Population Movements and Money Remittances May Spur Forest Regrowth

August 30, 2007
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A study in the September issue of BioScience presents novel findings on how globalization, land policy changes, and monies sent to family members by emigrants have transformed agriculture and stimulated woodland resurgence in El Salvador. The study, by Susanna B. Hecht and Sassan S. Saatchi, employed socioeconomic data, land-use surveys, and satellite imagery to monitor changes in woody cover in El Salvador since peace accords were signed in 1992.

Most analyses of forest cover in Central America have focused on the loss of old-growth forests. In drawing attention to the regrowth of woodland in a country that was extensively deforested during the 1970s, Hecht and Saatchi call for a renewed examination of social and economic influences on agricultural practices and of the implications for forest extent. New-growth forests, often in a mosaic alongside agricultural land, buffer declines in biological diversity and are widely used by old-growth species.

War drove many people to flee El Salvador during the 1980s and early 1990s, which led to the abandonment of many farms. Thereafter, the country experienced a net increase in tree cover. Hecht and Saatchi found a 22 percent increase in the area with 30 percent tree cover, and a 6.5 percent increase in the area with more than 60 percent tree cover. Policies that encouraged sustainable farming techniques contributed to the increase, the authors maintain.

Strikingly, the authors also found a strong link between forest resurgence and capital remittances from family members in other countries. More than a sixth of El Salvador's population left the country during the fighting, which helps explain why remittances now exceed direct foreign investment more than eightfold. Apparently, households receiving remittances felt less need to maintain existing fields, and also cleared less land. Conservationists should be more cognizant of the power of remittances and agricultural policies to benefit forest regrowth, according to Hecht and Saatchi, who suggest several measures that conservation-minded financial institutions, transnational organizations, and individuals, among others, can undertake to aid the recovery.

The complete list of research articles in the September issue of BioScience is as follows:

Dedifferentiation: A New Approach in Stem Cell Research
Sa Cai, Xiaobing Fu, and Zhiyong Sheng

Globalization and Forest Resurgence: Changes in Forest Cover in El Salvador
Susanna B. Hecht and Sassan S. Saatchi

Graphical Methods for Exploratory Analysis of Complex Data Sets
Ronnie L. Yeager, David F. Parkhurst, and Diane S. Henshel

Mountain Plovers and the Politics of Research on Private Lands
Victoria J. Dreitz and Fritz L. Knopf

Fueling Population Growth in Las Vegas: How Large-scale Groundwater Withdrawal Could Burn Regional Biodiversity
James E. Deacon, Austin E. Williams, Cindy Deacon Williams, and Jack E. Williams

Understanding the Ghost of Cactoblastis Past: Historical Clarifications on a Poster Child of Classical Biological Control
S. Raghu and Craig Walton

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jwilliams@aibs.org

 

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