Conservation

Jill Wagner

With great pleasure, I would like to announce the initiation of a new Arboretum in Kona, Hawaii. The Joseph Rock Arboretum has been planned over the last ten years. The garden is 48 acres located in the heart of Kailua Kona, an exceptional land.

The site of the Joseph Rock Arboretum was previously a cattle-grazing land. But, several hundred native Hawaiian dry forest plants and trees have persisted and provided the remnant stands upon which the habitat is built. Over the past two years, more than 3,000 plants have been planted, most of which are native dry forest species. The site does not have irrigation in the field, so we time the planting with the rainy season, and the plants are establishing and adapting to the local weather patterns.  

There are a few ways to determine if the site has good survival. One is to observe if the out-plants are flowering and seeding. The other is to check if natural regeneration happens in the habitat. At this site, we have observed good flowering and seeding. Besides, we are collecting the seeds to bank them for future restoration. It will enable the community to grow native plant species on their land.

The mission of the Joseph Rock Arboretum is to collect and study trees, shrubs, and plants from Hawaii and around the world. Its goal is to teach people how to care for the natural environment through hands-on seed collection, seed banking, propagation, and fieldwork. The vision is to support new forest creators as future caretakers of the planet. The Arboretum is primarily a training site for future foresters.  It is the home of Future Forests Nursery (www.forestnursery.com), which has been serving restoration in Hawaii since the 1990s. It is also home to the Hawaii Island Seed Bank (drylandforest.org), which stores native seed collections from over 32 large landowners and agricultural crop seeds for the Hawaii Seed Growers Network (www.hawaiiseedgrowersnetwork.org).  

The arboretum is curated and contains plant collections from Hawaii, South America, and Australia—including succulents and a tropical hardwood zone. The nursery facilities and seed bank provide excellent facilities to train visiting foresters, students, and global forestry partners.  We are currently building lodging for visitors so they can stay in Hawaii for four weeks and work through the entire restoration cycle. 

We also provide educational experiences for school groups on Hawaii Island. In addition to the Hawaii training experience, we also offer an online 12-month course in Restoration Principles and Practices. It is a comprehensive course with modules in all aspects of restoration to help land managers deepen their understanding of the work and increase capacity. 

For all interested, more information can be found here.

Nick Brokaw

_{Post as written in 1993}

One day last month, I was truly on the cusp of tropical forest conservation. On April 18th, 1993, I attended a meeting of Junta Directiva de Bethel, in Guatemala to discuss plans for Bethel’s cooperatively-owned forests. In five hours of discussion, I heard arguments for sustainable forest management, dissolving the cooperative, clearing the forest for cattle, and some other plans. Each meant a different fate for the forest!

Bethel (Bay-TELL) is located in the Petén lowlands of northern Guatemala, on the Río Usumacinta, with a view of Mexico across the river. Bethel has 47 households and about 10,000 acres of communally-owned forested area. Betheleros are tenacious. They were one of the only two villages in the region that refused to vacate during the recent civil war when guerrillas roamed the environs. The war slowed development in the area but is mostly over now (we passed through just one military checkpoint on the road to Bethel versus four last year). People are now thinking about new ways to use their forest land.

We are there to advise them if they want it. Bethel is one of several projects within “ProPetén”, or Proyecto Petenero para un Bosque Sostenible, run by Conservation International. ProPetén has a full-time staff of three North Americans and ten Guatemalans, which consists of community development people, social anthropologists, foresters, small business specialists, forestry extensionists, and others. I am a short-term consultant to ProPetén.

On April 18th, ProPetén presented a preliminary plan to the Junta Directiva for sustainable forestry integrated with agriculture. We had maps, timber inventory, economic projections, and market strategy. We discussed a tourist lodge (Usumacinta is the biggest river in Middle America and a route to marvelous Maya ruins that are rarely visited). We talked about the future but did not push hard. Weren’t these the best ways to use Bethel’s natural resources for the benefit of all Betheleros now and to come?  

The Junta responded—with a long speech by one member on the advantages of dissolving the cooperative and each member to manage their piece of land. Another 20 minutes speech on the advantages of clearing the forest for cattle. Another, deriding ecotourism! It lasted five hours—lengthy spontaneous speeches, with metaphor, hyperbole, humor, and elaborated repetition; all in the best tradition of oral communication. Finally, there was some support for the ProPetén plan and it was partly adopted.

The cattle faction and those wanting to dissolve the cooperative had spoken the longest and the loudest. But, in the end, a wise head secured some agreement by proposing to give forestry a two-year trial. Nonetheless, we were stunned by a near failure. We thought the ProPetén plan, with all its maps, figures, and compatriot spokespersons would carry the day. We had done a lot of homework, talking to people in Bethel for the past year, learning about local conditions, and anticipating reactions.

What went wrong? Despite lading our approach with socio-economic perspectives and our team with Guatemalans, we underestimated the human factor in conservation. The long-range, cooperative plan provoked a strong reaction. A few individualists (people like many of us) wanted to do their own thing. Why stake one’s future on cooperation in the precarious polity of Guatemala? Moreover, these entrepreneurs believe they can do better on their own with their share of Bethel. Doing better, they could then can buy somebody else’s share. They will certainly need more than one share of cattle.

What was the silent majority at the meeting thinking? Maybe of their thousands of landless compatriots, poorer than themselves. Dissolve the cooperative and within a decade or two, a few former members will own its (deforested) 10,000 acres and the rest will be landless. That night in private conversation, a spokesman for the cooperative faction reassured us that cooperation would hold as the majority wishes for long-term sustainable use of resources. We are not so confident, but we are working hard to assemble more facts for sustainable forestry, understand the political economy of Bethel, and foresee the obstacles in tropical forest conservation. But it is difficult! Only a few among us have a true feel for life in Bethel— a life little exceeding subsistence and overseen by a willful military.

Update: I do not know what happened in the end, but the 10,000 acres were not all deforested. Inspection of the Google Maps image available on September 1, 2020, shows substantial clearing but also a substantial forest in the vicinity of Bethel, Guatemala. Perhaps the community adopted a mixed land-use plan, with good results, considering their situation.

_{Author: Nick Brokaw, Forest Ecologist, San Juan, Puerto Rico}