Authorities in Costa Rica have begun destroying a number of clandestine airstrips used by drug traffickers that were identified during overflights by Costa Rica’s Air Surveillance Service (SVA) over the last several months.

The SVA said in April that it had managed to locate 33 such airstrips over a 5-month period alone, most of which authorities said are linked to Mexican drug cartels.

A number of airstrips have already been destroyed by authorities in recent days, and the effort will continue for some time, according to Costa Rica’s Ministry of Public Security (MSP).

Operations on Monday will focus on destroying airstrips that were identified in the central Pacific and southern parts of the country.

The airstrips range from 500 meters to a kilometer in length, and were spotted and recorded by SVA aircraft over the course of some 587 flight hours, according to the SVA.

Director of the SVA, Juan Luis Vargas, said last month that many of the improvised airstrips are cleared in as little as one or two weeks, and drug traffickers will often use a single airstrip only once before abandoning it.

According to the SVA, of the 33 clandestine airstrips it discovered, 18 were in the northwestern province of Guanacaste, while 8 were found in Costa Rica’s southern zone and another 7 along the central Pacific coast.

In Guanacaste, 7 airstrips were found in Santa Cruz, 4 in Flamingo, 3 in Samara, 2 in Tambor and one in Nicoya.

In the central Pacific, 5 airstrips were found in Quepos and 2 in Jaco.

Mexican cartels increasingly using Costa Rica for “narco flights”

In less than a single week in April, three drug planes crashed in Costa Rica, including a a small plane that  crashed in front of a Carate Beach, in Puerto Jimenez, in Costa Rica’s southern Pacific. The remains of a Mexican man were found at the scene, and authorities found 370 kilos of cocaine in a vehicle abandoned nearby that was presumably to be loaded onto the aircraft.

Two days later,  a single-engine aircraft crashed and burned near Nosara, in Costa Rica’s northwestern Guanacaste province, killing both of the aircraft’s occupants.

Amongst the wreckage, authorities discovered 50 kilos of cocaine, US $45,000 in cash, and multiple firearms.

That same day, the remains of another crashed aircraft, which unofficial sources have linked to the infamous Sinaloa drug cartel headed by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, were found recently buried – apparently by heavy machinery – at a clandestine airstrip on a palm plantation in Quepos, located on Costa Rica’s central Pacific coast.

According to Costa Rica’s Drug Control Police (PCD), drug traffickers – especially Mexican cartels – have increased their use of Costa Rica as an aerial transit point for South American cocaine en route to Mexico, and ultimately the United States, over the last year as enforcement efforts have made transporting the drug by land more difficult.

Meanwhile, 85 percent of cocaine trafficked through Costa Rica continues to happen by sea. But ongoing efforts by both the Costa Rican Coast Guard as well as the United States to intercept drug shipments at sea may be forcing drug trafficking organizations to increase their use of small aircraft in order to go undetected.

Costa Rica’s only radar system is located at the Juan Santamaria International Airport and is not capable of providing radar coverage to the country’s coasts.

Plans are in the works to place a radar station on Costa Rica’s Cocos Island, which would provide some coverage along the country’s Pacific coast, but it isn’t clear when the radar system might ultimately be deployed.

The best solution would be a national defensive radar system, but officials say they currently lack the budget to deploy such a system, estimated to cost some US $18 million.

Costa Rica’s Minister of Public Security indicated last month that Costa Rica may seek the assistance “of a friendly country” to obtain such a radar system, without providing specific details.

Costa Rica authorities expect record year for cocaine trafficking

Costa Rica’s Ministry of Public Security (MSP) and Drug Control Police (PCD) are expecting a record level of cocaine trafficking through the country this year, due in large part to increases in production in the source countries of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia.

The MSP estimates that some 1,700 tons of cocaine will flow through Costa Rica this year, a nearly 42 percent increase from the 1,200 tons estimated to have been trafficked through Costa Rican territory in 2015 and 2.5 times as much as the 670 tons believed to have been trafficked through the country in 2014.

According to the PCD, the amount of land dedicated to coca production – the plant from which cocaine is derived – in producer countries has increased, as well as the quantity and quality of the harvest.

Authorities in Colombia announced earlier this month the largest single seizure of cocaine in the country’s history, after seizing eight tons of the drug from the country’s most active criminal syndicate, the Usuga clan.