‘If we see you again, we kill you’: how a Colombian wildlife hotspot turned into a death zone

Polluted vegetation is cleared from the water after a refinery pipeline burst last October. The wetlands, near the Colombian oil town of Barrancabermeja, are home to several endangered species, including manatees – an animal once regarded as a guardian spirit of the lagoons – and jaguars Photograph: Harriet Barber

Standing on her wooden canoe, a machete in her hand, Yuly Velásquez hacks away at reeds matted with blackened sludge. Close by, a burst oil pipe has released a slick of crude into the San Silvestre wetlands in Barrancabermeja, Colombia’s oil city, choking the water and its wildlife.

“The destruction is immense,” says Velásquez, president of Fedepesan, a sustainable fishing organisation. “For the fish, the animals and flora, it means immediate death.”