Activities associated with cocaine trafficking threaten two-thirds of the most important landscapes in Central America for 196 forest bird species, including 67 migratory species. This is the key takeaway from a study that colleagues and I published in June 2024 in the journal Nature Sustainability.
Our findings suggest that there is real potential for drug-related deforestation to negatively affect populations of migratory birds. Many of these species are unusually concentrated in winter in Central America, which has a comparatively smaller area than their summer breeding regions in North America.
