Problems & progress in tropical forests - Special Coverage: Forests on a Shrinking Globe

American Forests, July-August, 1991 by Diane Jukofsky

EASY MARKS

Throughout the tropics, "protected" reserves set aside for indigenous peoples have always been an easy mark for incursion by loggers and squatters. In Brazil's 2.8-million-acre Maranhense Forest Reserve, home to five indigenous groups, invasions by land hungry subsistence farmers, illegal loggers, and diamond miners have intensified.

The Pro-Indian Commission of Sao Paulo is naming names and pointing fingers despite the dangers of such outspokenness. The commission notes that the governor of Maranhao, one of the largest ranch owners in the area, is not disposed to protecting the densely forested reserve. The commission also accuses the federal police of turning the other cheek.

The commission names businessman Nicodemos Marcos Martins as one of the prime culprits. Marcos has allegedly sold scores of lots in the southern part of the reserve, with the collusion of a government office in Sao Luis, which handily provided what the commission calls "fraudulent property titles. "

The spectacular reserve is more than the home of the Guaji Urubu-Kaapor, Tembe, Timbira, and Guajajara peoples. At a conference in Manaus last year, biologists listing outstanding areas of the Amazonian ecosystem in terms of richness of species put the Maranhense Forest Reserve high on the list.

Panama has similar problems with invasions into Indian reserves in the Bayano River basin between Panama's Pacific and Atlantic mountain ranges. In 1976 a hydroelectric power plant built on the Bayano displaced 2,000 farmers, who pushed into Kuna and neighboring Choco Indian reserves, clearing large tracts of forest for cattle ranching and -disrupting the social and cultural balance of the area,' says former natural-resource minister Stanley Heckadon. Last year, he reports, a Choco Indian was murdered when he confronted an invading rancher.

Meanwhile, loggers are pressuring the Choco and Kuna communities to sell their trees at bargain-basement prices.

Until his recent dismissal from the natural-resource agency, which conservationists claim was politically motivated, Heckadon planned to post guards to prevent incursions into the reserves. But his agency was denied desperately needed funds.

The natural-resource agency's 1991 operating budget is just $5 million, most of it going toward salaries. (South Carolina, about the same size as Panama, spent more than $80 million on natural-resource management in 1990.)

CHEERS AND JEERS

Costa Rica's well-earned fame for conservation efforts that include an impressive park system was blemished last year by a World Resources Institute report noting that the tiny Central American democracy is clearing 7.4 percent of its remaining forest each year, one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world.

With this in mind, it may seem strange that a Costa Rican logging company has earned the cautious praise of many conservationists.

The company, Portico, is cutting trees in Costa Rica's rainy Caribbean lowlands, using what the firm insists are environmentally sound techniques. Portico cuts carapa trees, a species common to the Caribbean rim, from the company's 21,000 acres and mills the rich, dark carapa wood into expensive doors for export to the United States.