Posted on November, 28 2001
From the air the forest looks brown, the treetops scorched by the sun and seemingly lifeless. At ground level it looks very different. Beneath the canopy of the taller trees there is ample shade, and the forests around Huatulco are located in the lower basins of the Copalita, Zimatan, Chacalapa and Ayuta Rivers. Here, more than 60,000 hectares of tropical dry forest remains intact, a rich habitat for more than 2,500 plant species, dozens of amphibians and reptiles and 300 species of birds.
�This is very productive land,� says Dr. Miguel Briones Salas, a biologist working as a consultant for WWF Mexico, as we walk through thickly wooded scrub. Miguel warns me not to put my hands into the leaf litter on the ground as we scramble down a slope: �We have several poisonous varieties of snakes here, especially the coral snake for which there is no anti-venom in the country.�
Stopping under a large tree, he reaches up to an overhanging branch and pulls down a slim metal container � a humane mousetrap. I peered at the trap. Inside, a Liomys pictus, the Spiny Pocket Mouse, is no larger than a European field mouse and not the most exciting animal I had hoped to see in the Mexican forest.
�These are fascinating creatures,� Miguel says enthusiastically as he held up the animal for me to see. �They carry their food in pouches inside their cheeks and store it inside their burrows. In the dry desert we know that they store their food in several different chambers underground, but here, where it is easier to forage they just live in one chamber. The mice themselves are the food for the owls, the snakes, the lynx and even the jaguar. When we count the mice we can calculate the density of larger carnivores that can survive here, and also gauge whether human refuse is having an effect on the mouse population.�
During the rainy season the dry forest becomes virtually impenetrable, and Miguel spends time on another favourite project. To see it, we had to drive for several hours into the hills inland of Huatulco, to reach the spectacular beauty of the upper reaches of the Zimatan River.
Here there is hardly any sign of human habitation and Miguel hopes that will not change. Initial studies indicate that the Zimatan may be home to the highest density of river otters in Latin America. Miguel believes that there may be as many as eight otters for each 6-kilometre stretch of riverbank here. As Miguel leads me along the river occasionally we found small footprints in the sand and droppings filled with pink shrimp shells showing us where the otters had been feeding.
Like many WWF experts, Miguel worries that the expansion of Huatulco resort will put increasing pressure on water resources in the region. Small local communities left out of the lucrative tourist trade are forced to abandon the land close to the sea and farm inland.
WWF�s partner organisation, named GAIA (Grupo Autónomo para la Investigación Ambiental), helps to promote environmentally friendly land use, and actively teaches the local farmers how to grow crops which may improve the yield of their land.
Noe Martinez Castro, one of the local people employed by GAIA, works with his community, collecting and cataloguing the naturally occurring plants and the food crops. He took me to a field where farmers have started using pineapples to save animals and the soil. �We chose pineapples because the prickles keep the wild deer away from the other crops we can plant in between the rows. And see here�, Noe points to the plants growing in a neat line across the slope of the hill, �by planting them this way we are preventing the soil from being washed away when it rains.�
For many of the villagers there is simply no prospect of working in the tourist development area. And yet, it is from the community-owned lands that the tourist resort draws its water supply � the watershed for that supply is the tropical dry forest, the very area that Noe and his fellow villagers rely on. One study has estimated that in ten years the tourist resort will be too large for the current water reserves.
�One day, the Government will have to sort this out,� says the Mayor of Huatulco Jorge Sanchez Cruz. �The people who own the forest will get compensation to reward them for not cutting it down.� Until that day comes, it is up to the villagers on the community-owned land to make their own decisions as to how best to preserve that environment. �I want my children to grow up here, and live off the land,� says Noe. �I hope that if we can keep the land productive they too will know the forest as I do.�
*Tim Ecott is a journalist whose work is featured on WWF�s �Journey to the Heart of the Forest� website
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