A Useful Way to Help Save Rain Forest

Carlos Acuna and others left Guatemala’s coastal plain to carve out a new life in the jungle as farmers.

The poor immigrants weren’t bent on destroying the fragile rain forest, he says, “but we did come here for land and to plant corn, so we have to burn down the jungle.”

Conservationists have long worried about such threats to the world’s rain forests, so one group came to the villagers of El Cruce with a proposal for making a living without harming the trees: Harvest the products of the jungle itself.

Peasants handpick detritus from the forest floor. They dry the leaves, dye the seeds and perfume the wood chips, which are exported to be sold in elegant packaging as exotic potpourri in chic stores in the United States and Europe. They also gather ingredients for the beauty-care industry.

Business is booming.

“People thought we were mad when we told them we would pay money if they brought us what was on the jungle floor,” said Acuna, who oversees the daily operations of the village’s potpourri center.

But the villagers quickly found they could earn up to three times the nation’s minimum wage of $2.40 a day by collecting botanicals and harvesting tree woods for dyes and gathering allspice leaves and berries to perfume potpourri.

Now, about a third of El Cruce’s 300 families are involved in the business and keen to protect the rain forest they once slashed and burned.

The village, one of several in the area, is only 150 miles north of Guatemala City, but, nestled in the jungle, it is a world away.

Covering 6,400 square miles, Guatemala’s tropical rain forest is the largest in Central America and the second biggest--after the Amazon--in Latin America. It is home to more than 400 exotic bird species, 57 snake species, a variety of monkeys, five types of wild cat and thousands of varieties of tropical plants and trees.

Conservationists have been warning that the rain forest is disappearing at an alarming rate because of illegal logging of its precious hard woods and a rise in the number of poor Guatemalans moving in seeking land.

A Washington-based environmental group, Conservation International, came up with the harvesting idea to save the forest while providing work for the impoverished communities in the region.

“Basically, it is the garbage of the rain forest. But the potpourri project creates alternative sources of income and jobs based on the sustainable harvest and extractions of the forest,” said Sharon Flynn, Conservation International’s enterprise development director.

With the success of the harvesting project, a spinoff industry began among local artisans, who paint decorative patterns on vegetable gourds as packaging for the potpourri.

Sitting on the ground inside a wooden shack at the center, Acuna’s sister Edie patiently sorts through what appears to a mound of delicate paper butterflies.

Tittering, she said, “Pretty, aren’t they? But they are just the inside of a pod that grows on a jungle vine.”

A U.S. company imports thousands of these “butterflies” annually, dips them in gold or silver and sells them as jewelry, bookmarks and Christmas ornaments.

“Just imagine, those beautiful earrings came from our jungle,” Acuna said.

The conservationists also are working with the jungle villages to collect exotic materials that are used in personal care products.

For example, jaboncillo extract obtained from dried berries of the Sapindus saponaria was used by Maya Indians centuries ago as soap and today is a key ingredient in facial washes, after-shave lotions and astringents.

Cohune oil squeezed from the Cohune palm is being exported for use in skin-care products, and allspice extract is used in lip balms.

Edward Millard, manager of Conservation International’s ecological businesses in Guatemala, said the group is sponsoring an allspice oil mill to be set up in the forest later this year.

“If people can get value out of the sustainable use of their environment, then they have a vested interest in protecting it,” he said.