Two stories from Haiti.
First, from Caribbean 360:
All over Haiti for many decades … the countryside has suffered a series of rolling calamities. Damaging agricultural practices, most recently cutting down trees to make charcoal for cooking fuel, have left only an estimated 3.8 percent of the land forested. Lack of equipment, credit and roads has crippled small farmers. Hurricanes, floods, landslides and erosion, like that seen along the Felse, have washed away fertile soil and decimated rural infrastructure.
…
This morning, though, far up the rocky track into the mountains, [Frisnel] Disir is clambering down the rough stone walls of a project designed to reverse some of the processes that ravage the Felse Valley.With technical and financial support from the FAO, local communities are building a system of erosion controls extending five kilometres up this steep valley. A series of terraces, contained by hand-built stone walls and backfilled with earth, catches rainwater and reduces erosion.
Each terrace creates a new strip of arable land 10 metres or more wide, where corn, beans, sugar cane and other crops are planted among the pre-existing trees. More seedlings are being grown in the project nursery for planting on the reclaimed land. Participants have also built stone irrigation canals to channel rainwater into their fields, all with hand tools and manual labour.
Looking down the steep ravine, Disir recalls: “Before, this hillside wasn’t arable. So we organised local people to build these terraces. Then we gave people bean and corn starts to plant on them. Now not only have we reclaimed this land for farming, but we’ve also protected the villages below from flooding.”
And second, from CNN via BirdLife International:
While the eyes of the world have followed the effect of Haiti’s devastating earthquake on Port-au-Prince, an ecological disaster has been quietly unfolding elsewhere in the country.
The mountainous forests of Haiti’s Massif de la Hotte region have more critically endangered species than anywhere else on earth, according to Alliance for Zero Extinction, a global initiative of 52 conservation organizations.
The area has 42 mammals, birds, reptiles, plants and amphibians on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Globally Threatened Species.
More importantly, 13 species of frog on the verge of extinction live only here. The Alliance for Zero Extinction reports nowhere else on Earth has more than nine such species
However, only 3 percent of Haiti’s original forests remain and they are disappearing at a rate of 10 percent every five years, according to a group of conservation groups including Birdlife International and the Zoological Society of London.
…
Birdlife International, the Zoological Society of London and Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust recently secured $450,000 from the UK government’s Darwin Initiative to work with Haitian NGOs, Societe Audubon Haiti and Fondation Macaya, helping local communities find alternative income without destroying the forest.Wege said: “Protecting the environment immediately comes down to helping local people with their livelihoods, because they are the same people who are impacting the environment.
“We need to help people survive better with less impact on the environment, so our involvement has to start at a community level.”
Examples of the work in helping reduce the community’s impact on the forest include piping fresh water from natural springs into villages, which saves people from having to cut down trees to reach the springs.
The NGOs have also established tree nurseries, growing trees for reforestation and giving employment to local people.
…
Researchers are now starting to study the forest itself to discover where exactly the most endangered species are living, and which patches should be made priorities for reforestation. ”We need to make sure species are not going extinct while are a reforesting somewhere else,” said Wege. ”The potential for extinctions there is huge. Because there are lots of little forest patches, any one could be the only place where a specific species lives, and if that goes, so does the species.“The area is exceptionally high in endemic species that are not found elsewhere: frogs, mammals, plants, reptiles and birds. ”There are two endangered species of mammal that are found only on the island: a solenodon, which is like a giant shrew, and a hutia, like a long-legged guinea pig living in trees.”
[Photos: ayayaye | birdlife.org]
