Maya Biosphere Reserve Research Articles

Guatemala Is Reclaiming Overexploited Forests

Researchers, local communities, and authorities are tackling deforestation and forest degradation at the Maya Biosphere Reserve.

Community and industrial forest concessions: Are they effective at reducing forest loss and does FSC certification play a role?

This paper examines the role of community forest management coupled with mandatory forest certification in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR). Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification aims to promote sustainable forest practices and increase economic returns for harvesting certified timber through price premiums gained through eco-labeling and specialized access to international markets. Guatemala established community and industrial forest concessions in the reserve as a way to stem rampant deforestation in the region in the 1990s. Concessions are required to obtain FSC certification to maintain their harvesting rights to the forest. The communities that manage the concessions vary across a number of cultural and socio-demographic characteristics, such as income, educational attainment, and previous forest experience. Some community concession members have lived in the region for multiple generations and have historically depended on the forest for their livelihoods, while other groups are comprised of more recent migrants that come primarily from agricultural backgrounds. The differences among the community forest groups, along with the private industrial concessions, allow for a robust examination of the impact of forest certification across different institutional approaches to forest management. Using Hansen’s forest loss data from 2000 to 2017 for Guatemala, we employ a random effects model to compare the effectiveness of the community and industrial concessions in reducing deforestation compared to a matched control group. Additionally, we test whether the benefit of increased market access that comes with FSC certification further decreases deforestation. Our findings suggest that sustainable forest management practices have continued to reduce forest loss in the MBR, just as well, if not more so than the industrial concessions, but the impact varies based on community characteristics. The market access component of FSC certification also impacts deforestation, although the effect is small.

Barriers and Facilitators for Successful Community Forestry: Lessons Learned and Practical Applications From Case Studies in India and Guatemala

Internationally, numerous examples have been of efforts to promote community-based forest management (CBFM) through forest decentralization programs that promote forest conservation and livelihood improvements. Although there are successful examples, those efforts have been met with mixed success. This article proposes an analytical framework for evaluating the case studies of CBFM, highlighting the interconnection between community capital, land tenure, and markets. The analytical framework is used to analyze factors contributing to community forestry success focusing on two case studies in central India and northern Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve. We evaluate how the interplay of community capitals (i.e., community skills and resources), tenure, and markets is crucial for the successful replication of community forestry efforts. Specifically, we demonstrate that community capital factors such as social (bonding and linking), human, natural, and political; tenure factors such as a legal basis for rights, implementation of rights policy, community engagement in decision-making related to rights, withdrawal rights; and market factors such as market availability for the product, market accessibility for the producers, and profitability are the most important for facilitating and replicating community forestry efforts. Our framework can be used by nonprofits and policymakers to engage with community forestry planning as well as for monitoring and evaluation.

Implications of community forest management for the conservation of the genetic diversity of big-leaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla King, Meliaceae) in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Petén, Guatemala

Community Forest Management in the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR; Petén, Guatemala) has been recognized internationally for yielding forest conservation and socioeconomic benefits. However, the effect of current timber harvesting practices on the genetic diversity of timber species populations has not previously been documented. This study assessed the effects of timber harvesting on the genetic diversity and viability of regeneration of the most commercially important timber species in the MBR: big-leaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla King). Trees and seeds were sampled for two consecutive years in two Forest Management Units of the Multiple Use Zone (MUZ) of the MBR: Cruce a la Colorada and Carmelita. We correlated genetic diversity parameters (as measured using nuclear microsatellites) with seed germination percentages and compared genetic diversity of adults and seeds in stands that had been affected by timber harvesting and those that had not. We found a significant correlation between seed germination percentages (81–83%) and observed heterozygosity (rho=0.27), confirming that genetic diversity is important to regeneration success. No significant differences were found in allelic richness (AR), expected and observed heterozygosity (HE and HO), or inbreeding (FIS), between adults and seeds in harvested vs. undisturbed stands; or before and after timber harvesting. We found low inbreeding levels (FIS=0.040–0.094), low biparental inbreeding (0–0.01), and high outcrossing rates (0.925–0.970) in the populations of S. macrophylla analyzed. Our study therefore provides evidence that genetic diversity in big-leaf mahogany populations was not diminished by one cutting cycle under current practices of community forest management in the MUZ of the MBR.

