East Andes, Nukak, and La Paya in the Amazonian lowlands, for a total of 1,716,000 ha of combined surface. Coca cultivation amounts to 78,800 ha, or 4.6% of the surface of these parks (UNDCP 2000).

Discussion If the expansion of illicit crops in the Andes continues, the effect on the forest-dependent Colombian avifauna

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Figure 2. Forests (gray) in Colombian municipalities, where illicit crops have been detected, and distribution of birds at risk, sensu Brooks et al. (1999).

might be devastating. The situation is particularly acute in the higher elevations of the southern West and East Andes, where illicit crops affected forests in one “irreplaceable” 15-minute square cell, the one encompassing the complete known range of Eriocnemis mirabilis in the southern West Andes ( J. Fjeldså, personal communication). These and other parks affected by poppy cultivation (e.g., those in the Serranía del Perijá) harbor numerous threatened species (Fig. 2) and are indispensable for the conservation of endemic birds (Fig. 4). Given the trend in poppy cultivation in the 1990s (Fig. 5), subsistence agriculture associated with illicit crop growers, and the fact that all vegetation types in these parks are considered suitable for poppy cultivation

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(Cavelier & Etter 1995), fragmentation could affect almost 10% of the montane forests of these protected areas and their surroundings by the end of this decade. This is a large fraction, because many bird species in these protected areas have restricted ranges and as such are listed as threatened. An area of lesser priority affected by illicit crops was the Serranía de San Lucas (Figs. 1, 2, & 4). The number of bird species recorded in San Lucas could be an artifact of sampling. The last avian collections in San Lucas took place in the 1940s and reached 650 min elevation along the northeastern slopes (de Schauensee 1948); based on these expeditions, the Serranía has been included as a key area for threatened birds in the Neotropics ( Wege &

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Table 1. Protected and unprotected forests in priority sites for conservation of threatened and endemic birds and extent of illicit cultivation in Colombia.a Region Southern Andes Santa Marta Serranía del Perijá Northern West Andes Darién Northern Central Andesc Adjacent lowlands Amazoniad

Illicit crop area b (ha)

Area

Total area (ha)

Puracé and Munchique Munchique Nevado del Huila Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Catatumbo-Barí Resguardo Motilonia Nudo del Paramillo Katíos Serranía de San Lucas Magdalena Medio Picachos Nukak La Paya

127,000

2,500

158,000 383,000 158,125 115,000 460,000 72,000 c. 2,000,000 not available 439,000 855,000 422,000

300 750 7,800 950 2,000 250 6,500 2,000 66,800 10,000 2,000

a

Sources: World Conservation Monitoring Centre (2000) and United Nations Drug Control Programme (2000). Includes illicit crops found inside and outside protected areas of the region. Percentages of illicit cultivation given in text are for comparison in order of magnitude only. c There are no areas currently protected by the national government in this region; see Dávalos (2001) for other forms of protection. d Not a priority area for conservation according to this study. b

Long 1995). The higher elevations of this range reach beyond 2000 m elevation and have never been surveyed for birds, although they remain forested. There are no protected areas in San Lucas ( World Conservation Monitoring Centre 2000), and, except for the southwest portion, the surrounding lowlands have been almost completely deforested (Fig. 1). There was one irreplaceable 15-minute cell comprising the range of Crypturellus saltuarius in the deforested lowlands northeast of the Serranía. Illicit crops, food crops, oil palm, and cattle ranching have fragmented the forests on the eastern half of the Serranía (Dávalos 2001; T. Donegan, personal communication). Although the region has been included in national conservation plans (Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi 1995), the government hopes to develop mining in its large gold deposits in the near future ( Villarruel et al. 2000). Options for both conservation and development, are currently limited, however, by the activities of at least six belligerent armed groups (Dávalos 2001). All the important areas for bird conservation in northern Colombia are of concern because the potential for expansion of illicit crops, especially coca, is large and the current government eradication offensive is focused exclusively on southern Colombia ( Tate 2000). Coca cultivation has grown at an average annual rate of 21% over the last 5 years (Fig. 5), and the optimal elevation and rainfall for growing coca is between 1000 and 1200 m elevation and between 1000 and 4200 mm/year (Dourojeanni 1992). Hence, there are still large, suitable remaining forests in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Serranía del Perijá, northern West Andes, Darién, and the Serranía de San Lucas that could be cleared for the crop. If incentives for coca cultivation remain intact, illicit crops and the deforestation associated with them

