On Feb. 15, three days after the creation of Bajo Paraguá – San Ignacio de Velasco Municipal Protected Area, the first hints of illegal activity began. Residents reported invasions and human settlements in the new protected area, claiming the colonizers were land traffickers.
“The people who want to get in here have never lived here. We were born here, raised here, and we are going to die here, and we have rights,” said a resident of Picaflor, one of the four Indigenous communities established in the protected area. The resident wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal.
The new Bajo Paraguá – San Ignacio de Velasco Municipal Protected Area, also known as the Bajo Paraguá Forest Reserve, is in José Miguel de Velasco province in Bolivia’s Santa Cruz department. The protected area was created on February 12, 2021, to protect 983,000 hectares (about 2,429,045 acres) of mostly primary tropical forest in the Chiquitania region. The Chiquitania region’s ecosystem was hit hard by forest fires in 2019 and 2020. Approximately 8 million hectares (19,768,430 acres) were destroyed in the fires.
Fuente: Mongabay Series: Forest Trackers
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