A new report based on the analysis of satellite imagery over 20 years confirms that the Ortega government’s forestry policy, in contrast to its discourse about fighting climate change, has reversed the recovery of the forest happening during the last years of the Bolaños government and greatly increased the pace of its destruction by suspending the application of the law mandating a moratorium on cutting pine forests.
Thirteen decrees to destroy a natural reserve in Nicaragua
By DIVERGENTES and Connectas
In just 15 years the natural reserve of the Dipilto-Jalapa Range has lost 60% of its pine forest, while the northern region of the Segovias has been left without sources of water. Since 2009 the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has approved 13 decrees to benefit logging companies that extract pine and affect the ecosystem. For the first time a study shows the true impact of this disaster produced by the Nicaraguan State.
I Felling the forest
Ignacio knew what he would find on going up the mountain, but he was not prepared to see it. The peasant, from a community of Jalapa, Nueva Segovia, hurried his pace amid the mist and found what he feared: several trunks of pine trees piled up on the soil, ready to be transported in trucks to some wood mill in the closest town. For a moment sadness blurred his vision. The forest of his childhood, the Dipilto-Jalapa Natural Reserve Mountain Range, was on its deathbed in front of his eyes.
It does not matter how many times he walked these mountains; the feeling of impotence was the same. Ignacio is Chorotega in origins. He is now 55 years old, but since a child he was taught the respect indigenous peoples have for what is called “mother nature.” Currently he continues fighting for the conservation of that ecosystem in northern Nicaragua, but he does not see the result of his struggle. We are not using his real name at his expressed request, because in Nicaragua demanding rights can cost you your freedom or your life.
“This is clearcutting, you can no longer call it thinning. It is a crime against our forest, and it is leaving us without water,” he laments, observing the desolate view at the high point of the Reserve, declared a protected area in November 1991, some 31 years ago. A regulation that has not done much good.
A technical report done by an expert in remote sensing and spatial analysis for this piece reveals for the first time that the reserve has lost 60% of the pine trees that covered it in 2007, the year in which Daniel Ortega returned to power. The document reveals, in addition, that the pine forest is being destroyed at an accelerated pace and in its place coffee plantations are springing up.
Ignacio found felled pine trees in El Ural, in the municipality of San Fernando, in the Nueva Segovia province; but in other areas of the mountain range the devastation looks the same. As one travels through the forest, “splotches” are seen left by the indiscriminate felling, and instead of the old thick trunked trees the so called “bobbins” are seen, young trees that are cut when they barely reach a useable size.
With the felling of the forest, the water sources have also suffered damages. In the first months of 2022, during the dry season, at least five springs were left without water in two communities of Mozonte. Meanwhile, the previously crystalline waters of the Quisulí and Mozonte rivers continue being turned into puddles, describes a report from the Mogotán environmental group, which for several years has been documenting the deforestation of the mountain range.
On paper a norm exists that, it is assumed, would be a tool to protect Nicaraguan forests. The Law for the Moratorium on Cutting, Use and Commercialization of the Forest Resources was approved in 2006. Nevertheless, since 2009 the government of Daniel Ortega has suspended it thirteen times to allow for pine trees to be cut down, under the pretext of vitalizing the economy.
But the economy only seems to have been vitalized for those who participate in the lumber business chain. Just one load of a 15 cubic meter capacity lumber truck represents an income of more than $50,000 for a logger.
The reality is different for a common citizen. In the communities of Nueva Segovia it is common to hear that “you eat one meal and maybe the next”. Always rice and beans, cheese at times, chicken on special occasions. “We here do not have jobs, no one is generating anything. We are surviving,” states Róger Sandoval, a farmer in the municipality of Macuelizo who states that this year he had to dig a hole in the river to create a damn to provide water for his cows.
II The deforestation of the mountain range
The Dipilto-Jalapa range is home for at least 200 species of birds and 40 species of mammals, in addition to reptiles and amphibians and around 300 species of plants, among them 120 orchids. Quetzals, lynx, spotted pacas, coatis and agoutis are some of its guests.
