Armed groups and a state-owned refinery’s oil leaks have displaced Barrancabermeja’s fishing community and poisoned a paradise once full of manatees and jaguars
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tanding 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.”
With its swamps, lagoons and forests, Barrancabermeja sits in a biodiversity hotspot – the home of endangered river turtles and manatees, and the wetlands act as a corridor for roaming jaguars.
