Reader’s Editorial: Venezuela could yield more profits from ecotourism than from oil

By Renee Owens, wildlife biologist

Photo by Renee Owens:  capybaras and sunset in Venezuela’s llanos

January 7, 2026 (San Diego’s East County) -- Having lived and worked in Venezuela, I can no longer remain silent amidst all the clueless rhetoric. Venezuela is more than a cliché of dictators and oil. It is a wondrous place and a cautionary tale we ignore at our peril.

Venezuelans celebrating is understandable but myopic. I, too, am happy Maduro was ousted. He and Chavez turned a wondrously resource-rich nation into a horror story of corruption that starved millions. But when kidnappers like the Trump regime are witless grifters contemptuous of international law and peace processes, the future is not promising.

Predictably, Trump supporters are reducing this to an obtusely binary issue of Maduro equals bad, therefore starting a randomly murderous, internationally illegal war of imperialism equals good.

What few outsiders know is that Venezuela could equal its profits from oil revenues with ecotourism alone - if they invested in building the tourism infrastructure. It is that rich in biodiversity and culture.

The remote cattle ranch where I did my research had 400 species of birds, and that’s just a tidbit of the vibrant flooded savanna that stretches over 60 million acres. (The area is so unique that my anaconda research was filmed by National Geographic, Discovery, and BBC). Almost 40% of Venezuela’s 30,000 plant species are endemic. The country hosts 30 distinct indigenous peoples, plus generations of refugees from WW2 along with immigrants from around the world.

Venezuela’s biological wealth offers a cornucopia of inspiration: a Caribbean archipelago amidst stunning coral reefs, vast wetlands, ancient flat-topped tepui mountains or “sky islands,” rising from lowland forests, a 230-mile wide Orinoco Delta, cloud forests (including a park in downtown Caracas where I saw my first sloth), Andean villages reminiscent of the Swiss Alps (but with more rum and wild parrots), and untrammeled rainforest that is home to Yanomami and other independent tribes.

Tragically this vast living, breathing biodiversity, including manpower, has gone largely neglected by the government. While Venezuela’s failed economy worsened at the hands of its oil-rich oligarchy, in 2019 Trump’s contractors helped fumble a government coup to seat progressive Venezuelan Juan Guaidó (who polled over 60% support by citizens). Long story short, Trump’s paid political saboteurs were morons, and the coup was royally botched. No James Bond geniuses here.

What about the unsupported accusations of narco-terrorism? A convenient fiction made up by an administration that needs a public pretext to steal another nation’s resources. One can only imagine how the future of Venezuela will pan out as Trump’s clueless sycophants and greedy grifters wrangle for control while their impulse-driven king has admitted openly we are taking their oil “that should have been given to us already.”

I am outraged at the inaction from Congress, and where are our grown-up military officials? The Trump cabal and its billionaire puppeteers are so drunk on power and the confidence of hubris they are now boasting that at least four other nations are next.

This is how world wars begin.

Renee Owens is a wildlife biologist, president of Sage Wildlife Biology and founder of Wild Zone Conservation. The opinions in this editorial reflect the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of East County Magazine.  To submit an editorial for consideration, contact editor@eastcountymagazine.org.