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The Problem with ‘Pristine Wilderness’

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By Latoya Abulu for Mongabay

The idea of a “pristine wilderness” in conservation efforts — a natural zone free of people — is an erroneous construct that doesn’t reflect the reality of how many high-value biodiverse landscapes have operated for millennia, a new study says. In fact, enforcing this concept can cause environmental degradation of these areas when their human inhabitants, such as Indigenous peoples and local communities who have adapted to living sustainably in these zones, are displaced from them, the study says.

In their paper published Oct. 5, 2021, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors make the case that a “pristine wilderness” where rich biodiverse forests continue to thrive without humans present is a Eurocentric construct. It emerged during the Enlightenment period in the West and was later imposed on Indigenous peoples and local communities the world over as they were displaced from their ancestral lands. This idea gained particular traction during European colonial and conservation efforts in the 19th and 20th centuries across the Americas, Africa, Asia Pacific and Australia, and may be experiencing a particular resurgence today among large international conservation organizations, philanthropists, foundations, and certain governments.

Wildlife rangers in Cambodia. Image courtesy of Rhett Butler/Mongabay.

A high-profile case that may be giving renewed salience to this idea is the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework’s draft target 3, which highlights the importance of preserving at least 30% of Earth’s land and ocean by the year 2030. Historically such territorial preservation has been achieved by establishing exclusionary conservation areas, notably national parks. Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and human rights organizations say the creation of such conservation areas will lead to the continued displacement and abuse of Indigenous peoples and local communities if it’s framed in the Eurocentric concept of creating a “pristine wilderness,” a system also dubbed “fortress conservation,” where human inhabitants are seen as a liability.

“Fortress conservation is motivated by the mistaken belief that successful conservation outcomes require ‘pristine wilderness’ free from human inhabitants,” David R. Boyd, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, writes in his policy brief on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

“Mounting evidence confirms that Indigenous Peoples and other rural rights holders possess the knowledge and ability necessary to successfully conserve and manage biodiverse ecosystems more effectively than governments and at a fraction of the cost, particularly where their rights are recognized, respected and supported.”

Separating humans from nature

The idea that natural wilderness areas should be sanitized of any kind of human presence stems from the Enlightenment theory that sought to release humankind from the binds of religion and other subjective cultural influences, and showcase an objective human isolated from the surrounding world. In doing so, however, this process created a whole new “religious” idea of human beings as separate from nature, while its exclusion of other beliefs narrowed the possibilities and solutions that could be used to address our environmental crises — notably Indigenous traditional knowledge.

The result is the now familiar binary of humans versus wilderness, with the former seen as a civilized entity and the latter, an untamed, primitive, wild space. As this concept evolved over the centuries, it fed the notion that humans could tame and conquer nature — and, by extension, “uncivilized” Indigenous peoples — without any adverse impacts on the humans that were tied to it.

For the authors of the new study, the underlining issue is that, at its core, this construct isn’t in touch with the reality of how many ecosystems operate and how high-value biodiverse landscapes are continuously preserved by human stewardship.

Certain ecosystems as “historical products”

Tropical forests, such as the Amazon, are often showcased as the last key biodiversity hotspots that were in place prior to human contact. However, more than half of the spatial landscape of the Amazon has seen and lived along with human activity over the last 10,000 years, to the extent that the region is shaped by it.

The forests are the center of the domestication of more than 80 crop species, such as cassava (Manihot esculenta), wild rice (Oryza spp.), peanuts (Arachis hypogaea), and chili (Capsicum baccatum). Agroforestry and the cultivation of maize began around 6,300 years ago and intensified more than 1,000 years later. This domestication and cultivation actively produced human-generated organic soils called Amazonian dark earth that now extend across a significant part of the Amazon and support the “distinct human-modified forests” and their diversity.

“This has influenced forest composition to such an extent that much of the forest is disproportionately rich in domesticated species,” the paper says.

Agroforestry cultivation practices, called chagra by Indigenous communities such as the Nonuya, Andoque and Ceima Chacivera in the northwestern Colombian Amazon, have been shown to lead to “diverse and highly dynamic landscapes” that are largely in line with forest cover thresholds set by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the Kyoto Protocol.

Maps detail how much of the “wild” hotspots of the Amazon are actually the ancestral territories of Indigenous communities that have lived, hunted, gathered and cultivated there for millennia. Most areas that aren’t Indigenous territories are areas containing either the predicted human-generated soils, domesticated plants, or earthworks.

