Legal logging and soaring saplings: the ‘green islands’ bucking the deforestation trend in central America

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In Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve, local communities engage in sustainable logging practices that increase forest cover while providing livelihoods. A strict management plan imposes a four-year pause on logging in cleared areas, promoting forest regeneration and combating deforestation.

In Guatemala’s Maya biosphere reserve local people are making a living from trees at the same time as increasing forest cover, showing nature is best protected by those who depend on it The low rumbling grows louder until a huge harvester crashes into the open, dragging a 15-metre trunk of mahogany in its wake. The tractor manoeuvres before releasing its load and shovelling it like a matchstick on to a growing pile of lumber at the edge of the clearing. Then, with a crunch of gears and a belch of diesel, it turns and lurches back into the forest. This is sustainable forestry at its most brutal, yet in a few weeks’ time silence will return to this pocket of tropical forest in Guatemala’s Maya biosphere reserve (MBR). Nature will be left to reclaim the land and chainsaws won’t return for at least four years, as part of a strict management plan that is helping to buck the trend of rampant deforestation. Continue reading...