Could timber plantations conserve forests in Panama?

Deforestation and conversion to cattle pasture in Panama

A recent study conducted by CIFOR questioned whether tree plantations support forest conservation. The results show that they potentially support conservation, depending on a number of other influencing factors.

The authors’ more macro-level findings, which were based on an exhaustive review of published literature, were inconclusive. As with many questions related to forest conservation, the answer was, to paraphrase “It depends.”

There is a commonly held assumption in Panama, or at least the Darien, that timber plantations will ease pressure on the harvesting of timber from native forests. Our anecdotal, non scientific experience is that that isn’t true. Case in point: we’ve been trying to sell thinnings of high-value tropical species like spanish cedar (cedro amargo), mahogany (swietenia macrophylla), and oak (tabebuia rosea) for the past two months, but there is only demand for timber from primary forests. These are not early-stage thinnings, but they still can’t compete with the large timber coming out of first-growth forests in the Darien.

Establishment of timber plantations in the Darien happens after the high value timber has already been cut out (degradation) and usually after further clearing for agriculture/cattle (deforestation). In Panama it is illegal to clear primary forests to establish plantations, and no significant amount of primary forest has been cleared specifically for a timber plantation (that we’re aware of). We did recently learn that near Meteti, a large swath of forest in the Filo de Tallo reserve/peat swamp was under threat by a “Colombian” who was going to plant palm oil.

The authors of the report did find strong linkages to reduced deforestation and degradation when fuelwood plantations are established. However, degradation or deforestation for fuelwood is not a significant problem in the Darien, so plantations for fuelwood would not relieve any pressure on natural forests.

Probably the best approach to preserving forest cover is pairing stringent conservation laws and the establishment of protected areas with the development of timber plantations.

This is good match for Panama, and to their credit, the new government and Ministry of Environment (ANAM) have taken measures to control forestry activities in the Darien.

It will be interesting to see whether these measures actually increase demand for plantation-grown timber among the local sawmills and furniture producers, who consume the most timber domestically.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in buying 10,000+ board feet of genuine mahogany, spanish cedar, and oak, let us know!

Initial Bird Counts in Plantations

Red-Legged Honeycreeper

Blue-Crowned Motmot

Keel-Billed Toucan

Collaborating in Arimae

Densiometer to measure tree canopy cover

Conservación Panama, a U.S./Panamanian conservation organization that engages local communities to conserve natural resources, recently visited a few of our forestry projects in Arimae.

Their purpose was to do a preliminary assessment of bird populations in our plantations, with the eventual goal of understanding if mixed species timber plantations could serve as suitable habitat for birds to thrive.

While more data is needed to determine the potential of timber plantations to serve as bird habitat, the variety of birds and their counts in Arimae is an encouraging sign. We look forward to working with Conservacion Panama on future site assessments. 

ANAM Steps Up to the Deforestation Challenge

Logging of an espave tree in the Darien province

We were heartened to recently read that under the new leader of the Ministry of Environment (ANAM), there will be an intensive new effort to control illegal logging in the Darien this dry season. The plan was announced last week.

During the last years of the Martinelli (previous) administration, there were a significant number of conflicts, and some deaths, in the Darien/East Panama region related to logging. ANAM as an institution saw its minimal resources cut further, which made it virtually impossible for them to regulate the logging in the region.

With the new plan, the ANAM regional team is being reinforced with 30 staffers from other regions. They will be stationed at the various checkpoints in the eastern side of Panama, helping to verify that wood leaving the region is legal and certified to be transported. The checkpoints will run 24-hours.

According to ANAM, they did significant public outreach to the logging community to consult with them about the new plan, while also educating them about the actual regulations. While the status quo was probably preferable to many of the loggers, this new enforcement will hopefully crimp the illegal cutting and extraction of timber in Darien, a province considered a biodiversity hotspot by Conservation International.

We spoke with the director of ANAM for the region and he mentioned that probably more than 50% of the timber harvested in years past was done illegally. That was not only bad for the forests in Darien, but bad for ANAM itself because of the lost revenues. Their goal now is to reduce the amount of illegal logging to 25% of the timber harvested. We wish them luck.

Raleo in Arimae

Over the past few weeks we have been working with the community of Arimae to do a raleo, or thinning, of their community-owned native timber. The community has about 15 hectares of native species trees, including mahogany, spanish cedar, and spanish oak that hadn't been thinned or properly maintained. Through an offtake agreement with a local indigenous-operated sawmill, we're helping the community sell some of the commercially viable trees. As you can see, this is a very manual process--no fancy machinery, just hard work.

Arimae in the News for Forest Carbon Inventory Project

Arimae and its forest reservation were recently featured in a blog and a video feature related to forest monitoring. Planting Empowerment supports the building of this skill set within the community as a manner to generate better land management planning.

The blog through written by the Environmental Defense Fund, Organization of Embera and Wounaan Youth of Panama, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute describes the forest monitoring training and data collection that took place in early April. It was the first of many training and data collection plots that would be done through Indigenous Territories throughout eastern Panama. The results of the data collection and training process will probably be presented at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change conference being held later this year in Lima, Peru.

The UN-REDD program of Panama released this video of a different type of forest monitoring that was executed in Arimae’s forest reserve. The video includes a number of interviews with members of the Arimae community with whom Planting Empowerment has collaborated with for a number of years. The video also includes some interesting filmography done from a drone which shows some great shots of the community and the deforestation that is taking place in their reserve.

We’re encouraged to see this type of activity happening in Arimae’s collective lands because they help the community conserve its remaining, but dwindling, forest reservation.