‘Blood timber’: western firms fuel conflict and ‘slavery’ in Colombia

Wood is loaded on to a truck in Quibdó, in the Chocó region of Colombia. Forests in the global conservation hotspot should be tightly protected, but a local community leader says: ‘They are cutting down the forest indiscriminately – and there is no one to stop them.’ Photograph: Jan Sochor/Getty Images

The Atrato River winds through the dense rainforest of Colombia’s Chocó region for nearly 400 miles (600km) before spilling into the Caribbean Sea. Some of these tropical forests are among the wettest on Earth. Their flooded lowlands and swollen rivers are so impenetrable they have acted as an evolutionary barrier, making Chocó a haven for rare and remarkable species found nowhere else on the planet.

“We have so many animals that you won’t even know the names of many of them,” says María Mosquera, a community leader in the region, whose name has been changed to protect her identity.