In the case of another biodiversity hotspot, Southeast Asia and New Guinea, humans have been hunting and using horticulture techniques, such as swidden, for more than 40,000 years. A technique of rotational agriculture used sustainably in the highlands, it requires clearing a strip of forest by cutting down trees and burning them to have land to cultivate for a short period. The land is then returned to the forests as the farmers shift to another strip of land.

Sustainable swidden agriculture is often lumped together with the encroachment of farms on forests, giving it the name “slash and burn.” Certain large conservation organizations and the REDD+ program see it as “incompatible with nature and conservation” or having degraded the “pristine ecology of tropical forests.”

However, today, swidden agriculture supports more than 14 million highlanders in the Southeast Asia and New Guinea region, and paleo-ecological research has demonstrated how it may increase landscape-scale biodiversity and forest resilience to climate change.

“Despite long being cultivated, these highland zones capture some of the most biologically, linguistically, and culturally diverse zones on earth,” the paper says.

Ecological functions performed by people

Removing humans from these zones that they have co-evolved with and shaped may degrade the ecosystem’s health by removing the human drivers they have come to depend on. A case study focuses on what occurred in Australia from the 1960s to the 1980s. After displacing the Aboriginal inhabitants, who consist of the world’s oldest continuous culture, from the tropical deserts, savanna and forests around the western deserts, uncontrolled wildfires and an erosion of the region’s biodiversity ensued.

According to researchers, the culprit was the lack of humans to perform low-intensity patch burning and hunting. Patch burning diminishes the intensity and destruction of wildfires on flora and fauna through controlled burns, while hunting balances species’ populations. The lack of patch burning in the region helped precipitate the decline and endangerment of many species in the western deserts, including keystone species such as the sand monitor lizard (Varanus gouldii).

“Long-term, multidisciplinary data from all three biomes indicate the long, continuing legacies of humans in shaping these supposedly ‘wild’ landscapes, ranging from food tree manipulation in the Australian Wet Tropics, to the construction of place-based societies across the Western Deserts,” the paper says.

Aboriginal notions imagine a “pristine wilderness” to be one that is, in fact, ecologically degraded without the presence of humans. This illustrates how the concept of “fortress conservation” doesn’t take into account the environmental necessities of various different ecosystems to maintain their integrity.

The co-evolution between people and place, between managed forests and the cultural, spiritual and economic needs of Indigenous peoples and local communities, occurred over millennia. Displacing humans from their lands to create “pristine” conservation areas not only entails human rights violations and social conflicts over territory, but may erode the biodiversity of ecosystems that co-exist with human intervention while impeding conservation efforts by ignoring Indigenous traditional knowledge of forest management.

Boyd, the U.N. special rapporteur, highlights multiple recommendations for the post-2020 global biodiversity targets to avoid continuing on the same failing conservation path of separating humans from nature, and encourages embarking on a transformative path that puts rights-based approaches at the heart of biodiversity conservation.

“Accelerated efforts to expand protected areas have proven insufficient to stop or even slow the tidal wave of environmental destruction sweeping the planet,” Boyd says. “Indigenous Peoples and other rural rights holders who successfully steward vast portions of the world’s biodiversity [are] vital conservation partners whose human, land, and resource rights must be recognized and respected if biodiversity loss is to be stopped and reversed.”

Citations

Fletcher, M., Hamilton, R., Dressler, W., & Palmer, L. (2021). Indigenous knowledge and the shackles of wilderness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(40), e2022218118. doi:10.1073/pnas.2022218118

Oldekop, J. A., Holmes, G., Harris, W. E., & Evans, K. L. (2015). A global assessment of the social and conservation outcomes of protected areas. Conservation Biology, 30(1), 133-141. doi:10.1111/cobi.12568

Iriarte, J., Elliott, S., Maezumi, S. Y., Alves, D., Gonda, R., Robinson, M., … Handley, J. (2020). The origins of Amazonian landscapes: Plant cultivation, domestication and the spread of food production in tropical South America. Quaternary Science Reviews, 248, 106582. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106582

Piperno, D. R. (2011). The origins of plant cultivation and domestication in the New World tropics. Current Anthropology, 52(S4), S453-S470. doi:10.1086/659998

Bush, M., Correa-Metrio, A., McMichael, C., Sully, S., Shadik, C., Valencia, B., … Overpeck, J. (2016). A 6900-year history of landscape modification by humans in lowland Amazonia. Quaternary Science Reviews, 141, 52-64. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2016.03.022

