‘Biologists were not part of the crime food chain’: why Ecuador’s scientists are facing violence, threats and kidnapping

The Mirador trail in Podocarpus national park, where research has become impossible since illegal mining began. Photograph: Dave Stamboulis/Alamy

Raul*, a biologist from Quito, has been leading conservation projects in the Chocó rainforest in north-east Ecuador for more than 20 years. It has not been easy, he says, recalling the threats he has received over the years for reporting illegal hunters and loggers in reserves, but he never considered giving up.

Last year, however, tensions in the area escalated after violence soared on the country’s coast. Accounts of almost daily killings in the cities of Esmeraldas and Guayaquil emerged as gangs appeared to fight over territory, while forced recruitment in rural areas increased, as did extortions, known locally as vacunas, or vaccines.