might be displaced from the government’s foci of attack in the south to other areas of Colombia, increasing local deforestation even more sharply than at present. Although the potential for expansion of coca in Colombian Amazonia is large, this is the region of Colombia where the government intends to eradicate illicit crops first (Presidencia de la República 2000). Despite the overestimation of threats by illicit crops implicit in Figs. 2 and 4, it is apparent that current frontier expansion into the Amazonian lowlands of Colombia is associated with illicit crop cultivation. Ignoring the potential effects of herbicide spraying on bird diversity (for details see American Bird Conservancy 2001), the evidence for eradication having an effect on deforestation is scant and predictions are not straightforward. Some think most areas currently planted with illicit crops have been deforested as a result of the distorted economic incentives these crops furnish (V. Tafur, personal communication). If this were so, ceteris paribus, deforestation caused by illicit crops would be much greater than that caused by licit crops because coca pays an average US$2347 annually per hectare harvested (Álvarez 2002), and no licit commodity pays a similar price. This economic incentive would (1) attract individuals who would otherwise not undertake agriculture at all, and (2) allow farmers to plant in locales where no licit crop would profitably grow. The government claims that illicit crops can be feasibly replaced with other crops in all poppy-producing areas and about 33% of coca-growing lands (Presidencia de la República 2000). This means that 67% of coca cultivation is taking place in land where agriculture is economically or ecologically nonviable, perhaps indicating that the difference between the price of coca (and poppy) and the price of other crops does affect the

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Figure 3. Main protected areas in priority areas for conservation of threatened and endemic birds significantly affected by illicit crops ( World Conservation Monitoring Centre 2000; United Nations Drug Control Programme 2000). Forests (gray) in municipalities where illicit crops have been detected.

quantity of deforestation caused by the crop. Thus, eradication of illicit crops from southern Colombia would result in less deforestation in Amazonia, but not necessarily in montane southern Colombia, where the land would still be suitable for agriculture. Illicit crop eradication, however, has also been hypothesized to increase deforestation in Peru and Bolivia ( Henkel 1995; Young 1996; Kaimowitz 1997 ) as growers relocate deeper into forests to avoid detection or plant less profitable crops that require more area of cultivation. At present, no data are available as to whether or not eradication has increased background rates of deforestation in these Andean countries, although early reports from Colombia suggest that growers “simply move along”, clearing deeper into the forest (González-Posso 2000; Forero 2001). Thus, eradication would result in

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more deforestation in southern Colombia, particularly in Amazonia where most of the illicit crops are planted. Given these two possible outcomes and the government’s focus on eradication in Amazonia, inferences on the future effect of illicit crops in the region are moot. The effect of fragmentation on the biodiversity of Amazonia is another contentious issue. Neither the prioritysetting exercises I used here nor other such analyses based on different taxa and criteria (e.g., Olson & Dinerstein 1998; Myers et al. 2000) ascribe a high conservation priority to these forests. There are indications that this low priority is an artifact of the misuse of the biological species concept, the assumption that Amazonia is more homogeneous than it really is (Bates & Demos 2001), and the expectation that Amazonian ecosystems can persist in a fragmented state (Laurance 1998).

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Figure 4. Minimum set and nearminimum set of areas for conservation of all the birds of Colombia (lowest number of cells whose protection would conserve all taxa in the J. Fjeldså database) and forests in municipalities where illicit crops have been detected. The 15-minute cellblocks are areas of priority for conservation of all bird species known or estimated, from habitat interpolation, to live in Colombia. Cells numbered 1–3 are “irreplaceable” in terms of preserving the sole locality of one endemic bird species and cannot be moved: 1, Crypturellus saltuarius; 2, Grallaria chthonia; and 3, Eriocnemis mirabilis. The 18 thin-lined cells in Colombia are sites whose conservation minimizes the overall area necessary to represent one population of each species in the database. The conservation of species present in these sites could be achieved by preserving other areas (i.e., the sites are “flexible”), but this would increase the overall area necessary for conservation. Cells marked with an X are first alternative choices to the 18 ( flexible) cells in the minimum set of areas for conservation. These alternative choices constitute one near-minimum set of areas for conservation.