McMichael, C. H., Piperno, D. R., Neves, E. G., Bush, M. B., Almeida, F. O., Mongeló, G., & Eyjolfsdottir, M. B. (2015). Phytolith assemblages along a gradient of ancient human disturbance in western Amazonia. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 3. doi:10.3389/fevo.2015.00141

Barker, G., Barton, H., Bird, M., Daly, P., Datan, I., Dykes, A., … Turney, C. (2007). The ‘human revolution’ in lowland tropical Southeast Asia: The antiquity and behavior of anatomically modern humans at Niah Cave (Sarawak, Borneo). Journal of Human Evolution, 52(3), 243-261. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2006.08.011

Mertz, O., Leisz, S. J., Heinimann, A., Rerkasem, K., Thiha, Dressler, W., … Potter, L. (2009). Who counts? Demography of swidden cultivators in Southeast Asia. Human Ecology, 37(3), 281-289. doi:10.1007/s10745-009-9249-y

Bliege Bird, R., Bird, D. W., Fernandez, L. E., Taylor, N., Taylor, W., & Nimmo, D. (2018). Aboriginal burning promotes fine-scale pyrodiversity and native predators in Australia’s Western Desert. Biological Conservation, 219, 110-118. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2018.01.008

Crabtree, S. A., Bird, D. W., & Bliege Bird, R. (2019). Subsistence transitions and the simplification of ecological networks in the Western Desert of Australia. Human Ecology, 47(2), 165-177. doi:10.1007/s10745-019-0053-z

Bliege Bird, R., Tayor, N., Codding, B. F., & Bird, D. W. (2013). Niche construction and dreaming logic: Aboriginal patch mosaic burning and varanid lizards (Varanus gouldii) in Australia. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 280(1772), 20132297. doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.2297

Banner image: Indigenous Tikuna man in the Amazon rainforest. Under a human rights-based framework, communities on the ground would take a leading role in biodiversity protection, with outside conservation projects or initiatives structured as an equal partnership rather than an imposition. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Republished from Mongabay with permission under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license.

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By Jason G. Goldman

One of the best places in the world to see whales in their natural habitat is in Latin America. The waters around the continent include some 64 species of whales and dolphins: about three-quarters of the planet’s total cetacean biodiversity. That might explain why whale watching tourism has grown around 11% each year there, a rate that three times the annual growth of global tourism and nearly five times the annual growth of Latin American tourism more generally. In Central America, the numbers are even more impressive, with (pre-pandemic) annual growth in whale tourism of some 47%. This is the second fastest growing whale watching industry in the world.

Whales are found throughout the Pacific and Caribbean coasts of Central America, but most cetacean (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) tourism is situated in just a few countries: Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama. Together, these three countries account for a whopping 97 percent of all whale watching operations in Central America, according to a 2008 report published by the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

But other countries are working hard to earn a piece of that business. In 2006, for example, El Salvador established a marine protected area off the Pacific coast of Los Cóbanos, west of San Salvador, near the Guatemala border. Ten years later, in the 2014-2015 whale watching season, about 400 whale watching tourists had participated in sixty-five expeditions, generating more than $14,000 worth of revenue for whale watch operators in the area. As whale watching tourism has grown in this small community – thanks in part to local fishermen who no longer spend one hundred percent of their time fishing – so has tourism more generally. More hostels and lodges are being built, some of which offer their own in-house whale watching activities, bringing even more revenue to the Los Cóbanos area.

These small businesses aren’t in it alone. One of the most important things that the federal government has done is to publish a set of best practices for sustainable whale watching activities, most recently updated in 2019. These guidelines help business owners to ensure that the whales themselves are not overstressed by the presence of tourism boats.

For example, the mandate that any group of whales can only be continuously observed by a maximum of two boats for thirty minutes. The regulations specify that cetaceans should only be approached from in front rather than behind, to avoid spooking the animals, and that the boats must maintain a distance of 100 meters – and 200 meters for blue whales, which themselves can reach nearly 30 meters in length. The government also provides guidelines for how to respond if a boat accidentally strikes a whale or dolphin, or if somebody spots an injured animal.

None of this would have been possible without the collaboration of Paso Pacifíco, which has been officially tasked with coordinating best practices for wildlife-related tourism by El Salvador’s Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources.

