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Tropical Forest Research Network |
PARTNERSHIPS AND SUSTAINABLE FOREST MANAGEMENT: TOWARDS SUSTAINING MAHOGANY (SWIETENIA MACROPHYLLA) IN THE MAYA FOREST OF MEXICO AND BELIZE
By Laura K. Snook
Approximately 500.000 ha of the Maya forest in southern Mexico are owned by more than 40 communities that obtain subsistence crops from shifting agriculture and income from timber and non-timber forest products. Since 1984, partnerships between European bilateral aid organisations, American foundations and NGOs, and local organisations have helped these communities and the foresters who work with them make significant progress towards sustainable forest management. Across the border, a Belizean NGO that has received support from conservation NGOs in the US as well as the EU, has come to own and manage over 100.000 ha of forest for the joint objectives of biodiversity conservation and the demonstration of sustainable development options. Through an ongoing, 7-year collaborative relationship with researchers, these two different kinds of forest owners in Mexico and Belize have become leaders in demonstrating that the highly valued mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) can be both harvested and sustained in natural forests.
Flagship species
Mahogany has become the flagship timber species in debates about the feasibility
of sustainable tropical forest management. It is still obtained from natural
forests because decades of attempts to grow mahogany in monospecific plantations
have been deemed unsuccessful due to attacks by an insect pest. However, selective
logging of mahogany from natural forests undermines the capacity of the species
to regenerate due to the depleting of seed trees without producing the sunny
conditions required for mahogany seedlings to survive and grow (Snook, 1996).
Because of the incompatibility between the regeneration ecology of mahogany
and selective logging, mahogany is typically treated like a non-renewable resource,
and mined out of the forests where it is found. A financial analysis of the
return to mahogany mining on a Bolivian timber concession led Rice et al. (1997)
to conclude that sustainable management of natural mahogany forests was not
competitive and therefore not viable either.
Long-term thinking
Fortunately, the forest-owning communities in Quintana Roo, Mexico, and the
Programme for Belize (PfB), Belize, are interested in managing their forests
in the long term and for the benefit of future generations. The families who
share title to communally-owned forests in Mexico consider their grandchildren's
welfare when they make decisions; the managers of the Rio Bravo Conservation
and Management Area in Belize consider the future welfare of the people of Belize,
for they own and manage this area (6% of Belize) 'in trust for the people of
Belize'.
This concern for the long term led the forward-thinking foresters who advise the communities of the Organización de Ejidos Productores Forestales de la Zona Maya (OEPFZM), and the leaders of the PfB, to encourage or actively seek the support of researchers in determining how to sustainably produce mahogany timber from their forests. Individual forest researchers had begun to address this issue in the late 1980s, in collaboration with forest communities. Initial research revealed that mahogany had typically regenerated in the Maya forest in response to hurricanes followed by wildfire (Snook, 2002). The next challenge was to determine how to create similar conditions using silvicultural techniques.
Findings
Five years later, measurements revealed robust, management-relevant patterns.
The slash and burn techniques used to establish shifting agricultural fields
in Mexico were found to favour the survival and growth of mahogany, from seed
or from planted seedlings. Uprooting patches of forest using bulldozers was
almost as effective, favouring the establishment and growth of seedlings from
natural regeneration, sown seed or planting. On clearings produced in either
of these ways, cleaning, a costly periodic intervention intended to reduce competition,
was found to be neither necessary nor desirable: it did not significantly favour
growth, but greatly increased the rate of attack by pests. Overall, the experiments
revealed that forest owners could sustain and increase mahogany populations
in their forests by applying effective, low-cost techniques to only 3% of their
annual cutting area each year (Snook and Negreros, in press).
All the landowners involved in the research are adaptive managers, willing and able to integrate into their management this new knowledge about mahogany silviculture. For example, in the past, communities modified their harvest rates in response to more accurate forest inventories (Bray et al. in press). In Mexico, communities were able to incorporate into their forest management both the shifting agriculture practised by most of their nearly 10 000 heads of household; and mechanical clearing, used to open log-loading yards. Mechanical clearing is more feasible on the RBCMA, where shifting agriculture is not part of the land use mosaic and where forest managers' fear using fire as a management tool.
Lessons learnt
What lessons can be drawn from these experiences? For one thing, support for
forest owners on the part of bilateral organizations, multilateral organizations,
conservationist NGOs and private foundations from the US and Europe has successfully
contributed to the development of the capacity of forest owners and their foresters
to manage and conserve these forests, while building new foundations for sustainable
livelihoods. In addition, by supporting partnerships between researchers and
forest owners, donors have enabled these players to combine their respective
assets in order to take the lead in developing feasible solutions to the challenges
of sustainable forestry in the tropics. New insights into mahogany silviculture,
determined from studies on these forests, are applicable to sustaining mahogany
populations and harvests on millions of hectares of forests elsewhere in the
Maya region and South America. Finally, it is important to recognise that there
are tropical forest managers and owners who do not reject sustainable forest
management based on financial calculations of net present value. These forest
owners and their researcher partners have provided the opportunity for the world
to learn that sustaining mahogany in production forests, and thus sustainable
tropical forestry, is feasible as well as desirable.
Further information
(also about references):
Dr Laura K. Snook
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
P.O.Box 6595 JKPWB, Jakarta, Indonesia
E-mail: l.snook@cgiar.org