It has a territorial extension of 35,555 hectares and forms part of the municipalities of Dipilto, Jalapa, San Fernando, Ocotal and Mozonte, in the province of Nueva Segovia. In addition, it functions as a natural border between Nicaragua and Honduras.
Another factor that has an impact on the vital importance of this range is that it forms the highest part of the Rio Coco basin; the lower part is the river itself and depends on these mountains not just for its replenishment, but also to prevent the sedimentation caused by the surface runoff that wears away the topsoil and drags sediment to the lower basin.
The task of these pine trees is to trap the humidity, permeate it into the subsoil, and produce mountain creeks and small rivers that empty into the Rio Coco.
In spite of the importance of this ecosystem, a study done by a specialist in Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis with ample experience in environmental issues, reveals that in the last 15 years the natural reserve has not been protected. From 2007 to 2022 the pine forest went from 29,838 hectares to only 11,887. In other words, 17,951 hectares of pine forests were destroyed, the equivalent of 25,130 soccer fields, given that 1.4 soccer fields fit in one hectare.
The objective of the study, whose results are published for the first time in this investigation of DIVERGENTES and CONNECTAS, was to describe the change in the use of soil in the range in the period between 2000 to 2020. For that purpose, the specialist, who has requested that his name be omitted for security reasons, used as a reference point the Corine Land Cover Methodology, developed by the FAO for the evaluation of forestry lands. This allowed him to assess the changes in the forestry cover based on the analysis of the high-resolution satellite images.
The geo-referenced images were taken from the Sentinel-2A satellite and are from April 10, 2022. They were extracted from the platform of the Geological Service of the United States (USGS) and each one was corrected with programs that reduce the cloud effect to identify the type of coverage and soil use.
In general terms, the report reveals that for 2007 the reserve had seven years of sustained recovery. This is deduced because in the year 2000 close to 50% of its surface was covered by pine forests, something that, in the words of the specialist, “indicated an important level of conservation within the protected area”; nevertheless, in 2007 the panorama was much more positive, because the reserve had recovered nearly completely the areas of pine, with a coverage of 89%. The report highlights it as “the biggest recovery of this ecosystem in such a short period of time”, among other reasons, thank to “the low extraction during this period.”
Nevertheless, quickly that tendency was reverted and by 2011 the area covered by pine trees in the reserve had gone from 29,838 hectares to 15,463. It was reduced by nearly half in a period of just four years.
If the map is seen in a general way, including also the five municipalities that delimitate the natural reserve, it confirms that the forests that surround the protected area have not done better.
In the last 15 years the pine trees of these Segovian municipalities have been exploited in such a way that they have lost 46,853.76 hectares, the equivalent of 65,595 soccer fields. This loss represents 76.11% of the pine forests that in 2007 existed in this zone of the country: a total of 61,5419.16 hectares.
The recovery that was produced in the pine trees of the range from 2000 to 2007 was due to the national strategy applied during the government of President Enrique Bolaños Geyer, thinks Amaru Ruíz, biologist, environmentalist, and president of the Fundación del Río. If you allow the pine forest to grow, it is “grateful”, he stated in an interview with DIVERGENTES:
The problem is that they no longer allow that.
The rivers of yesterday, dry creeks of today
The enormous deforestation is evident to not only peasants like Ignacio, who because he is a member of the environmental collective Grupo Cocibolca is more familiar with the issue. All the people in the community feel and suffer from it.
“In my day when I was 10 years old, the forests there were dense. Today this is a disaster. It is painful when you go and, suddenly see those logging roads and see that there is even wasted wood,” complained Esteban, a 48 year old peasant who is seated by the Mozonte River, located in the community with the same name.
He points to the water and clarifies, “Right now the river has a lot of current because of the rains that we have. Three years ago this river dried up. They told us that it was because there were hoses and irrigation ditches connected to it, that they were going to remove them and regulate it. But in other times, the times when we were raised, in those mountains there were already hoses and irrigation ditches and this problem did not exist. I tell you that, if this continues like this, we are going to lose the river, it is going to completely dry up.”
