Stuart Leiderman leiderman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: leiderman: "private nature reserve"?
Thanks to Jacqui Labrom for the link to the article below. But reading
it, there are holes in it big enough to drive a logging truck. Is there
a Creole word for "Polyanna"?
The article is superficial and skating on thin ice, to use a polar
metaphor in the near-tropics. The writer uses the expression "covered
with trees," more than once, but that is not the same as "forested." In
the same way, "covered with whiskers" is not the same as "bearded."
Worse, the hyperlinked word "exaggeration" goes to a single reference
that is, in my opinion, also highly-spun and on thin ice. We've
discussed that one before.
Take a look at the attached satellite image. There's a significant dark
green location in central D.R. - Armando Bermudez National Park - that
one could call forested. And there's the far eastern tip of Cuba (also
a national park) that one could call forested. There are no equivalent
parts of Haiti. In fact, almost all the country is several shades
lighter. A gross generalization such as one-third of the country being
covered with trees is an equivocating, ecologically unsustainable
statement to make, especially for an environmental website. It may be
suitable for grade-schoolers' reading, but not for mature audiences such
as list members here.
There is no need to write fluff pieces like this, because they
accomplish nothing except a weak and unhelpful attempt to salvage a
country's awful reputation. Articles like these don't reforest
countries, they consign what's left to tourist itineraries and
uncaptioned photographs of single tree frogs, a sommelier's equivalent
of the last bottle of hundred-year old cognac.
Well, that's not enough and especially after the world has gone through
a summer of penetrating Brazil's propaganda and fire-smoke surrounding
the plight of the Amazon forest, and then the extraordinary analysis of
deforestation in Cambodia
https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2019/plundering-cambodias-forests/index.html
The real story is in the relationship of landholding to Nature, and how
those landholders, be they individuals, corporations, government
agencies or armies, expect to halt and reverse deforestation for
national, continental and planetary survival purposes. Fencing?
Mercenaries? Tear gas? Land mines? Carbon transfer credits?
Anthropologists? Winks and nods? You tell me. The article is bereft of
details.
P.S. Per below, who relies on (or cares about) USAID's judgement of
whether the Caribbean is a hotspot of biodiversity? There's a dead-end
pronouncement for you...
= = =
https://www.earth.com/news/haiti-first-private-nature-reserve/ [1]
09-10-2019
HAITI GETS ITS FIRST PRIVATE NATURE RESERVE TO PROTECT FORESTS AND
SPECIES
By ZACH FITZNER [2] Earth.com staff writer
Haiti may not be the first place you think of when nature reserves come
to mind. Much of Haiti has been ravaged by hurricanes, and the primary
source of energy for use in homes in Haiti is charcoal, which is created
by local people from local trees. Mainly, the image of Haiti has been a
stark one; the country has been called the most deforested country in
this hemisphere.
A photo in a 1987 National Geographic [3] centerfold showed a barren
Haitian landscape next to a lush, green Dominican Republic. Studies have
said that Haiti has only 2% forest remaining but this number is hotly
contested. Due to lack of clear data and long term studies,
deforestation in Haiti is poorly understood.
Despite warnings that wood for fuel and charcoal production would run
out by the year 2000, prompting an environmental apocalypse, satellite
photographs reveal that currently roughly one third of Haiti covered in
trees. Earlier studies were built on extrapolations from flights over
the most deforested parts of Haiti. Because of the poor studies, the
story of deforestation [4] in Haiti is one of exaggeration [5].
Despite the confusion and contradictions, Haiti _is_ severely
deforested. Much of the areas covered with trees in Haiti are fragmented
and original old growth forest is a rarity. According to _Mongabay_
[6], recent research has found that as little as 1% of original forest
in Haiti remains. Deforestation in Haiti has a long history, starting
in the modern era with large colonial production plantations. There was
actually a small forest resurgence after Haiti gained independence and
large plantations were put out of production. Still, trends today point
toward a loss of forest in Haiti not a gain. Even with a third of the
country covered with trees, very little virgin forest remains.
The forest that is still untouched in Haiti is truly amazing. According
to a report from USAID [7], the Caribbean is a hotspot of biodiversity
with a large portion of species found nowhere else on Earth. Even
within the Caribbean, Haiti is special. Roughly one third of plants
found in Haiti are found only there. Deforestation and the resulting
erosion, flooding and destruction of aquatic habitat remain the biggest
threat to the biodiversity of Haiti. Officially, as much as 6% of
Haiti’s land is protected by the government but effective protection
is estimated to cover only about 0.5%.
