Environmental organizations filed a claim before the Ministry of the Environment and Energy (MINAE) due to illegal logging and the invasion of the Kéköldi indigenous territory in the town of Cocles de Puerto Viejo, Talamanca.
On March 9, several officials of Sinac La Amistad Caribe Conservation Area visited the area and filed a complaint with the Bribri Prosecutor Carlos Matamoros. In the complaint, they stated that the machinery is working in front of the Super Negro, in the town of Cocles, and they’re allegedly planning to build a parking lot.
The neighbors claim that these works are inside the forest zone, Natural Heritage of the State, and coastal marine area. Although MINAE momentarily halted the work, it eventually resumed as they said the land did not fall under any of the protected categories.
The neighbors denounced that MINAE “does nothing” and that it is common to see destruction in the area, as this is endorsed by the regulatory plan that has been highly questioned. They also indicated that they would continue to expose such incidents to the authorities and through social networks and the media.
According to Bloque Verde, this denunciation of the destruction of the coastal forest and natural patrimony of the State for a supermarket parking lot revealed another terrible discovery: the forest is disappearing from the inside out, in dribs and drabs, using the technique called “socola” of the forest.
This situation was exposed in a video made by a neighbor of the place when she entered what used to be the forest and found to her surprise that everything was covered, and she also noticed that they were leaving some visual barriers so that no one would notice what was happening. This is evidence that they have been systematically destroying the undergrowth for months.
The area is located within the Kéköldi de Cocles Indigenous Territory, so the ecologists alerted the Bribri community, which claims these properties.
According to ecologists, the systematic elimination of the undergrowth, which implies the gradual cutting of smaller vegetation in forested areas to isolate trees of larger diameter, is largely affecting the dynamics of ecosystems.
This terrible practice has destroyed thousands of hectares of forest in our country to convert the forest into wooded pastureland or agricultural crops.
Environmentalists accuse public institutions of allowing the destruction of the country’s natural resources by failing to act appropriately and by not taking the necessary measures to protect them.
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