BATTLE IN THE CLOUNDS: In the Colombian Andes, ecosystems ore disappearing faster than scientists can study them

摘要

"FROM IT HERE VOL can sec it I the land is dying." Colombian Park Ranger Diomar Castro is standing at the edge of a sheer cliff about 9,000 feet high in the Andes' Central Cordillera. Castro waves his machete at the denuded, yellow foothills far below. "Twenty years ago that was a cloud forest," he says with a shrug. I've been reading about Colombia's deforestation troubles — as much as 1,864 square miles are lost annually to legal and illegal logging, and scientists say a third of the country's forest cover has been cut down. Even so, I'm not ready for the vista Castro has brought me to. Mile after mile of treeless, erosion-scarred hilltops stretch to the horizon — a panorama that looks more like Arizona than the Andean jungle.