In recognizing “polytypic” species, the biological species concept systematically underestimates the number of differentiated taxa, resulting in a coarse delimitation of areas of endemism (Cracraft 1997 ). For neotropical mammals, for example, the delimitation of species and their ranges has been obscured by a great “polytypic species concept contraction,” whereby taxa have been synonymized with little or no explicit justification by uncritical taxonomists since the 1940s ( Voss et al. 2001). The cumulative effect of species delimitation based on this approach can be large (Hazevoet 1996) and may be particularly acute for birds of Amazonia (Bates & Demos 2001). Colombian Amazonia might therefore harbor more threatened and endemic species of birds than currently estimated. If this is the case, illicit crop deforestation along the northwest edge of Amazonia in the upper basins of the Putumayo, Caquetá, and Guaviare rivers may have a significant effect on endemic and threatened birds not yet considered as such.

Conclusion The expansion of illicit crops in Colombia is a significant cause of deforestation in areas associated with large numbers of threatened and endemic birds in the southern Andes, the northern West Andes, Darién, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Serranía del Perijá, and the Serranía de San Lucas. The extent of deforestation in protected and unprotected areas of these regions is alarming. If current trends of illicit crop expansion persist, fragmentation of forests in some protected areas of high conservation priority for birds may reach a tenth of their surface over the next decade. Illicit crops are currently concentrated in Amazonian forests of low conservation priority for birds. The extent of cultivation in nominally protected areas of Amazonia makes illicit crops an unprecedented threat to this region, whose avian diversity may be underestimated. Currently, protected areas may not represent bird diversity

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Figure 5. Area cultivated with coca and poppy and total illicit crop area (sum) since 1986 ( fitted curve for illicit trend: y  755.65 x2  3 * 106x  3 * 10 9). Data from United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (1999).

in the most economical or complete manner (compare Figs. 3 & 4). Nevertheless, if these cannot be effectively preserved from illicit agriculture it is hard to see how asyet-unprotected areas such as the Serranía de San Lucas have a better chance of remaining forested than nominally protected lands. Although little is known about the ecological requirements of many species, human-induced habitat transformation is regarded as a leading cause of population decline in threatened birds ( BirdLife International 2000), and conservation efforts generally aim to reduce the scale and degree of human intervention in bird habitat. Given the narrow endemicity and uncertain conservation status of many birds included in the analyses, unchecked deforestation may result in several extirpation events. Government efforts to eradicate illicit crops might curb or eliminate this cause of deforestation, but these are currently concentrated in southern Colombia, in the southern Andes and—more imminently—Amazonia. The ineffectiveness of illicit crop eradication thus far and the conservation importance of protected and unprotected areas throughout the Andes and the Chocó should convince conservationists of the necessity of proposing and aiding forest conservation projects to minimize the effect

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of deforestation on bird diversity. For example, government plans to introduce “alternative development” projects in regions economically dependent on illicit crops (Presidencia de la República 2000) could be an opportunity for conservationists to inform development decisions in forest remnants. This is particularly necessary as roads and alternative crops are introduced to montane and lowland forests where illicit crops currently thrive. Efforts to protect forests in parks and indigenous and Afro-Colombian forest reserves should be stepped up, and support for new protected areas in sites of high conservation priority (e.g., Serranía de San Lucas and Andean forests not affected by illicit crops) should rank high on the agenda of conservationists. Ultimately, the conservation of forests and forest-dependent birds in Colombia, as elsewhere, may hinge on successfully curbing economic incentives for deforestation, including international trade in illegal drugs. The policies that have been pursued to this end over the last 20 years in Colombia and consuming countries have been environmentally ineffectual at best and detrimental at worst. Perhaps conservationists can also contribute to the conservation of Colombian forests by proposing new, creative ways to approach this complex problem.

Álvarez

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