The degradation is causing changes in the capacity of the land towards a lower or irreversible state as it happens in two protected areas of Colombia: the Tinigua and Sierra de la Macarena National Natural Parks, exactly at the confluence of the Guayabero - Bajo Losada rivers. This paper analyzes the degradation of land in a protected area from the environmental perspective and landscape ecology. For this, the land cover was determined for four dates between 1985 and 2018. Based on these, the changes in the composition and configuration of the landscape were determined, then two degradation scenarios were calculated whose result served to have an approximation of the effects in the composition and richness of birds. Added to this, the territorial dimension of degradation is recounted and reconstructed from bibliographic review, open - axial coding and participant observation. The increase in coverage of anthropic origin and its cohesion in the last triennium leaves the matrix of this landscape at a turning point where natural coverage represents less than half. The magnitude and frequency of the disturbances will be decisive for the recovery of the natural cover or on the contrary the deterioration of the degradation. Its presence in protected areas poses challenges for both peasants and institutions that exercise certain management within, where conservation is hindered by violence, livestock as an intensive economy and weakness for this to be a unifying work of the territory.