Threats to Acre

Putting real value back into the land

One of the biggest problems in Acre is the clearing of trees to grow crops and the resulting overuse of forest soils.

"Traditionally, farmers clear an area of forest and after a few years of growing crops there, they move on to clear another area because the soil is poor and full of weeds," explains Luis Meneses, Acre's WWF Project Manager.

"The people are not giving the forest soil time to recover its fertility therefore it's very important to have more sustainable uses of these forests."

Better ways to use deforested land
WWF is trying to increase the sustainability of activities in the deforested areas. One way is to promote agroforestry. This means growing a variety of different plants and trees on an area of ground where trees have already been cut down.

For example, farmers could plant yukka, pineapple, corn, peanut, banana and papaya which would be ready for harvesting within a year. This provides food for a family and the surplus can be sold to provide an income.

In between these plants, Amazon fruit trees like Guava, Apple and Heart Palm could be planted, which take a few more years to establish. Finally the farmer can try to grow back some of the types of trees which originally grew in that area, such as Mahogany and Cedar, which could then eventually be logged in a sustainable manner."

Says Luis Meneses "This way you will have an area of forest which is useful for the people in the short-term but within 10 years, will look like a forest again."

This agroforestry technique also has another advantage: The income earned from growing a whole variety of plants is much more than would be earned by cattle-ranching or by chopping down a tree - which you can only do once!

Logging the right way
It would of course be ideal if people stopped chopping down trees altogether but this isn't practical as there is worldwide need for timber and Acre has a large range of very valuable woods.

However, there is a way to produce timber which will keep everyone happy. It's called Sustainable Timber Production and it means that instead of just chopping every tree in sight, loggers are trained to grow a large variety of different sorts of trees, some of which grow faster than others. Then only selected trees will be felled.

"People here are changing the way they produce timber," says Luis, "so that they meet FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) standards. This means that when the wood is truly sustainably produced, the timber company will receive so-called FSC-certification."

Forest Managers Association
In Acre, many logging companies are making the change under the direction of Mrs. Fatima Goncalves de Oliveira, the Founder-President of the newly established Forest Managers Association which is dedicated to sustainable timber production.

Says Fatima, whose own timber company will shortly be the first to receive FSC-certification, "I will now be working with 64 species of tree as opposed to the traditional 12. And if the market wants Mahogany, which is legally protected, we have 4 other species of tree with the same colour and resistance as mahogany on offer."