Resident jaguars (Panthera onca) at the heart of the Maya Forest in Guatemala

In this study we determined the resident status of individual jaguars (Panthera onca) in a 7-year timeframe, in order to provide insight into the life history of this species as an input for abundance estimations and the management of the Maya Forest shared by Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize. We gathered photographic jaguar records from studies conducted in 2 Core Zones of the Maya Biosphere Reserve from 2013 to 2019. Individual jaguars were identified by their unique coat pattern, and were considered as residents when recorded for 3 or more consecutive years. Also, range sharing and interactions were quantified. Both female and male resident individuals were recorded. We suggest the presence of a resident population with a tendency for spatial or temporal range exclusion within individuals from the same sex and a fast male’s turnover, and a demographically mixed group of transients. These circumstances appoint the relevance to determine the resident status of individuals for accurate abundance estimations and population trends, and also in maintaining the integrity of the transboundary continuous forest cover, as connectivity appears to have an important role for maintaining the fluctuating jaguar population dynamics.

Repeated burning undermines the value of regenerating cattle pastures for tropical forest birds

Forest restoration has become a central strategy to conserve biodiversity, especially in the global tropics, but many priority regions are increasingly threatened by anthropogenic stressors. Of particular concern is the growing frequency of fire in humid tropical systems due to agricultural expansion and regional drying. Yet little is known about how fire affects recovery of tropical biodiversity in restored lands, including forest-dependent and threatened species. Here we provide the first assessment of the impacts of burning within naturally regenerating cattle pastures on pasture use by Neotropical forest birds. Working within 1–11-year-old regenerating pastures in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve, we asked how occupancy rates of forest-dependent and threatened bird species differ between repeatedly burned and unburned pasture. To better understand the effect of fire on pasture use, we examined how species’ opportunistic use of regenerating pastures is a function of vegetation succession at local scales. We found that 70 forest-dependent and 19 threatened species used unburned pastures, but fire reduced or eliminated pasture use for 56% of forest-dependent and 53% of threatened species. Local vegetation succession explained the likelihood of colonizing pastures for nearly half of forest species that used regenerating pastures. Species closely associated with closed-canopy vegetation were most likely to be partially or fully excluded from burned pasture, suggesting that fire excluded certain species by impeding forest regrowth. Our results clearly demonstrate that burning undermines the high value of regenerating pastures for forest-dependent and threatened species and highlight the critical importance of preventing human-caused fires in restored tropical landscapes.

The Community Commitment to Sustainability: Forest Protection in Guatemala

This article covers the current research vacuum on how Guatemala partially conducts forest preservation through community concessions. Our paper starts its analysis by synthesizing the private property-rights approach environmentalist theory and the community concession theory. It is argued that the shared common private property as a community arrangement can turn conflicts into potential opportunities for the involved parties to solve the existing environmental problems by win-win games. Based on the above theoretical views, our study extends the scope to the modern and democratic municipals’ forest preservation in Guatemala, as previous research mainly focused on how the Guatemalan traditional indigenous communities have conducted forest preservation. Our empirical results show that the in-force forest concessions in the Maya Biosphere Reserve have achieved the Guatemalan government’s forest conservation target in recent years. However, as the Guatemalan forest concession arrangements are just usufructs and the state still owns forest titles, the current Guatemalan forest concession could reverse the result of the limited, decentralized forest reform. In this regard, we suggest that Guatemala state should privatize all these forests to the concessions’ communities and firms. If the results are positive, we propose the Guatemalan government further apply the decentralization forest policy to the whole country.

An analysis of migrant characteristics in forest-dwelling communities in northern Guatemala

This study examines whether the establishment of community-managed forest concessions has driven migration into the Petén department in northern Guatemala. The Petén department is home to the Maya Biosphere Reserve, which is a 2-million-hectare tropical forest that contains forest concession areas managed by forest-dwelling communities living in and near the reserve. The forest concessions provide concession members with employment opportunities in forestry and tourism as well as the opportunity to profit from timber and non-timber forest product sales of products sustainably harvested from the concession. Members are then responsible for protecting the forest resources within their concession and abiding by Forest Stewardship Council regulations. We examine household characteristics of migrants from within the Petén as well as outside of the Petén department using a 2017 survey of forest-dwelling communities in and near the Maya Biosphere Reserve to determine whether concession members are more likely to have migrated into the reserve than non-concession member households. The results show that concession members are less likely to be migrants, which suggests that, although the concessions create opportunities in forestry and tourism sector, migration is not drive by the prospect of obtaining concession membership.