“Los Cóbanos is where the bulk of the action is in terms of whale tourism; there’s been a lot of humpback whale tourism in the last two or three years,” says Paso Pacífico executive director Sarah Otterstrom, especially since the government has cleared up the gang-related violence that used to be common in the area. She explains further that “There’s been a lot of investment by international NGOs” in maintaining sustainable wildlife tourism in the region. This tourism also includes SCUBA and snorkel activities centered on the area’s protected coral reef ecosystem.

In the meantime, some three hundred kilometers southeast, in the Gulf of Fonseca, researchers have now documented twenty-one cetacean species, including some that are rare or vulnerable to extinction. Members of the communities there are now looking to Los Cóbanos as a model for establishing a sustainable whale-based tourism economy of their own.

Header: Humpback whales seen in Los Cóbanos, El Salvador. By Flickr user zambomba; used under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

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The Pacific leatherback sea turtle has survived since the dinosaur age—and as the largest turtle species, this reptile is a giant in its own right. Yet today, these turtles are in imminent danger of extinction, in part because of declining numbers of viable nests. In Indonesia, which is the primary nesting habitat for the Western Pacific leatherback sea turtles, numbers have dropped by over 80%. In Mexico and Central America, the main sea turtle nesting grounds for their Eastern Pacific counterparts, the decline is over 90%. 

These turtles are vulnerable along their migration routes throughout the Pacific Ocean and coastal habitats in the Americas. Today, the greatest threats to the leatherback sea turtle population as a whole include:

  • Fishing (including intentional and unintentional catches; the latter is called bycatch)
  • General loss of habitat to coastal development and resource extraction
  • Poaching
  • Collisions with boats
  • Pollution and climate change

Mothers and hatchlings face additional hazards during sea turtle nesting season:

  • Human predation (for turtle meat and eggs, considered a delicacy in Central America)
  • Poaching (selling turtle eggs into the illegal wildlife trade)
  • Predation by native and non-native animal species
  • Hatchling disorientation by beachfront lighting in populated areas
  • Loss of nesting habitat to coastal development and resource extraction

Strategies for Protecting Pacific Leatherback Sea Turtles

Although Pacific leatherback sea turtles are legally protected in the US, Mexico, and some Central American countries, many threats to the species require additional effort to eliminate. The following strategies can aid significantly in bringing this species back from the brink of extinction. 

Governments, companies, and other organizations can do the following:

  • Work with domestic and international partners to ensure compliance with conservation laws
  • Reduce waste and pollution in the Pacific ocean and coastal lands
  • Develop new fishing gear technology to help prevent sea turtle bycatch
  • Create legal and best practice policies for protecting sea turtles (such as creating coastal ordinances that reduce boat collisions, light pollution, and nest disturbance)
  • Educate the public about sea turtle conservation

Individuals can do the following:

  • Reduce waste and trash in the ocean; consider volunteering for beach cleanups
  • Keep your distance from sea turtles; don’t approach them, feed them, or disturb their nests
  • Report marine life in distress
  • Vote for political policies and candidates that support marine conservation efforts

Help Save Pacific Leatherback Sea Turtles with Paso Pacífico

An excellent way to help save endangered species like Pacific leatherback sea turtles is to support conservation organizations. Paso Pacífico is accomplishing important steps in protecting these ancient giants. 

At Paso Pacífico, our mission is to create wildlife corridors that safeguard biodiversity while connecting people to their land and ocean. Our goal is to restore and conserve Mesoamerica’s Pacific Slope ecosystems. The threatened mangrove wetlands, dry tropical forests, and eastern Pacific coral reefs are among these ecosystems.

All conservation programs at Paso Pacífico benefit directly from your donations. These include education programs that teach children the principles of biology, ecology, and environmental citizenship.

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The yellow-naped amazon parrot (also known as the golden-naped amazon) is a strikingly beautiful and intelligent bird widely considered a subspecies of the yellow-crowned amazon parrot. It is predominantly native to forests, woodlands, and tropical zones in Pacific coast regions from southern Mexico to northern Costa Rica. Unfortunately, these parrots are also currently endangered, largely by deforestation and the illegal pet trade. Here’s what you need to know about the lives of yellow-naped amazons and how they function in their ecosystem.

