The world’s leading conservationists will flock to Cali, Colombia, this October for the U.N. biodiversity conference, COP16. Within Cali’s bustling urban environment, it’s easy to forget that the city lies at the foothills of Los Farallones de Cali, a major biodiversity hotspot and national park in the Andean mountain range. Migratory birds fly overhead and crystal-clear streams flow into the urban environment. The city is crisscrossed by several rivers and has one of the greatest bird diversity in the country. But the beauty of the region produces a blissful ignorance. At the conference, attendees will not be exposed to how antiquated conservation tactics have resulted in antagonisms between the state and the locals who reside in this Andean paradise right beside them. Nor will they see how these conservation methods have been unable to solve the complexities of economically insecure locals engaging in illegal gold mining. Biologist Valentina Paz Aramburo near Peñas Blancas, Los Farallones de Cali, Valle de Cauca, Colombia. Image by Alex Reep. When the national parks system (Parques) arrived to declare Los Farallones a national park in the 1960s, many locals say that the state adopted a hostile approach to conservation by imposing borders around the park zone, halting construction within, seizing farms, and removing people from their land. Their tactics reflect fortress conservation, a conservation model that assumes biodiversity is best protected by creating areas with zero human disturbance. This model views humans as separate from nature, often displacing Indigenous groups and long-term locals, even if…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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