The road leading to Podocarpus National Park winds around lush, forested mountains that seem to stretch endlessly on the horizon. Covering 1,463 square kilometers (565 square miles), the park stretches from the foothills of the eastern Andes into the rainforest, straddling the southern Ecuadorian provinces of Loja to the west and Zamora Chinchipe to the east. It extends from the foggy alpine shrubland known as the páramo, at 3,600 meters (11,800 feet) above sea level, down into tropical forest at 900 m (3,000 ft), with waterfalls and boulder-strewn crystalline rivers like the Bombuscaro. But even this remote place named after the only genus of conifer trees in South America has not escaped the crime wave sweeping Ecuador, as a single criminal gang, Los Lobos, has extended its grip deep into the heart of the park in the last few years. According to intelligence reports seen by Mongabay and Ecuadorian investigative news outlet Código Vidrio from September 2023, an estimated 2,200 people — Ecuadorians as well as Peruvians, Colombians and Venezuelans — were working illegally in a dozen different sites inside the park. They include those who charge dynamite to blow open rocks and open up tunnels, cart pushers and rock grinders, as well as those supplying food, fuel, drugs like cocaine and marijuana, and even sex workers. So remote were the spots in an area known as San Luis, deep inside the park, it took specially trained jungle troops 12 hours by foot to reach the zone. Dense vegetation in the Podocarpus National…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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