‘If we see you again, we kill you’: how a Colombian wildlife hotspot turned into a death zone

Standing on her wooden canoe, a machete in her hand, Yuly Velásquez hacks away at reeds matted with blackened sludge. Close by, a burst oil pipe has released a slick of crude into the San Silvestre wetlands in Barrancabermeja, Colombia’s oil city, choking the water and its wildlife.

“The destruction is immense,” says Velásquez, president of Fedepesan, a sustainable fishing organisation. “For the fish, the animals and flora, it means immediate death.”

With its swamps, lagoons and forests, Barrancabermeja sits in a biodiversity hotspot – the home of endangered river turtles and manatees, and the wetlands act as a corridor for roaming jaguars.

Yet it is also Colombia’s biggest oil town. Gas flares shoot into the sky from a labyrinth of tanks, pipes and chimneys, producing up to 250,000 barrels of crude oil a day and serving 80% of the national demand for fuel.

For decades, this refinery, which is operated by the majority state-owned company Ecopetrol, has also been accused of releasing oil and toxic waste into nearby rivers and wetlands, and of causing leaks that pollute the region’s fishing grounds.

Read more