Illegal Deforestation: Death by a Thousand Cuts (video)

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.

Divided island: How Haiti and the DR became two worlds

Haiti and the Dominican Republic share a border, and an island. But the two countries are very different today: the Dominican Republic enjoys higher quality of life for many factors than Haiti. I went to this island and visited both countries, to try and understand when and how their paths diverged. And I began to learn how those differences are playing out in the present.