Charcoal contraband at the border with Haiti continues to devastate Dominican forests, a feature in Diario Libre reports today, Wednesday 14 May. Journalist Kirsis Diaz and a team of Diario Libre photographers were at the border to capture the trafficking in charcoal. The feature highlights how charcoal smuggling goes on openly at the border. <\/p>\n
The story focuses on how the Grupo Jaragua environmental group has placed specific complaints with the authorities and presented evidence about the illegal charcoal trade, but there is apparent complicity with military sectors. The feature says that Cesfront border forces are making it more difficult, while also pointing to continued complicity between the smugglers and some elements in the military forces. A 2011 complaint submitted to the Environment Prosecutor in 2011 accused a General Campusano of complicity in the devastation of Dominican forests. As reported, the traffickers maneuver in the border province courts to easily get off when cases have been made against them. <\/p>\n
Environmentalist Jake Kheel has made a documentary about the plight of Dominican forests on the border. He told Diario Libre that the illegal charcoal trade “is eating up Dominican forests piece by piece and is leaving large areas naked, little by little.” He has been studying the Bahoruco mountain range for four years and has seen how the mountains’ forest cover is disappearing as more and more mountains are deforested. Kheel’s film, Death by a Thousand Cuts explores the changing reality of communities along the Dominican-Haitian border, illustrating how deforestation cuts across the economic and social fabric of both countries with far-reaching consequences, largely unrecognized in either nation. Haiti’s long history of charcoal consumption has resulted in its deforestation, and, in the eyes of Dominicans, it is the driving force behind the illegal exploitation of Dominican forests.<\/p>\n
Diario Libre’s article and video also focuses on the threat to the iguana, a protected species that is also being hunted by illegal immigrants from Haiti.<\/p>\n
www.muestracinemedioambientaldominicana.org\/film_cortes_en.asp<\/p>\n
www.diariolibre.com\/destacada\/2014\/05\/14\/i604611_contrabando-carbn-vista-todo-mundo.html<\/p>\n
www.diariolibre.com\/video\/i7271\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Charcoal contraband at the border with Haiti continues to devastate Dominican forests, a feature in Diario Libre reports today, Wednesday 14 May. Journalist Kirsis Diaz and a team of Diario Libre photographers were at the border to capture the trafficking in charcoal. The feature highlights how charcoal smuggling goes on openly at the border. The … <\/p>\n