Flying yellow-naped amazon parrot. Photo by Nestor Herrera.
Photo: Nestor Herrera

The Life Cycle and Habits of Yellow-Naped Amazons

These vibrant birds can live to be about 20-30 years old in the wild. They are monogamous and choose a life partner when they reach maturity at 2 years of age. Females make nests in tree cavities as high as 30 meters off the ground, and males guard their nests from outside. Males also feed the nesting females, but never enter the nest itself. Breeding pairs are territorial, so although these parrots live in large groups, it’s important for them to establish, defend, and keep their own area.

Yellow-naped amazons are highly social birds, which means it’s important for their numbers in the wild to remain significant enough to support their preference to live in large groups. This is just one reason to protect them as an endangered species; they also contribute to keeping their ecosystems healthy.

Natural nests are often hard to find because of deforestation and competition from other animals like bees.
This very tall tree has an artificial amazon nest provided by Paso Pacifico. The parrots love it!
This very tall tree has an artificial amazon nest provided by Paso Pacifico. The parrots love it!

The Yellow-Naped Amazons’ Dispersal Duty

As herbivores, yellow-naped amazons eat fruits, seeds, berries, nuts, blossoms, and leaf buds. For this reason, and because they fly for long distances, these parrots are able to help significantly with seed dispersal. They generally leave seeds intact after eating the fleshy part of fruits and drop these wherever they perch to eat. This helps palms and a wide variety of other trees regenerate. Trees in turn help to feed and house other species as well as convert carbon dioxide to oxygen, all of which is crucial for amazon ecosystems as a whole.

Help Save Yellow-Naped Amazon Parrots with Paso Pacífico

An excellent way to help save endangered species like yellow-naped amazon parrots is to support conservation organizations. Paso Pacífico is accomplishing important steps in protecting these beautiful and intelligent birds.

At Paso Pacífico, our mission is to create wildlife corridors that safeguard biodiversity while connecting people to their land and ocean. Our goal is to restore and conserve Mesoamerica’s Pacific Slope ecosystems. The threatened mangrove wetlands, dry tropical forests, and eastern Pacific coral reefs are among these ecosystems. All conservation programs at Paso Pacífico benefit directly from your donations. These include education programs that teach children the principles of biology, ecology, and environmental citizenship. Contact us today!  

Paso Pacífico rangers give health checkups to young parrots and work with local families to keep them safe from poachers. Learn more here.

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Bird populations in Central American countries include a wide variety of migratory species. Migratory birds make up around 25% of Costa Rica’s avifauna and almost 50% of El Salvador’s. Some travel as far as South and North America.

Migratory birds are an important natural resource because they contribute to biodiversity across the Americas, particularly with regard to the pollination of flowers, seed dispersal, and pest control that they provide. All of these behaviors are crucial for a healthy ecosystem, but also for promoting the growth of crops that feed humans and animals. Some migratory birds in Central America include:

  • Tanagers
  • Warblers
  • Grackles
  • Emeralds
  • Hummingbirds
  • Cotingas
  • Finches
  • Doves

Because many migratory bird species have become endangered as the result of human-caused pollution and man-made energy sources, the US and other countries have adopted policies to preserve these avians.

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 administers four international conservation accords signed by the United States in 1916, 1936, 1972, and 1976. Its goal is to preserve the long-term viability of all protected migratory bird populations.

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act forbids humans from harming protected migratory bird species. This includes capturing, killing, selling, and transporting them without prior authorization from the Department of the Interior’s US Fish and Wildlife Service. You can read about more US migratory bird initiatives here.

World Migratory Bird Day

World Migratory Bird Day occurs every second weekend in May and October. This event gives bird enthusiasts and environmentalists worldwide the chance to celebrate these birds and increase awareness of the manmade and other environmental perils that they face.

Migratory Bird Flyways Map

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFW) and its partners help to monitor and recommend actions to preserve migratory birds based on their routes between breeding and wintering grounds, which are called flyways.

Four administrative Flyway Councils (in the Atlantic, Central, Mississippi, and Pacific regions) have been formed to coordinate these efforts. These are advised by the technical committees of biological professionals from member agencies, who assess population and habitat data.

Other Organizations that Support Migratory Bird Preservation

There are other organizations dedicated to preserving migratory birds and other species in the Americas, including Paso Pacífico. Our mission is to create wildlife corridors that safeguard biodiversity while connecting people to their land and ocean. Our goal is to restore and conserve Mesoamerica’s Pacific Slope ecosystems. The threatened mangrove wetlands, dry tropical forests, and eastern Pacific coral reefs are among these ecosystems.