Valuing User Preferences for Geospatial Fire Monitoring in Guatemala

Like many landscapes across Central America, forests in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR) are increasingly susceptible to forest fire, with most forest fires resulting from untended agricultural fires. Fire damage poses significant risk to the MBR’s natural resources and cultural heritage, but budget challenges limit the capacity of national, regional, and local institutions to effectively detect, monitor, and control forest fires. The Geospatial Information System for Fire Management (SIGMA-I) is a United States government-subsidized suite of geospatial fire management tools that are widely disseminated, free of charge, to land managers and other users in Guatemala for on-the-ground fire prevention and response. Provision of SIGMA-I geospatial data and tools such as daily thermal “hotspot” maps provide positive benefits for sustainable fire management. However, little research exists supporting the nonmarket monetary value of geospatial fire monitoring tools and their component features. We used a choice experiment to estimate land managers’ willingness to pay for individual attributes of SIGMA-I hotspot mapping in Guatemala. We found quantitative evidence of positive willingness to pay for geospatial data, demonstrating positive nonmarket value of geospatial data for sustainable fire management in developing countries and regions where agricultural fires are common. Our results indicate strong preferences from Guatemala’s forest fire management community for improving the frequency of hotspot reporting and reducing detection of erroneous hotspots. As the availability of geospatial data increases, use of tools like SIGMA-I has the potential to significantly improve fire management, especially in regions where funding and resources for fire management are scarce. Our results support continued multinational funding for tools like SIGMA-I for forest fire management in Guatemala and other developing countries.

A Comparative Analysis of Community-Based Enterprise Governance in the Maya Biosphere Reserve

This study focused upon the governance characteristics of Community Forest Enterprises (CFEs) in the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR). The MBR is an excellent location for studying CFE governance due to the diversity of CFEs operating within the reserve. For example, CFEs vary based upon their legal entity (nonprofit, for-profit, or cooperative) and whether members live within the MBR or outside of the MBR. This research occurred between 2017 and 2019 and involved over 100 interviews with key informants in the reserve, document review, and direct observations of CFE operations. The study describes differences between the governance structures of CFEs in the reserve and investigates factors that enable or constrain equitable and effective CFE governance. The study highlights insights related to CFE membership, decision-making, investments in social and economic goals, and policy enforcement that can be helpful in improving the governance of CFEs in Guatemala and abroad.

Evolution of Community-Based Enterprise Governance Over Time: Lessons Learned from the Maya Biosphere Reserve

Evolution of Community-Based Enterprise Governance Over Time: Lessons Learned from the Maya Biosphere Reserve

Determinants of agricultural intensification and maize productivity in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala

Tropical deforestation is one of the world’s most pressing environmental issues. Some theorists, building on agricultural economist Esther Boserup’s work, propose that agricultural intensification through population growth curbs deforestation through limiting extensive forest cutting for agricultural purposes. Although various scholars have studied the drivers of tropical deforestation, few have examined the determinants of agricultural intensification, which plays key role in forest conservation. This paper uses household data collected in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala, to uncover predictor variables associated with intensification in farmed plots. Maize productivity is statistically and positively related with several key variables including smaller farms, and a small percentage of overall land area in crops; the latter households dedicate more of their output to market sales instead of subsistence. These results challenge the applicability of Boserup’s theory to the tropical agricultural frontier but is consistent with theories of land and labor maximization.

Forest power: The impact of community forest management on female empowerment

Community forest management (CFM) systems have been implemented in developing countries as forest conservation initiatives with community development objectives. Women are often active in CFM by participating in non-timber forest product harvesting and management. Given the increasing presence of women in CFM, this study assesses whether participating in community forest management gives females more household decision-making power, a proxy for empowerment. This is a relevant issue because many development policies are implemented with female empowerment objectives, yet no existing rigorous quantitative studies have examined whether women's participation in CFM empowers them. Using an ordered logistic regression and an instrumental variable method, we analyze a household-level survey of forest-dwelling residents living in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in northern Guatemala. We find that female's participation in CFM increases her intra-household bargaining power on average. The results demonstrate that CFM systems can have development benefits that extend beyond increased household income and welfare.

