Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve: Sustainable Forestry Halts Deforestation

The low rumbling grows louder until a huge harvester crashes into the open, dragging a 15-metre trunk of mahogany in its wake. The tractor manoeuvres before releasing its load and shovelling it like a matchstick on to a growing pile of lumber at the edge of the clearing. Then, with a crunch of gears and a belch of diesel, it turns and lurches back into the forest.

This is sustainable forestry at its most brutal, yet in a few weeks’ time silence will return to this pocket of tropical forest in Guatemala’s Maya biosphere reserve (MBR). Nature will be left to reclaim the land and chainsaws won’t return for at least four years, as part of a strict management plan that is helping to buck the trend of rampant deforestation.

The 2.1m-hectare (5.2m-acre) MBR, in the northern province of Petén, was established by the Guatemalan government in 1990 and recognised by Unesco. It now anchors the largest natural forest in Central America, says José Román Carrera, a forestry director at the Rainforest Alliance, who was part of the initial discussions to establish the reserve.

The MBR is divided into three zones: a buffer (23%) protects the forest from encroachment around its southern edge, while the rest is divided between a core (39%), which is the base for national parks and conservation areas, and a multiple-use zone (38%), where people are allowed to make a living from the forest – as long as it is done sustainably.

The multiple-use zone includes 12 community forestry concessions (CFCs), each with 25-year contracts, collectively spread across 400,000 hectares. The first concession was established in 1997 following the end of the country’s long civil war and over the last 20 years they have been central to ending decades of deforestation in Central America’s most illegally logged jungle.

While the reserve as a whole has lost nearly 13% of its natural cover in 24 years, the community concessions have maintained near-zero deforestation, serving as “green islands” for the region, according to the National Council of Protected Areas (Conap).

A few miles along the forest road from the growing piles of valuable timber, a temporary camp of huts has been set up. Some hammocks are strung between trees and food is being prepared in an open kitchen.

This is the hub of the logging operations and for the next three weeks will be home to 30 men from the Carmelita cooperative that manages the concession.

Every year, they take just two trees from each of the 1,000 hectares earmarked for harvesting on a rotational basis within the 43,000-hectare concession.

Every tree is mapped, logged and numbered and there are strict criteria about which can be felled, depending on size and abundance, explains Hedy Godinez Pulido, a forestry engineer. “The young trees define how many old trees you can cut,” he says. Carefully selecting the trees helps to preserve the forest, as well as opening up pockets of forest floor for seeds to germinate and grow.

Before the sustainable plan was in place, says forestry technician Bayron Chub, it was “chaos”. Private companies would select trees at random by hitting them with a hammer. “If it sounded damaged, they left it,” Chub says. “They cut the easy way … and left huge wasted stumps in the ground. There was no planning.”

As part of their contract, the concession must work to strict Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) standards, a stamp that means the timber can be exported. FSC staff inspect every stump, assessing how it was cut and the angle the tree fell; any miscalculations and the community will be fined.

None of this comes as a surprise to those who have always lived on the land. “Our fathers taught us to live with the forest without causing damage,” says Chub.

The community of La Pasadita, further south, has seen how strictly the rules are applied. In 2009, explains Walbi Cardona, the out-going president of the village association, Conap suspended the community’s contract after discovering illegal logging within the 18,000-hectare concession. Winning their licence back has proved a struggle. “Nobody believed in them [the former concession managers] because they did bad things,” he says.

In the past five years, they have worked with the Rainforest Alliance through its Prosperous and Resilient Landscape programme to create a plan for restorative production, in an attempt to regain Conap’s trust. The project is based around a community nursery – the largest within the MBR – where more than 120,000 seedlings from 23 different species of trees have been nurtured, creating dozens of jobs.

The trees are used to restore degraded pastureland, bringing back tree cover and removing the threat of wildfires, which regularly swept across the dry fields.

The former concession is regreening, as tall, spindly cedar and mahogany saplings poke up above an understory of maize and beans, which will be grown for just two years, providing food and improving the soil.

“We’re very grateful … for the restoration that has taken place in our community,” says Cardona. “There has been a lot of participation from women and youth, generating social benefits and bringing income back to their homes, which did not happen before. This has been a massive project for us.”

The mahogany trees in La Pasadita’s nursery grow much more quickly than those in the forest, says Cardona. “The secret of the success is the nursery,” he says – they come from good seeds, have been well planted and have space to grow. They also flourish in direct sunlight, without competition from other vegetation.

Old spice and ramón (a nut tree) have also been planted, along with cantemo, a type of acacia, which is a favourite nesting site for the scarlet macaw, a move that will hopefully encourage the rare birds back to the area.

Drones are used to monitor the landscape and, according to data from Conap, there has been a net increase in forest coverage of 105 hectares. “Restored forest is coming back at the expense of pasture,” says Carrera, proudly.

Conap is now looking at how it can use the success of the project to guide a national policy of productive restoration, a move that could finally see the community win back its concession.

Uaxactún, in the far north of Petén province, is another concession where, according to Conap, forest cover has grown by 113 hectares. This is one of the largest concessions in the MBR, covering more than 83,000 hectares, with a village spread out either side of a long grassy area that previously doubled as a landing strip for planes collecting the sap from chicle trees, which was once used in chewing gum.

Alongside strict forestry management, Uaxactún has used lucrative non-timber forest products such as xate palm to boost its income. This, too, is harvested to strict guidelines, with most of the fronds sold to the US for religious ceremonies. It is a value-added product that can employ 40 people at certain times of the year, explains Francisco Aldana, vice-president of the village. And since they took over managing sales, a trade that was once worth a few hundred dollars a year now brings in $60,000 (£45,000) annually.

In the village’s timber workshop, Rafael Fajardo and Duglas Barillas are working on fittings for the 10 cabins they are building as part of the community’s big tourism push. Their scholarships in carpentry were paid for by money made from sustainably managing the forest. By creating jobs this way, the concession hopes to stem the migration of young people from the countryside.

The community is also working with the US environmental non-profit The Nature Conservancy (TNC) on its tourism offering, which includes tours of its nearby Maya ruins, trekking to the ancient city of El Mirador and mountain biking.

Back at the Carmelita cooperative, the rich scent of sap from freshly cut timber mingles with the smell of varnish from the community’s woodworking shop. The group’s president, Jesús Barrera, is preparing the vast marshalling yard for the next influx of timber.

In the past, he says, they simply sold the trees as rough lumber, as they had no equipment or skilled labour to process them. With four sawmills and a team of local carpenters, the emphasis has switched to value-added products. “Workers used to come from outside, now 95% are local people because we have invested in training. That’s a big change,” says Barrera.

Alongside planks cut to size, the workshops produce furniture – there is growing interest from European buyers – necks for guitars and even kits to build wooden houses.

The work has brought jobs and money to pay for services such as health and education that are not provided by the government. Reports show that household incomes in the concessions are up to three times higher than the national poverty level.

At first, sustainable management was unpopular, says Carrera, and people wanted freedom to do what they wanted. But they worked through the challenges, he says, with the cooperative projected to make around $3m this year by sustainably targeting a controlled number of trees.

Initially, he adds, 80% of the concession was given over to conservation and just 20% to production. Now these figures have been reversed but still the forest continues to grow and flourish.

It goes to show, he says, that “the forest is best protected by those whose livelihoods depend on it”.