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Mesoamerica is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots—with only half a percent of the world's land area, it is home to seven percent of the world’s biodiversity.
It is also home to the Five Great Forests: the Maya Forest in Guatemala and Belize, the Moskitia in Honduras, the Indio Maíz/Tortuguero in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, La Amistad in Costa Rica and Panama, and the Darien in Panama. These forests provide habitat for iconic species such as the jaguar, scarlet macaw, and Baird’s tapir, as well as lesser known but equally threatened species like the Central American river turtle and the white-lipped peccary. All of the five great forests are part of a protected area, such as a biosphere reserve biosphere reserve
A biosphere reserve is a site within the international Man and the Biosphere Program. The program, run by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), recognizes biosphere reserves for their value in conservation and in providing the scientific knowledge, skills and human values to support sustainable development. Biosphere reserves form a worldwide network that facilitates the sharing of information relevant to the conservation and management of natural and managed ecosystems.
Learn more about biosphere reserve or national park, and together they hold about 50 percent of Mesoamerica's forest carbon.
Unfortunately, threats like forest fires and cattle ranching have taken an incredible toll on the five great forests, causing extremely high deforestation rates. The Maya Forest, for example, has lost approximately 33 percent of its forest since 2000.
The five great forests are also important sources of local communities’ livelihoods and provide critical ecosystem services. Most communities located in and around these forests rely on them for food, shelter, and income. These local communities, many of which are made up of Indigenous Peoples, manage about half of the remaining area of the five great forests. In the case of the Maya Forest in Guatemala, the communities’ role is critical to its conservation.
The Maya Forest (or Selva Maya, in Spanish) is the largest of the five great forests. Measuring about 15 million hectares, about the size of Georgia or Michigan, it stretches through Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. The largest Central American portion lies in Guatemala's northern department of Petén.
Like the other five great forests, the Maya Forest is a carbon sink and is very important for mitigating climate change climate change
Climate change includes both global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns. Though there have been previous periods of climatic change, since the mid-20th century humans have had an unprecedented impact on Earth's climate system and caused change on a global scale.
Learn more about climate change . In 1990, the Guatemalan government created the Maya Biosphere Reserve within the Maya Forest in an effort to preserve its forest ecosystems. Like all UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserves, it has different zones that allow for different levels of conservation and use. The multiple use zone is intended to facilitate sustainable natural resource use with few negative impacts on the diverse ecosystems found within the reserve.
In 1994, the Guatemalan government instituted the forestry concession program, which provides concessions, or leases, to groups to manage large tracts of public land in the Mayan Biosphere Reserve’s multiple use zone. These forestry concessions allow the concessionaire to harvest timber and non-timber forest products according to a plan that the National Council for Protected Areas, or CONAP in its Spanish acronym, approves.
The leases originally began as 25-year leases, but recently some concessions have been renewed for 30 years, a testament to their success. Currently, there are 14 concessions and all but two of them are managed by local community groups. Within these concessions, the deforestation rate is close to zero (0.4 percent in 2022) and, under the watchful eye of the communities, the forest fires that occur here account for less than two percent of all forest fires in the biosphere reserve. For over 25 years, the concessionaires have proven their ability to successfully protect the forests and the valuable resources and ecosystem services they provide.
With funding from the Central America Program within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s International Affairs, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is working with two concessionaires in the Maya Forest: the Selva Maya Association of Agricultural and Forest Producers (ASOSELVA, its acronym in Spanish) and Carmelita.
The Carmelita concession, managed by a community of the same name, covers about 54,000 hectares (133,436 acres, about the size of Redwoods National and State Parks) and is managed for timber, non-timber forest products, and ecotourism. In 2019, it was the first concessionaire to have its lease renewed, and the first to receive a 30-year lease. In 2021, Carmelita began working with WCS on forest restoration, testing different treatments on former cattle ranches to determine which allowed for faster regeneration and growth. After determining that native species enrichment was the best treatment, the organizations developed a strategy to identify priority areas for restoration, giving special attention to those affected by fragmentation. The results of this project will provide crucial guidance for future investments in forest landscape restoration in the Maya Forest.
The other concessionaire, ASOSELVA, is a newer community group located outside of the concession it manages. It signed an agreement with the Guatemalan government on April 5, 2024, to manage two tracts of land totaling over 36,770 hectares (the size of Las Vegas, Nevada).
These two tracts, La Corona and El Morgan, are known as “The Shield” because they are located on the far western edge of other concessions and shield the rest of the area from forest fires and encroaching cattle ranches. The Shield is made up of healthy forests and important water resources including rivers, wetlands, lagoons, and seasonal swamps. La Corona is home to two-thirds of Guatemala’s most important scarlet macaw nesting populations.
WCS is working with ASOSELVA to build its capacity in forest management, financial management, and organizational development. With the assistance of WCS, during the first year of the project ASOSELVA developed and implemented a biological monitoring program to evaluate key species and habitats. The project will also increase community capacity to monitor threats and protect biodiversity within the area. Successful implementation of this project will translate to over 33,000 hectares of forest and its associated carbon stocks managed and protected for at least 25 years.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also supports Asociación Balam (“balam” means “jaguar" in the local Mayan language) in the Maya Forest. Asociación Balam is working in deforested areas just south of the Mayan Biosphere Reserve, assisting local communities near the Belize border with their reforestation efforts.
Through the provision of technical assistance, plants, and seeds, two community groups are using agroforestry techniques to restore ecosystems, protect forest remnants, and develop income-generating activities that are based on forest protection instead of deforestation. Managing forests for non-timber forest products such as palm leaves (xate, Chamaedorea elegans), allspice (Pimenta dioica), and fruits provide local communities with both income from sales and increased nutrition for home consumption.
Asociación Balam is also helping these local communities receive payments for ecosystem services from Guatemalan and global programs. All of these activities provide communities with income-generating opportunities and incentives to keep the forest standing and to reforest or restore areas that have been deforested or degraded.
In the first year of this project, 181 hectares (447 acres) were planted in agroforestry systems and 966 hectares (2,387 acres) of forest were placed into payments for ecosystem services programs.
These projects highlight the importance of working with local communities to find creative solutions that not only protect forests and support carbon sequestration but also provide livelihoods for people living near protected areas. Developing alternatives to activities that deforest or degrade large forests is essential for healthy, productive forests that store carbon, generate other ecosystem services, and provide for surrounding communities.
If these concessions continue operating as planned, in 2049, it will be interesting to see what Carmelita, ASOSELVA, and other concessionaires accomplish through their hard work and dedication to the forests they are charged with protecting. And if Asociación Balam is able to support more communities with projects that replace rather than cut down forest, future satellite photos will hopefully show a reversal of deforestation that helps the five great forests remain great.
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