Left over pieces of a guanacaste tree cut down to make a canoe in Capiro y Calentura Park. (Photo by Wendy Griffin.)

By WENDY GRIFFIN 

In central Honduras, the burning season is in April, as farmers prepare their land for the May rains.  On the North Coast, the heavy rains come in October and my neighbors are getting ready.  A cloud of smoke hangs over the forest.  There is a column of orange as corozo or cohune palms with fast burning leaves and oil bearing nuts go up in flames.

It is distressing, though, because these trees are inside the Capiro and Calentura National Park.  People already living in the park have expanded their lands.  Plantain farmers outside the park let their fires run wild into park lands, opening them up for planting.

The first year after Hurricane Mitch, parks ran into new problems.  A law was passed that gave temporary permits to remove the trees that had fallen during Mitch.  Since the eye of the Hurricane passed near Silin in the buffer zone of Capiro and Calentura park, it is not surprising that many trees fell here.

But people with the permits did not stop at fallen trees.  Large living trees, such as a 225-year-old guanacaste (ear tree) near the USAID-funded visitor's center of the Capiro and Calentura park was cut down, and pulled out of the park to make a canoe.  This tree used to host toucan nests.

Trucks arrived at night to take wood away, especially after the lock to the park gate was shot off.  Complaints of illegal logging were made even after the one-year limit of the Hurricane Mitch permits expired.  The name and whereabouts of the logger was known, but no one was arrested.  The people who received part of the wood are also known.  Bribes were reportedly involved.  Members of the Cristales, Trujillo community, which depends on water from the rivers, asked the Honduran Forestry Development Corporation (COHDEFOR) to look into this.

When asked, the staff of FUCAGUA said they were unaware of logging in the park, in spite of 18 tree stumps near the road in a protected watershed.  They said they did know about the mayor being denounced for selling 30 acres of land in the park, but this was not a problem.  A Spanish developer bought them and an environmental impact statement would show that developing these 30 acres would have no negative impact on the park.

A canoe made from a tree inside the Capiro and Calentura National Park. (Photo by Wendy Griffin.)

Meanwhile, there is a Lps. 800 fine to cut down one tree to make a Garifuna drum.

Other parks also reported increased pressure after Hurricane Mitch, such as the Rio Platano Biosphere and La Muralla National Park in Olancho.  In interviews with recent immigrants to Silin, some reported they had lost their land or their house or both to Hurricane Mitch.  If they had to start over from nothing, they might as well start somewhere where there might be jobs and resources, such as the North Coast, said researcher Sharlene Mollett.