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Honduras - 2007
Sustainable Logging Project Hits the Right Note
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Each month, a shipment of two-foot mahogany blocks departs Honduras bound for U.S. guitar manufacturer Gibson. Behind the wood's transformation into a coveted musical instrument is an Alcoa-supported effort to combat poverty and protect one the world's biosphere reserves from illegal logging and "slash-and-burn" agriculture.
Through a business liaison brokered by the nonprofit Rainforest Alliance and funded in part by a US$155,000 grant from Alcoa Foundation, subsistence farmers and loggers from three villages near Honduras' Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve are extracting mahogany planks from the rainforest in a sustainable and legal manner.
The wood is cut with donated equipment, transported on muleback down muddy slopes, and shipped by boat. Gibson—the world-famous company that has outfitted entertainers such as Santana and B.B. King—pays US$40,000 per month, a huge sum for the region's poor families. Because the wood is harvested sustainably, it provides a future livelihood for the communities while protecting the environment.
The Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve and the rainforests adjacent to it have been under severe ecological pressure from the illegal cutting of mahogany and fires set by area ranchers to clear the land. Today, soldiers from the Honduran army guard the roads through local villages and patrol the woods, confiscating mahogany and other timber from unlicensed loggers.
Loggers trained by the Rainforest Alliance, an international conservation organization, work on the fringe of the reserve's protected buffer zone to salvage flawless mahogany blocks from trees felled by storms or left behind by other loggers. Whenever live trees are harvested, the loggers adhere to a management plan approved by the state forestry administration.
"Neighboring cooperatives were calling the loggers associated with our organization fools for going the legal route, since it implied less wood cut and sold, more costs in management plans, and long bureaucratic delays for permits," said Rebecca Butterfield, the Rainforest Alliance's director of the Training, Research, Extension, Education, and Systems (TREES) Program. "During 2005, their first year of working with us, the loggers cut and sold half of their usual volume but at 10 times the price. Now, with the army guarding the reserves and parks, their neighbors have no source of income while our communities are continuing to export. The neighbors now think that the legal market might just be the way to go."
Because Gibson is willing to pay a premium for legally harvested mahogany, the loggers and their families enjoy a higher standard of living.
"This is the best market we've seen," said logger Alcides Escaño. "We used to sell wood for four or five lempiras (less than US$0.25) per foot to national companies. Now, we sell directly to the buyer for almost 40 times as much."
Just as important as the change in income is a change in attitude.
"We used to throw everything on the ground, but now we pack out our trash and go back to pick up what we find that wasn't ours," said José Álvarez, a community leader. "We replant after cutting, which we didn't do before, and we don't clear-cut a whole area. Things are going well for us. There's no reason to cut illegally."
Adds fellow logger Omar Antonio Rivera, "Over the years, we've seen the animals move farther and farther away, and there aren't as many fish in the streams because of all the hunting and fishing here. But the idea is they will come back because of our conservation work."
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