All conservation programs at Paso Pacífico benefit directly from your donations. These include environmental education that instructs young Junior Rangers in the care of endangered baby parrots, monkeys, sea turtles, migratory birds, and other local wildlife. Contact us today!

Header photo by Dan Pancamo.

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Paso Pacifico rangers closed out a period of migratory bird activities by hosting a ‘Festival of Kites’ for kids in Sapoa and Ostional with the motto “sing, fly and soar like birds.” In this activity, the children used their imaginations and crafting skills to use the kite as a metaphor. The kites represented the beautiful migratory birds that fly long distances to reach Central America during the winter.

The children ran through the beaches and watched their kites soar and fly, imitating the birds that have come a long way to visit the beaches and forests of Nicaragua.

On a bright and sunny day, the community rangers used this opportunity to talk to the kids about the importance of taking care of the beaches, mangroves, and forests that are home to thousands of birds and other animals. With this hands-on activity, kids were able to imagine what it’s like to soar like a bird!

 

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Oysters keep the oceans healthy. They filter up to 50 gallons of ocean water a day and form banks with their shells, giving habitat and protection! Without them, seawater is more polluted, coasts erode more easily, and there is less habitat for sea life.

With your support and with generous funding from the PRBB Foundation, the oyster cooperative in the village of Pochote has made great strides for oysters and more. The aim of the oyster program is two-fold: to restore coastal ecosystems and to elevate women fishers through leadership and income from sustainable aquaculture. In the last two years, the women fishers have learned boating and swimming skills, strengthened their fishing cooperative through regular meetings and legal support, and improved their livelihoods through selling oysters and poultry.

Earlier in the program, the women harvested very small oysters from the coastline and placed them in bags hung from open-ocean long-lines. The oysters grew there into market-sized products.

This approach was a good start, but it was limiting because it did not help restore the oyster beds or generate a profitable volume of oysters.

Therefore, during the past year, the women have focused on monitoring wild populations of tropical rock oysters (Striostrea prismatica). Their goal has been to understand the timing of oyster reproduction to eventually capture a portion of the wild larvae, organisms that are otherwise mostly lost to the sea. Using local materials, the women built buoys and set up 36 collectors along 3 lines suspended in the water. We couldn’t be more proud of their work.

Collectors are simply a batch of seashells in a bag that can attract oyster larvae and help bring these mollusks to the next stage of development. While the larvae are microscopic, regular sampling helps us know their presence and abundance.

Over the past year, women have been visiting the long-lines weekly, removing algae and other growth from the linds and taking a sample. Paso Pacifico’s biologist Osmar Sandino reviews samples collected by the women using microscopes at the UNAN-Leon laboratory. Over time, monitoring and additional oyster farming equipment will enable the women to grow more oysters on their ocean farms.

The oyster program has grown gradually through the years. Donors like you have been part of their journey, and so have foundations including the Waitt Foundation, the Loyal Bigelow and Jedediah Dewey Foundation, and more recently the PRBB Foundation. Our commitment to supporting these women remains strong. We couldn’t be more grateful for our donors, and we know that the women fishers are thanking you too.

Photos: Hal Brindley, Yorlin Vargas, and Julio Collado.

 

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In Central America, some farmers use machetes to plant “living fences” and assist forest regrowth. There is significant potential for mass forest regrowth efforts using their techniques, but this information is hard to find.

Today, you can fund the pilot project that will gather this information, design easy instructions and pilot this program to 1000 farmers so they can grow 20,000 trees. Until 11:59 pm EDT on Friday, April 23, 2021, your donation will be doubled (up to $100) by GlobalGiving! After piloting, this program can then be refined and scale across the tropics, leading to hundreds of millions of new trees that help save our planet. Click here to donate to our planet today.

 

Challenge

Climate change threatens life on this planet. Though carbon finance programs aim to rapidly store carbon through growing trees, rural farmers are often excluded from their highly technical methods and top-down financing structures. These farmers often have unique knowledge and experience managing and cultivating forests by using their machetes to assist natural regeneration. Given the climate emergency, we need solutions that are inclusive and that can bring benefits to local livelihoods.

 

 

Solution

This project will gather expertise from small-scale rural farmers on the use of machetes to assist natural regeneration by removing vines, grasses and lianas from naturally growing trees. The program will also bring in farmer knowledge and technical resources on management cuttings from sprouts and stems to plant and grow trees quickly. These materials will be compiled and edited as an illustrated training manual. We will pilot this manual with 1000 farmers, helping them plant 20,000 trees.