Visitation patterns of jaguars Panthera onca (Carnivora: Felidae) to isolated water ponds in a tropical forest landscape

Jaguar populations have declined dramatically in the last century. The Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR) within the Selva Maya (SM) is a priority area for jaguar conservation. Influential factors in the jaguar seasonal distribution include the availability of surface water in wetlands such as the “aguadas” and the availability of prey. Aguadas are formed by isolated depressions in the landscape and serve as a water supply for wildlife during dry periods. The goal of this study was to describe the visitation patterns of jaguars to aguadas in a Tropical forest at Dos Lagunas Protected Biotopo, a core zone of the MBR, Guatemala. We used camera-trap data from seven aguadas during the dry seasons 2014-2017. We determined visitation rates (VR, records for 1,000 trap-days) and activity patterns (AP) of jaguars for all years, aguadas, and sexes. We tested for significant differences in AP between sexes, and we estimated the coefficient of overlap (D) for female and male jaguar activity. We recorded 14 individuals (five females, eight males, and one unsexed) in 60 visit events. Jaguars have significant more diurnal activity at aguadas, and showed a VR = 13.1 for 1,000 trap-days. VR varied between aguadas (VR = 9.5 – 19.4), years (VR = 1.9 – 39.2) and sexes (VR = 6.1 for females and 5.5 for males). We did not find significant differences in the AP of female and male jaguars (P > 0.05). The coefficient of overlap between activity of females and males was D = 0.77 (95 % confidence interval: 0.70 to 0.84; P > 0.05). Aguadas may represent regular sites of jaguar home-ranges overlap for the important resources they provide for wildlife during the dry season. Aguadas could play an important role in the conservation and management of jaguar populations since the spatial distribution of these bodies of water is scattered, but ecologically important for jaguars within the MBR and the SM. Aguadas also, are important landscape features that could influence the spatial interactions of individuals. We encourage jaguar researchers to increase investigation on jaguars visiting aguadas and other wetlands in the SM to better understand the jaguar activity patterns and sex-specific habitat requirements.

Relationship between community capitals and governance: The perspective of local actors in the Maya Biosphere Reserve

Internationally, the decentralization of forest management from central government control to collaborative stewardship by local communities is gaining popularity. Forest decentralization is seen as a means of promoting both conservation and community economic development while decreasing government agencies’ management burdens. However, not all community forest programs have been able to successfully achieve both forest conservation and socio-economic development. A growing body of literature identifies under what circumstances local groups can collective action dilemmas in resource management. While a wealth of literature focuses on institutional influence in common-pool resource management, recent research emphasizes the need to understand both how the local context and local governance structures influence community forestry outcomes. The goal of this study is to understand how governance and community resources interact to facilitate or impede the establishment and management of community-based forest enterprises. This paper addresses this question through a cross-case analysis of community forest enterprises in the Maya Biosphere Reserve. Results highlight the importance of social capital reflecting a growing body of research that has found that local-level network-based relationships are an important factor that either facilitates or impedes community governance processes. In addition, for many attributes of good governance, the resources that are typically seen as the most difficult to measure such as cultural capital, human capital and social relationships were also seen as having the greatest impact on governance.

Analyzing community forest enterprises in the Maya Biosphere Reserve using a modified capitals framework

• This manuscript presents a modified capitals framework for analyzing community forest enterprises. • Community forest enterprises operating in the Maya Biosphere Reserve face unique challenges related to their capitals. • All enterprises in the Maya Biosphere Reserve have leveraged their resources to improve their capitals over time. This paper introduces a modified community capitals framework for understanding the context in which community forest enterprises (CFEs) operate. The framework is applied to enterprises in the Maya Biosphere Reserve of Northern Guatemala through a comparative cross-case analysis. Data for the cross-case analysis were collected and triangulated via a variety of qualitative methods including document review supplemented by direct observation, and key informant interviews. The analysis details several differences in capitals between different enterprises in the reserve and details how enterprises have leveraged their resources to improve their capitals over time. This framework is of particular interest to sustainable development scholars and practitioners as it provides a means of analyzing local community-contexts focusing upon the resources that a community has at its disposal and how those resources can be used to develop their capital over time. These insights can be particularly helpful to development practitioners working to design interventions adapted to the unique challenges and opportunities faced by CFEs.

