THE DAYLIGHT HAS FADED IN THE CARIBBEAN PORT OF Santa Marta, but high above the coast, the sun’s last rays sharpen the outlines of the white peaks of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. From my vantage point at the Hotel Don Pepe’s rooftop bar, the glowing mountaintops form a jagged, triangular halo behind Tito Rodríguez, who rolls an unsipped bottle of beer between his palms.
Rodríguez is the director of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta National Park, a natural wonderland that rises from Colombia’s Caribbean shore to nearly 19,000 feet in just 26 miles. The park ascends from beaches and mangroves through dry forests, rainforests, cloud forests, glaciers, and the tropical tundra known as páramo. Its steeply stacked microclimates support an exuberantly complex range of ecosystems and endemic wildlife, including 23 birds found nowhere else. The reserve is, according to a 2013 study published in the journal Science, the most irreplaceable protected area in the world for threatened species.
“I don’t think the authors intended the word ‘protected’ to be ironic,” Rodríguez says, managing a grim smile. “But in truth, it has never been adequately protected. And considering that protecting it was my responsibility, what I feel at this moment is an overwhelming sense of defeat and grief.”
Rodríguez’s broad face is darkened by lack of sleep and a day’s growth of beard. He’s come tonight to share with his conservationist friends a decision that he and his wife have not dared to discuss with others, including their children. In three days they intend to flee Colombia and the escalating spiral of intimidation and violence that has left his park’s headquarters in embers and a friend and coworker dead—felled by bullets that, sources say, were intended for Rodríguez.
As the waitress comes around to light the table’s candles, Rodríguez glances toward the mountains and lowers his shoulders, as if the mass of granite and snow were bearing down on him. Even though Colombia’s National Protection Unit has deemed him to be at an “extraordinary risk” for assassination, they’ve informed him that they will no longer maintain his security detail—“although they said I could keep the bulletproof vest and a cell phone with a panic button.” And because he’s a public figure, there’s no place he can hide in Colombia, and little possibility that he’ll ever be able to return.
“And so,” he tells his friends, “tonight is goodbye.”
COLOMBIA, RODRÍGUEZ’S HOMELAND, IS ONE OF THE MOST biodiverse nations on Earth, and by far the world’s richest country in terms of avian life. Its tapestry of ecosystems hosts nearly 2,000 bird species, many of them migrants that spend summers in North America. The nation also has the distinction of being the most dangerous place on Earth to defend