 

 

Miguel Rostran with the trees planted 7 years ago by Paso Pacifico reforestation project on his farm (Loma del Bosque) near Ostional, Nicaragua. © Hal Brindley .com

Long-Term Impact

The training manual and work with 1000 farmers across Central America will lay the groundwork to scale up this approach to reach one million farmers in the region. As farmers are empowered to use their knowledge and tools to plant trees and grow small forests, they can reap the multiple benefits including food, timber, and ecosystem services. If 1 million farmers were to plant 3 trees, we could store 1 million tonnes of carbon and elevate the role of the farmers as climate heroes.

Donate Now

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By Jason G. Goldman

Biologist Miguel Ordeñana crouches down in the shade of a forest and reaches into his pack for a small bottle. He sprays the substance on a tree just a few feet above the ground. A few meters away behind him is a camera trap he’s deployed. The liquid he’s spraying is a cologne called Calvin Klein Obsession for Men and if he’s lucky, the scent will convince a jaguar to stop and sniff it long enough for the camera to snap a photo or two.

Nobody knows why this particular aroma is enticing to the big cats. It could be the vanilla extract, or it could be the civetone, a synthetic chemical meant to mimic the excretions of a small nocturnal cat-like mammal native to the Asian and African tropics. Either way, jaguars go nuts for the stuff.

That was a few years ago, and Ordeñana, a wildlife biologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles who was then collaborating with Paso Pacífico, did get lucky. While locals had reported seeing jaguars in the region, this was the first time they were formally documented by scientists. In the years since, the spotted cats have made their presence known in the Paso del Istmo region, a corridor of land sandwiched between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific Ocean.

Male jaguar in the Paso del Istmo, Nicaragua, April 2014

A male jaguar pads along a trail in the Paso del Istmo, Nicaragua, in April 2014.

These cats are something of an anomaly. “We know that jaguars have dipped their toes into the Paso del Istmo,” says Paso Pacífico executive director Sarah Otterstrom, “but they’re pretty much gone from western Nicaragua, which is a pretty large area. And they’re gone from El Salvador and they’re probably gone from western Honduras.” In other words, the big cats have been driven out of almost the entire Pacific dry forest of Central America.

The region’s other big cat has suffered a similar, if less precipitous, decline. The puma, also known as the mountain lion, cougar, panther, ghost cat, catamount, and almost forty other common names in different areas, has the widest range of any modern large cat, stretching from the Northern Yukon all the way to the southernmost reaches of Patagonia. And while a single puma was photographed with a camera trap last year in El Salvador, and a second one recently turned up dead, shot by hunters, that species is likewise only rarely seen in western Central America.

It’s certainly not unusual for large cats to be extirpated from parts of their range, or to go extinct entirely. The jaguar is largely extirpated from the United States, for example, besides the odd sighting in Arizona. And the cougar has disappeared entirely from the U.S. east of the continental divide, save for a small population hanging on in Florida. But Central America is home to the Mesoamerican Biodiversity Hotspot, a region that has both a high rate of endemism (species found there and nowhere else) and a high rate of habitat loss. It contains the third largest forested area in the world and is a vital linkage between the ecosystems of North and South America.

Two pumas stroll past a camera trap in the Paso del Istmo, Nicaragua, in January 2020.

Two pumas stroll past a camera trap in the Paso del Istmo, Nicaragua, in January 2020.

As agriculture and urban development have expanded, large mammals like jaguars and pumas have lost habitats that are vital to their survival and movement, but habitat loss alone doesn’t account for the cats’ plummeting populations. Add revenge killings, when ranchers kill predators due to real or imagined threats to their livestock, and the global trade in wildlife parts, and you have a recipe for extinction.

It’s due to the habitat concerns, in part, that many big cat conservation projects have historically focused on the more intact forests of eastern Central America rather than the more heavily populated and more intensively altered regions closer to the Pacific Ocean. But maintaining or restoring habitat doesn’t, by itself, solve the anthropogenic problems. That’s why Paso Pacífico has dedicated its efforts towards coexistence.

“Paso Pacífico disagrees with the idea of ignoring the importance of major predators in human-dominated ecosystems. We think that you still need these major predators on these landscapes,” says Otterstrom. “You need them to be able to survive at some level.”

