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ECO CONCERNS
is to return species to their place and to take our place,
a small place." --Bill Mollison
An estimated 600,000 hectares of old growth forest is deforested each year in Mexico. Only a small fraction of the damaged land is reforested.
Status of the environment and its impact on the people of the region
The Sierra Madre region of Chiapas, Mexico is an amazingly diverse environment with hot tropical forests a few kilometers away from coniferous cloud forest. There are species of orchids that are found only here. Flocks of lime-green parrots fly into the remaining sunlight when the late afternoon shadows cool their nesting grounds in winter. In the rainshadow there are cactus intermixed with fragrant copal and the gracious, grand guanacastle trees. This is the headwaters for 46 rivers to the Pacific side of the divide. Numerous other rivers flow inland to join the Grijalva River that flows from Guatemala through to the center of Chiapas.
Once this massive watershed formed part of what was a continuous, lush Central American forest. But the Chiapas forest was severely damaged sixteen years ago by a large scale commercial logging project by no less than a former governor of the state. This deforestation has been so voracious that a NASA satellite photo taken over 12 years ago clearly shows the outline of the Guatemala border where that nation’s forest meets the denuded mountains of the Mexican Sierra Madre. El Triunfo Rainforest, considered one of the top priority wild-land areas on earth to be protected, is being chewed away at the edges as poor farmers clear land for cornfields like relentless leaf-cutter ants.
The consequences of this environmental damage have been serious for the bioregion and its people. The natural balance has been so severely altered that changes in climate patterns have had a devastating impact on coffee harvests, the main source of income for thousands of poor families throughout the region. Many rivers are now dry except in the rainy season when they flood, carrying precious topsoil from the steep mountainsides.
The catastrophic flooding in 1998 that affected over a half a million people was the direct result of the deforestation of the watershed by logging. What was once a temperate conifer forest shrouded in clouds, supporting an abundance of animal and plant-life, is now in many places a sad landscape of barren steep slopes with the occasional tree stripped of its branches by people looking for cooking fuel. (Disaster page)
Old timers reminisce about the time when jaguars, toucans, monkeys, lynx, deer and other native creatures were common. But there are islands of forest remaining where one can catch glimpses into that past they remember. On slopes too steep to farm, misty clouds curl among the branches of old-growth trees filled with bromeliads and orchids. These places are the reserves of the seeds, bulbs, and spores needed to reforest.
The Big Picture
This small piece of the planet, the Sierra Madre, has an important role to play in the ecology of the Americas. Population studies of migratory songbirds that make it to the U.S. and Canada have shown that their numbers are dropping each year at an alarming rate. This is due to the increased use of agro-chemicals, pushed by U.S. aid policy and Latin American governments, and the continuing loss of habitat cut for farming in Central America. These birds are one part of the web of life that is calling us to attention as they show us how far the damage has gone.Helping to repair the relationship between people and the Earth, a pragmatic approach
The struggle to rise above hunger and poverty is the most important motivation in impoverished communities. So, apart from our obvious duty to help our brothers and sisters to achieve a secure and dignified life, it is necessary for the success of any environmental work in the developing world that it include sustainable strategies to help the local people to progress economically.
In the Sierra Madre, as is the case elsewhere in the developing world, impoverished rural people must depend on an over-pressured environment for their survival. The loss of natural resources means that the Maya campesinos (rural farmers) can no longer use the land for low-impact subsistence. Climate change, soil erosion, and the scarcity of water contribute to the poor quality of life. In the Sierra, malnutrition is the norm.
The result is that there is a mass exodus of able-bodied young men who are sent north by desperate families who pool money for bus fare with the hope that they will succeed in crossing illegally into the U.S. and find work. The money they send home is just about all that sustains a surprisingly large percentage of Sierra families.
Philosophically, we do not see people as separate from the natural world. Rather we seek ways to help the entire system, people included, to reach a balance within the carrying capacity of the land.
In a damaged region like the Sierra Madre, this is a daunting task.
But just as the voyage of a 1000 miles begins with the first step, reforestation takes place tree by tree, and establishing an ethic of right stewardship, person by person.