Condición actual en la Reserva de la Biósfera Maya, tradición y reelaboración para una visión integrada de patrimonio mixto

In order to study its conditions, since 1987 the authors have monitored the Prehispanic buildings located in the Maya Biosphere Reserve (mbr) in Petén, Guatemala; they have also analyzed neighboring protected areas such as the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, in Campeche, Mexico, and others. This region of the Central lowlands is now known to possess a double heritage: cultural and natural. For the Maya Biosphere Reserve, in Guatemala, the data indicates that this mixed "ideal" management of heritage has not been successful, since the natural and environmental aspects prevail over the cultural ones. For this reason, the present work tries to give an updated view of the condition of the built heritage in the mbr and seeks to revalue the spirit of mixed management.

Drug trafficking, cattle ranching and Land use and Land cover change in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve

Drug trafficking organizations are driving deforestation in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve. Drug traffickers deforest the protected area in order to illegally ranch cattle, which serves as a mechanism of money laundering, drug smuggling, and territory control. Journalists and ethnographers have analyzed “narco-cattle ranching” activities in the reserve and resulting “narco-deforestation,” yet land use change scientists have yet to quantify the contribution of illegal cattle ranching to forest loss. This article uses remote sensing and GIS analysis to distinguish the relative contribution of cattle ranching, farming, and land speculation to reserve deforestation and other forms of land use and land cover change. We also use ethnographic methods to provide evidentiary links between illegal cattle ranching and drug trafficking activities that suggest a large part, but not all, of illegal cattle ranching is narco-capitalized. Our research finds that illegal cattle ranching is responsible for the majority of reserve deforestation, ranging from 59 to 87% of photographs on deforested lands in three sampled areas. We also found illegal cattle ranching activities are the highest in the reserve’s western national parks, which should be strictly protected from land use change. Contrary to popular debate, these findings suggest drug traffickers in the context of the US-led War on Drugs are to blame for forest loss, not subsistence farmers illegally living in the reserve.

As the drone flies: Configuring a vertical politics of contestation within forest conservation

This paper explores how the use of new monitoring technologies, including drones, are being incorporated into forest conservation, with emphasis on what is at stake politically for forest-based communities. This is a critical area to consider, as the cheapness and easy availability of drones has fostered their rapid proliferation in conservation practices, for activities as diverse as wildlife counting and fire prevention. Many have raised political concerns about these technological developments, and their potential to be used for the surveillance and spatial discipline of minority groups. For example, recent scholarship within political ecology, human geography and conflict studies makes clear that the regulatory frameworks of international conservation are being appropriated by states to pursue racialised agendas of social exclusion in former conflict zones – often with the support of international environmental actors. By justifying increased military presence; surveillance technologies; and stop-and-searches, conservation frameworks have facilitated the containment of “risky” populations and the production of new kinds of borders. However, few have yet explored what it will mean to incorporate drones into the production of territorial claims that can protect commons-based livelihoods and resist new forms of spatial enclosure. By examining the introduction of drones in the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR) in the Petén region of Guatemala, I reveal how satellite technologies and drones are also being used as part of community-led resistance to dispossession. Here, drones are used as part of everyday conservation practices, as part of a socio-legal process that I describe as the configuration of a vertical politics of contestation. Following the history of technological innovation in the MBR leads me to show how, despite their associations with military containment, such technologies can be used to rework spatial orders imposed by states, international actors, the army and the national elite.

Timber or carbon? Evaluating forest conservation strategies through a discrete choice experiment

There are growing concerns that timber harvesting in the tropics, even when done sustainably, can increase carbon emissions. Despite these concerns, few studies have addressed whether households that engage in timber harvesting would be willing to forgo property rights to receive payments for carbon sequestration. This study addresses this issue by examining the trade-off between timber production and carbon storage in the context of the Maya Biosphere Reserve forest concessions in Guatemala. We estimate willingness to increase carbon storage at the expense of timber harvesting through a discrete choice experiment administered to 716 households in the Maya Biosphere Reserve. Because many individuals have rights to harvest non-timber forest products and work in the tourism sector, we assess how rights for these activities would influence the willingness to participate in carbon contracts. Contract length and group or individual payment structures are also investigated. The results show that households prefer contracts that focus on carbon storage rather than timber harvesting, but access to forests so individuals can participate in non-timber forest product harvesting and tourism is critically important in this region.