That’s because the carnivores at the top of the food chain, also known as apex predators, help to regulate the rest of the ecosystem. Free from the pressure exerted by large predators, medium-sized carnivores like coyotes, foxes, and ocelots (also called mesopredators) would see their populations go through the roof. But as a result, their prey base – the small mammals, like rabbits and rodents – would decline. Populations of the largest herbivores, like deer, tapirs, and peccaries, would expand because their own predators would be missing. If those animals over-grazed the plants they eat, it could have impacts on everything from insect communities to carbon sequestration to hydrology. In other words, the entire system would go sideways in an ecological process called a trophic cascade.

One need only look at mega-cities like Los Angeles or Mumbai to understand that large predators like mountain lions and leopards, respectively, can co-exist alongside human communities – as long as they are protected from being shot, run over, or poisoned. If cats such as these can make it in two of the most heavily urbanized landscapes on the planet, surely there is a place for jaguars and pumas in western Central America.

Making space for predators in these regions requires re-imagining what suitable habitat looks like. “As we restore areas, the cats come back,” says Otterstrom, adding that as predator conservation efforts succeed, resources will need to be marshaled for addressing the human-wildlife conflicts that will inevitably follow.

To start with, people should probably avoid spraying themselves with Calvin Klein Obsession for Men when out in the woods.

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By Jason G. Goldman

The writing was on the wall more than a decade ago, or at least it seemed to be. Though the species was classified as one of “least concern” by the IUCN, yellow-naped amazon parrots were struggling in the Paso del Istmo region of Nicaragua. The green-feathered birds sport patches of red on their wingtips and are named for the yellow on top of their necks. A 2008 survey in the department of Rivas found that ninety percent of the parrots’ nests failed. Their nesting trees were being chopped for firewood and timber. Their nestlings were succumbing to Africanized bees and to predators. Most of all, the chicks were being stolen out of their nests by people looking to sell them into a pet trade with an extraordinarily high demand for the chatty species.

The species, which ranges on the Pacific slope of Central America from southern Mexico to Costa Rica, and on the Caribbean slopes of Honduras and Nicaragua, was reclassified as “vulnerable” in 2012, and then as “endangered” just five years later. Meanwhile, thanks to the hard work of Paso Pacífico biologists and the dedication of a small group of landowners, the population in Rivas is rebounding.

That change has come about one landowner at a time. If a nest is found on a farmer’s property – and they agree to protect it – they’re paid a small fee. They’re paid again to allow biologists to periodically monitor the health and development of the chicks, and again if the birds successfully fledge. The cash incentives add up to slightly more than $200 per nest altogether. In recent years, more than a dozen landowners have participated in the program.

Incentives like these are intended to shift local communities’ perspective of these animals from a commodity to be traded to a resource worth protecting, to promote the notion that animals are worth more in the wild than in cages. In addition to the inducement offered by cold, hard cash, a more robust parrot population offers an opportunity for communities to generate revenue indirectly through ecotourism and birdwatching.

If successful, then after enough years of cash payouts, community members would come to value the presence of the birds on the landscape in a more abstracted manner. That, in turn, would enable conservationists to redirect scarce funds towards other conservation efforts.

Paso Pacífico executive director Sarah Otterstrom believes that this transition has already begun in Rivas, though the need for cash-based incentives has not yet faded. “We have gotten a good amount of community members expressing their happiness and joy to hear and see parrots again,” she says, adding that Paso Pacífico’s Junior Ranger program, now in its twelfth year, likely has an impact on attitudes as well. Many of the earliest participants, now entering adulthood, are likely uninterested in pursuing the parrot trade.

The program’s impacts can be seen even by an untrained observer. “When we started we couldn’t find any roosts, and now we have roosts with over one hundred birds in them at a time. The social behavior of the parrots on the landscape has changed,” says Otterstrom. “We have really effectively reversed declines of the yellow-naped amazon parrot in Rivas.”

Having proven an effective strategy for avian conservation, Paso Pacífico has begun to replicate it in Cosigüina, near the Gulf of Fonseca in northwestern Nicaragua. That’s where the last remaining population of wild cyanoptera scarlet macaws on Central America’s Pacific coast can be found. This unique subspecies is nearly extinct in the wild, but if landowners there can be motivated to protect the macaw nests, just as their counterparts have protected yellow-naped amazon nests in Rivas, they might just have a fighting chance.

3 yellow-naped amazon parrots in flight. Photo by Orlando Jarquin.

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