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Drug traffickers in Central America have been known to practise 鈥渘arco-ranching鈥�, in which they launder cash by buying land and cattle, then selling the meat in Mexico for money that can鈥檛 be traced to drug activity. A new analysis suggests this method may be responsible for up to 87 per cent of deforestation in a nature reserve in Guatemala 鈥� and the situation may be similar in protected forests along the drug transport corridor countries of Central and South America.

鈥淭his is the first attempt to quantify the role narco-cattle ranching plays in the deforestation happening in the Maya Biosphere Reserve,鈥� says Jennifer Devine at Texas State University. Carved out of the rainforest, these ranches also help traffickers and control territory along smuggling routes.

She and her colleagues analysed 4500 aerial images of deforested areas in the 2.1 million hectare in Pet茅n, Guatemala, which covers one-fifth of the country鈥檚 total land area, to determine what had caused the loss. They found evidence of large-scale cattle ranching in 87 per cent of the images in a key part of the reserve,聽.

Liza Grandia at the University of California, Davis, who has worked in Pet茅n for 27 years, says 鈥渃attle culture鈥� has been in the region , when massive ranches were encouraged by the national government.

鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 really until 2002 or 2003 that narco-ranchers entered the area as the new villain,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t was the normality of cattle ranching that really allowed the narcos to move in so swiftly and cloak themselves as an average agribusiness.鈥�

From 2000 to 2015, about 30 per cent of the forest of Laguna del Tigre, Guatemala鈥檚 largest national park, was turned into agricultural land.

Devine and her team conducted more than 100 interviews with people living in and around the reserve to understand how to identify areas deforested by narco-ranching. These feature large clearings of dozens of hectares of land, set out with straight lines, square and rectangle shaped plots, and even tractor marks.

She says they can鈥檛 definitively say the deforestation was funded by drug traffickers, but other small farmers, or campesinos, tend to grow food crops, not just pasture, and have smaller overall plots.

鈥淛ennifer鈥檚 work is unique in identifying what land use is changed to after the forest is lost,鈥� says Beth Tellman at Columbia University in New York. 鈥淯nderstanding specifically where forest loss leads to cattle ranching is essential to understand how narco capital transforms landscapes: it helps us 鈥榝ollow the money鈥�.鈥�

David Wrathall at Oregon State University says narco-ranching happens wherever there is a lot of illegal money passing through forested frontiers. He says while campesinos have long been scapegoats for deforestation, local people have been shown to be the solution to stopping the destruction of nature reserves.

鈥淚f people have collective, local decision-making authority about land and resources, and they have strong expectations that they will maintain this authority in perpetuity, then we see better development outcomes and forest conservation outcomes,鈥� says Wrathall.

For example, the Association of Forest Communities of Pet茅n () manages the concessions granted to indigenous people and peasant farmers in 1990 to sustainably harvest timber and other forest products. Erick Cuellar, ACOFOP鈥檚 deputy director, says the land that is part of these concessions has compared with the national parks.

Marcia Macedo at Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, who studies the Amazon, says although narco-ranching doesn鈥檛 appear to be a major driver of deforestation across the whole of the Amazon, studies like this can be a powerful tool to curb such activity.

鈥淭hey can provide objective evidence of what is happening on the ground, prevent false narratives from taking hold and keep voting citizens and the international community informed,鈥� she says.