Colombian Amazon Department Watch
The Colombian Amazon is not one place — it is ten departments, each with its own pressures, institutions, and communities. This page tracks public reporting department by department, so a reader can follow what is actually happening in Guaviare, or Vaupes, or Vichada, instead of a single flattened "Amazon" headline.
Every item below is linked to its original source. Sourcing standards, scoring, and publishing rules are the same ones that govern the rest of Amazon News Watch.
Core Amazon Departments
The six departments that make up Colombia's officially defined Amazon region, per SINCHI (the government's Amazon research institute).
A La Silla Vacia analysis of MapBiomas data finds 12 Indigenous territorial entities in Amazonas, Vaupes and Guainia deforested 0.8% of their territory from 1987 to 2024, versus 10% across the six Amazon departments. Pressure comes from nearby towns, outside actors and mining from Brazil along the Pure River.
La Silla VaciaSurrounded by pasture, the Coreguaje reserve of Jacome in Milan has set aside 120 hectares for restoration and has more than 40,800 seedlings of 25 native species. Its micro-basin lost over 2,500 hectares of water surface between 2000 and 2023.
Mongabay LatamCriminal-analysis reports seen by El Tiempo say illegal gold from Guainia leaves by river to Venezuela and Brazil and by flights from Inirida to Bogota, with armed groups charging communities. Authorities made 13 related arrests in 2025-2026.
El TiempoA Bogota family court lifted its suspension of military air strikes, a case triggered by the 27 August strike on Calarca dissidents in Guaviare that killed three minors, but ordered a stricter precaution standard when recruited children may be present.
El TiempoA Mocoa administrative court admitted appeals by the Justice Ministry and others against its 22 September ruling that suspended the government's pilot of aerial coca spraying with glufosinate in Putumayo. The case now goes to the Putumayo administrative tribunal.
El País (Cali)Early warning ATI 021 of 2026 says Indigenous communities in Taraira, on the Apaporis and Pira Parana rivers, face high risk of displacement and child recruitment as FARC dissident factions dispute drug routes and alluvial gold, with river blockades limiting fishing and farming.
El EspectadorAmazon Transition Departments
Cauca, Meta, Narino, and Vichada are not part of Colombia's core Amazon region, but each has territory in the Amazon biome or its immediate piedmont, and each shows up in national deforestation and land-use data. Coverage here will be thinner than the six core departments — that's a reflection of where reporting actually exists, not an editorial choice.
A Global Witness report says Cauca recorded 13 of the 39 killings of land and environmental defenders in Colombia in 2025, four of them Indigenous guards, amid land disputes, coca and illegal mining that degrade forests and water.
InfobaeColombia's Fiscalia alleges that a network of at least 21 people cleared 52,000 hectares of forest in Mapiripan between 2008 and 2026. Fifteen people were charged in July, including with ecocide; El Espectador reports case files also point to a former congressman.
El EspectadorColombia's Special Jurisdiction for Peace found members of the Grupo Cabal and Batallon 93 responsible for stigmatization, false-positive executions and military control over ethnic territories on Narino's Pacific coast. The ruling also documents environmental harm from glyphosate spraying and unresolved gender-based violence.
El Espectador / Mongabay LatamAfter visiting Puerto Carreno, Colombia's Ombudsman said more than 60,000 people in Vichada, about 40%, are not enrolled in the health system, with access to basic rights hardest for Indigenous peoples. She also flagged mercury in river dolphins, which her office links to illegal gold mining.
El MorichalHow this page works
One item per department, refreshed on the same weekly cycle as the rest of Amazon News Watch. Every headline links directly to its original source — wire services, national and regional outlets, government agencies, and research/conservation organizations. Sourcing rules, severity/confidence scoring, and the language standards that govern the rest of this section apply here too: no unsupported accusations, no sensitive locations, no publishing below a confidence threshold.
Some departments will have thinner coverage than others in a given week — Vaupes, Guainia, and the four transition departments generally produce far less English- or Spanish-language reporting than Caqueta, Putumayo, or Meta. When a department has nothing new and credible to report, its card will say so rather than being padded with an unrelated story.
Part of: The Colombian Amazon
