When a ranger is killed near the Dominican Republic's border with Haiti, the impact of illegal deforestation is exposed.
In 2012, Eligio Eloy Vargas, nicknamed Melaneo, a park ranger in a Dominican National Park was found murdered with a machete.
At the time, he was on patrol investigating an illegal charcoal production site run by Haitians coming across the border into a protected Dominican forest.
His murder becomes the starting point to investigate the larger story of increasing tension between Haiti and the Dominican Republic over illicit charcoal exploitation and mass deforestation: the alleged murder weapon itself being the same tool used to chop down Dominican trees by the thousands.
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