One of these officially protected areas is Grand Bois [8], a place of
great importance in terms of Haitian biodiversity. According to Haiti
National Trust, Grand Bois is an isolated, bowl-shaped mountain in
Southwest Haiti covered in rare rainforest. The highest summit of the
mountain is 1,262 meters (roughly 4,140 ft.) about half of which above
the elevation of 1000 meters is still covered in forest.
Grand Bois is home to 68 vertebrate species, including 2 threatened
birds and three recently discovered frog species and a critically
endangered frog. Overall, 19 frog species are found in Grand Bois and
nowhere else on Earth, which is more frog species than anywhere else in
the Caribbean. One frog the Tiburon Stream Frog (_Eleutherodactylus
semipalmatus_) was thought to be extinct until it was rediscovered on
Grand Bois after four decades without being seen, according to Global
Wildlife Conservation [9]. The rare Ekman’s Magnolia (_Magnolia
ekmanii_) was also re-discovered after not being seen by scientists for
decades.
In 2015, Grand Bois National Park was created to protect this special
part of Haiti and its rare species. Unfortunately, studies by Blair
Hedges, director of the Center for Biodiversity at Temple University in
the US, and his colleagues show the official protection wasn’t enough.
Forest is still being lost inside national parks in Haiti.
A rule in Haiti allows a national park to be entirely on private land,
so Hedges started buying up lands near Bois National Park. Partnering
with Global Wildlife Conservation [10], Haiti National Trust, (a
non-profit founded by Hedges) and Société Audubon Haiti, a private
nature reserve was founded bordering Grand Bois National Park. This is
Haiti’s first private nature reserve.
The idea of a private nature reserve in a nation like Haiti raises lots
of questions. According to the World Bank [11], Haiti is extremely
vulnerable to natural disasters with 90% of the population susceptible
to harm from natural disasters. In 2016, Hurricane Matthew caused the
equivalent of 32% of Haiti’s GDP in damages and parts of the country
are still rebuilding. About 59% of Haitians live below the poverty line
of US $2.41 per day and 24% lie below the extreme poverty line of US
$1.23 per day. Small economic growth was shown last year due to
agriculture in Haiti, but a drop in financing from Venezuela is causing
greater problems within Haiti’s government.
Faced with these stark realities in one of the poorest countries in the
Americas, the question become, ‘why care about a nature reserve at
all?’ Is the creation of a nature reserve financed by wealthy Haitians
and non-profits managed by outsiders just a form of colonialism or is it
in the best interest of Haitians?
To answer that question, it must be realized that natural resources such
as soil, water and clean air are more important than the money which is
based on not only real resources but collective trust of those who use
it. As US President Franklin D. Roosevelt said [12], “A nation that
destroys its soil, destroys itself.” Besides trees, soil started to
improve after the colonial period in Haiti. Forest health and soil
health go hand in hand. Soil health allows agriculture. Healthy land
also contributes to the health of marine habitats surrounding a nation,
especially an island nation like Haiti. Healthy oceans mean fish to
eat.
“With less than one percent of Haiti’s original forest left, the
country is on the verge of a potential ecological collapse,” said Wes
Sechrest, GWC chief scientist and CEO. “We knew that we needed to take
action to protect the country’s staggering diversity of unique and
threatened species, many of which are found only in Haiti. Global
Wildlife Conservation has partnered with Haiti National Trust to
directly protect, manage and restore this high-priority conservation
site in an effort to begin to turn the tide of centuries of unregulated
environmental destruction.”
= = =
Links:
------
[1]
https://www.earth.com/news/haiti-first-private-nature-reserve/?fbclid=IwAR1qg2v_GlfZ9WgKF4fHFA8BM6baSJ09rhKeKSVkDEZRPbEIROukRpxGKwU#.XXkPIA4bUA8.facebook
[2] https://www.earth.com/staff
[3] https://www.nationalgeographic.com
[4] http://www.earth.com/news/dramatic-increase-brazilian-deforestation/
[5] http://www.envirosociety.org/2016/05/haiti-is-covered-with-trees/
[6]
https://news.mongabay.com/2019/02/haitis-first-private-nature-reserve-seeks-to-protect-rare-plants-and-animals/
[7]
http://www.usaidgems.org/Documents/FAA&Regs/FAA118119LAC/Haiti_FAA_118-119_Dec_2010%20%281%29.pdf
[8] https://www.haititrust.org/grand-bois
[9]
https://www.globalwildlife.org/our-work/regions/caribbean/haitis-first-private-nature-reserve/
[10] https://www.globalwildlife.org/
[11] https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti/overview
[12]
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/us_8may_drought.pdf
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haiti cuba d.r. google satellite image.pdf
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