Life is in a hurry to return to Cruce a la Colorada, a portion of once-overexploited forest in northern Guatemala.
The land was pasture just 3 years ago. Now, wild cherries, jackass bitters, trumpet trees, and yellow oleanders are spontaneously sprouting near cultivated big-leaf mahogany, breadnut, and Spanish cedar trees, thanks to the efforts of local farmers, the government’s conservation agency, and a nonprofit. Many of Cruce a La Colorada’s new trees are still short, but they signal the region’s rebirth.
Located about 50 kilometers from the historic city of Tikal, Cruce a la Colorada is one of the management units along the Carmelita Route, a region within the Maya Biosphere Reserve in the department of Petén.
Created in 1990, the reserve is the largest continuous swath of protected area in Central America and one of the largest tropical forests in the Americas—second only to the Amazon. It is managed by Guatemala’s Consejo Nacional de Areas Protegidas (CONAP), the country’s conservation agency.
In 2000, CONAP granted residents in the Cruce a la Colorada community a 25-year concession to sustainably manage the area. Locals were to produce what was necessary for their livelihoods without damaging the forested areas, “which were becoming increasingly fragile at that time,” said Felisa Navas, president of the Integrated Forestry Association Cruce a la Colorada, the community’s residents’ association.
That fragility came from heavy logging and forests being turned into pasture for livestock. Even after the Maya Biosphere Reserve was created, ranchers continued to move into the protected area illegally, said Apolinário Córdova, Petén’s regional director of CONAP.
In 2009, Guatemala began reclaiming illegally seized areas, expelling ranchers. CONAP took back more than 137,000 hectares within the Maya Biosphere Reserve—and the nearly 20,500-hectare Cruce a la Colorada was part of that.
The removals, however, came with challenges. Not all communities were happy. Expelled ranchers threatened those in favor of the expulsions or co-opted community leaders to sell them land within the concessions. La Colorada, another management unit along the Carmelita Route, received a concession in 2001, but CONAP rescinded it in 2009 because such sales represented a breach of contract.
Farmers Shift Focus
In 2019, CONAP partnered with local communities and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), a New York–based research and conservation nonprofit, to help manage the restoration of the Carmelita Route. The group focused on 11 locations, including Cruce a la Colorada and La Colorada.
It took time and several meetings with CONAP and other institutions for farmers to understand that it was possible to make a living by restoring the forest, Navas said. “We discussed what would be the best way to regenerate the area.”
With consensus and a management plan in hand, the farmers in Cruce a la Colorada now include sustainable activities in their daily work, including landscape restoration, nursery planting, and sustainable timber management, and in 2021 they started these activities with support from WCS. Earlier this year, the community’s concession was renewed for another 25 years.
“Just protecting forested areas goes a long way, but adding active techniques to that can significantly improve results.”
After years of restoration work, La Colorada’s new association, Civil Society Selva Maya del Norte, fulfilled the conditions for that community to reobtain their concession in 2022.
When CONAP reclaimed the lands, the agency stood guard around them so that degraded forest patches could naturally regenerate. By insulating these areas, birds and other animals in the remaining trees could disperse seeds, said César Paz, a technical assistant in environmental protection and wildlife trafficking with WCS. This is passive restoration, he explained. And 3,115 hectares of the 3,668 being restored along the Carmelita Route are managed this way.
The rest of the area is being restored actively—trees multiply with the help of human activity, with locals seeding native plant species to help degraded areas recover faster. Of the remaining 453 hectares under active restoration in the Carmelita region, 122 are in Cruce a la Colorada and 171 are in La Colorada, Paz explained.
In tropical regions such as Guatemala, both passive and active restoration are common techniques to recover forest areas. The active approach tends to yield better and faster results in the short term, said Celso Silva-Junior, an environmental engineer at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in Brasília, Brazil. “Just protecting forested areas goes a long way, but adding active techniques to that can significantly improve results,” he said.
In August 2022, most of the 171 hectares being actively restored in La Colorada were covered in pasture, “which is highly resistant and really hard to stamp out,” Paz said. In one of the permanent monitoring plots in La Colorada, the WCS team found about 35 plants comprising just seven species scattered over a sea of pasture. It was a desolate sight, said Gabriela Ponce Santizo, assistant director of biological investigations at WCS.
By mid-2023, there were 289 plants and bushes comprising 20 species in the plot. The community planted seven of the 13 new species, Paz said. The remaining six spread naturally. “With more trees and green areas, animals such as mammals and birds came back and worked as seed spreaders for native plant species,” he explained.
The project is important, Silva-Junior said, because so much attention is paid to preserving tropical forests such as the Amazon, Congo Basin, and forests in Southeast Asia. “We end up forgetting about forests in Central America.”
Making It Economical
Forest restoration brings human benefits as well, said Erick Cuellar, vice-president of the Forest Communities Association of Petén. Pepper and breadnut products, along with beekeeping and the export of sustainable timber production, are among the main sources of income in Cruce a la Colorada, Ponce Santizo said.
“This [project] is helping us all as farmers.”
All 22 native species selected for active restoration of the Carmelita Route have either commercial value or an important ecological role. Big-leaf mahogany, Spanish cedar, and allspice have helped move the economy in Cruce a la Colorada, La Colorada, and the other management units.
“This [project] is helping us all as farmers,” Navas said. “Even if we won’t be able to see its full results, our children and grandchildren will benefit from it.”
—Meghie Rodrigues (@meghier), Science Writer
Meghie Rodrigues visited the Maya Biosphere Reserve with support from the Wildlife Conservation Society.
