Our Mission
EcoLogic advances conservation of critical natural resources in rural areas of Latin America by promoting sustainable livelihoods and by strengthening community participation in natural resource management.
Project Update
Illegal Logging Thwarted in Xapper, Guatemala
EcoLogic and its partner, the Northern
Border Municipalities Alliance, recently averted a
significant threat to the old-growth cloud forests of Xapper, traditional
homeland of the Maya Chuj people. Remoteness and inaccessibility had made
Xapper one of the better preserved areas of the San Mateo de Ixtatan
municipality in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. Technology and access increasingly
place it in jeopardy.
The creation of a road in 2000 began to put pressure on the forest. Areas
previously
unreachable were now easily entered by large trucks. Trees that
would have required several men a half-day's work to bring down, now fell in
less than an hour under the efficiency of a single electric chainsaw. Xapper's
community leader, Felipe Gómez Gonzales, estimates that 15% of the mountain has
been cleared since 2000. Earlier this year, a logger unearthed a claim from the
1950s that asserted his right to tracts of land in Xapper. The claim however,
had not been acted on for over 50 years, during which time the Xapper community
had regularly protected and managed the area.
