Food security through biodiversity

 


Below is the original page about the catastrophic fire we suffered as a consequence of an absentee owners lack of clear land management strategy:



Fire sweeps the valley:


On the evening of Monday, May 19th, 2008, we saw a glow on the horizon. A quick trip to the top of the hill confirmed what we already knew - that the caretaker of land owned by our absentee land owner neighbors two hills over had lit his annual fire to clear for rice plantation.


Tuesday, May 20th; flames once again lit the evening skyline, this time one hill closer to the farm.



Wednesday, May 21st; around 2:30 pm, the sound of approaching fire alerted us to the impending peril. With winds sweeping from the east, MMRF staff quickly judged the location of the fire and knew our classroom and staff housing were in danger. Everyone on site rushed to work. Fire came within 5 feet of the classroom, and hard work avoided damage to the thatches. Buckets of water, machetes to chop firebreaks and hard work paid off; no structures were lost. By 11pm we ate, then fell asleep exhausted.



Thursday, May 22nd; we continued to prepare for the Truman State University group expected in the evening, all the while with a wary eye to the surrounding hillsides that would suddenly burst into flame, then die down. At 2:00 pm, the far end of the pasture caught fire. Flames leaped high in the air, smoke choked the kitchen staff, floating embers ignited spot fires throughout the agroforestry system. Staff continued to fight the fire, but at 3:30 we decided to evacuate the main site. When we returned, with the arriving students, we saw all the buildings still standing.


Friday, May 23rd and Saturday the 24th; spot fires continued to spark up, but die out for lack of fuel.


Sunday, May 25th; blessed rain.


This uncontrolled milpa fire burnt an estimated 300-400 acres. Of the 70 acres on which MMRF is situated, a little over 50 acres were burnt to the ground. The fire worked its way in a circle sparing most of MMRF’s cultivated areas, but burning the natural ecosystem and destroying thousands of young timber trees. The wildlife dependent on this habitat were forced to migrate elsewhere for food – toucans came right inside the kitchen to eat bananas. The cultivated areas lost coconuts, criollo cacao, pineapples, some large teak trees and a few other species. The ecological services provided by our uncultivated areas have been severely degraded. Most of the carbon has been released, the canopy is nearly gone, the habitat is destroyed. The biological corridor between the Columbia Forest Reserve and the Columbia Branch of the Rio Grande is severely compromised. Jaguar, brocket deer, peccary, ocelots, tayra and other animals used that habitat to access water in the dry season have not been sited at MMRF since the fire.

The heavy rains of our rainy season resulted in soil loss, siltation of two small creeks and displacement of wildlife.


Update:


Ecological restoration of these fire damaged areas is ongoing. In the first year, we invited the MMRF staff from Columbia Village to plant as much corn as they want – the land is pretty easy to clear once it’s burnt to the ground, and five acres of corn were planted. We planted a mix of species within the cornfields. We have been selecting timber species, leguminous species, fruit trees, and bio-mass accumulators. No one on site has experience in restoration of tropical eco-systems devastated by fire. We would welcome researchers with interest or expertise in this area. Seeds for reforestation are being generously provided by Trees for the Future.




The fire came within 5 feet of the classroom and the two thatch buildings.


We spent much of the summer of 2008 pushing back the wild areas of the farm and transforming that severely damaged landscape into what will eventually be a complex agroforestry system. Pioneer species like banana, vetiver grass, pigeon pea, corn and a mixture of tim
ber trees have gone out into the areas adjacent to the buildings. We want to push back the flammable heliconias which were a large part of why the fire which originated 2/3 of mile from MMRF travelled so easily replacing them with useful tree species.


Thousands of linear feet of vetiver rows were planted on contour to control erosion in a small percentage of the land that was damaged. Thousands of trees and pineapples were planted out between the rows of vetiver. This planting was done by MMRF staff and a fantastic bunch of interns.


This fire has had long ranging impacts on Maya Mountain Research Farms agenda for the next two years, having derailed projects that had been planned for the summer of 2008, finishing the goat dairy, building a pond, the pig tractor and bio-gas plant. Invasive grasses have sprouted where there had been forest, and many thousands of small timber trees that had been planted were killed, representing a loss of thousands of hours of work, and lost potential income in the future.



Damage to the surrounding habitat has reduced the wild life that we would see through the year. For the first time, we did not see brocket deer during mango season. The fruit trees at MMRF have provided food for deer every season for the last 20 years, The peccary have not been seen, either, and this year there have been no sightings of or signs of jaguar or other large cats. The birds who have been displaced now feed heavily on the banana in the kitchen, as do the bats at night.


The responsible parties, absentee land owners, the “Tropical Conservation Foundation”/”BARC”, visitors with a seasonal presence in Belize and a well documented history of burning into their neighbors lands, have now made their caretaker stop burning.


The forest is still heavily degraded. In an attempt to reduce fuel loads close to the buildings, areas adjacent to the classroom have been terraced with vetiver strips on contour, and with pineapple, papaya, plantain, coconut, banana, golden plumb, papaya, inga and leaucaena. Two corn crops of local open pollenated blue corn have come out of that area. By transforming that area from second growth, which was so disastrously flammable, into a a stacked polyculture, we reduce the fuel load and push back the next potential fire.