Esteban has reasons to be concerned, because he knows about small lagoons and streams that have vanished “on the very border” with Honduras. In addition, every time he goes to the forest and passes through the river, he sees new damage.
In his judgement, making use of the wood would not be bad if it were done in a controlled way. “At times they plant some trees, but it is only to say “we planted”. They do not provide them with maintenance, because many times they plant when the rainy season is ending and they are not going to survive,” commented Esteban.
III Worthless paper, a law that is not applied.
The Moratorium Law 585 was approved in 2006 for a 10 year period. It was assumed that the law would protect the species of mahogany, cedar, pochote, pine, mangrove and ceibo trees throughout the territory of Nicaragua.
It was established that, once the decade was over, the Law could be renewed for similar periods, depending on the circumstances. It was left written that the prohibition would be permanent and valid in the protected areas for all species of trees; the only thing that would be permitted would be the collection of firewood for exclusively domestic purposes, like for cooking.
Nevertheless, since the approval of the Moratorium Law the regime of Daniel Ortega has issued thirteen decrees to suspend it in the pine forests The first one was made public in October 2009; the most recent one, in January of 2022. All refer to article 15 in the regulations, which grant the president of the Republic the power to modify the restrictions on the moratorium, based on studies and recommendations from the National Forestry Institute (INAFOR), with the approval of the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR).
In the judgement of Mónica López Baltodano, an environmental lawyer, member of the Grupo Cocibolca and the Articulation of Social Movements, the regime of Ortega has made use of that weakness in the Law to suspend the moratorium under an apparent “legality”.
“The suspensions of the moratorium for pine that they approved annually under a supposed technical and legal shelter are as arbitrary as the aggressions against more than 900 organizations that have been closed down and many confiscated without due process and without the right of defense,” she stated. “Everyone knows that INAFOR, like MARENA, do not have any technical autonomy. They obey orders from the regime which are built on their privatizing logic about nature and doing business at the cost of the lives of people and environmental integrity.”
For López Baltodano, the decrees about the suspension of the moratorium do not have any technical basis.
“The same thing happens with the suspension of the moratorium on pine trees, that they base on supposed technical criteria from INAFOR, affecting also the protected areas of the country, because these decrees allow for felling pines trees even in protected areas,” she emphasized. “All this happens even though the General Law on the Environment establishes that the protected areas are zones that must be conserved and restored because of their ecological importance and their biodiversity. Even in its article 17 it indicates that “a total and permanent moratorium be established for the forestry resource in the protected areas,” and that enters into contradiction with the decrees of Ortega.”
The decree for the suspension of the moratorium issued in 2009 legalized felling of pine trees in all the national territory, even though the analysis of the images reveals that pine cutting began previously, along with the return of Ortega to power. With the advance of the deforestation, the denouncements increased from Grupo Cocibolca about the cutting in the Dipilto-Jalapa Natural Reserve. But instead of ensuring a plan to stop the clearcutting of the pine trees, in 2014 the regime of Ortega approved a decree that suspended the moratorium of pine throughout the country, including the protected areas.
Where are the technical reports?
None of the technical reports that supposedly support the decrees which suspended the forest moratorium have been made available to the citizenry. “It is not even known whether they have discussed it in the famous Forestry Commission, where it is assumed that several actors should participate, including civil society and private enterprise,” explains Amaru Ruiz.
“They say that there are technical studies, but even if we would grant that they have the studies, if you are honest and you are not acting discretionally, you would make them public,” explains the president of the Fundación del Río.
Ruiz recognizes that if a true commitment existed to restore ecosystems, they would be able to take advantage of the forest resources of the country. In the end, we all have in our homes more than one object of wood, beginning with the doors. “But this is not the case in Nicaragua,” he highlights. “You cannot be talking about the fact that you are going to make use of it in a sustainable way, if you do not have anyone to supervise you.”
Community members directly blame the municipal governments and the municipal delegates of INAFOR, for providing extraction permits to any logging enterprise with the resources to buy them.
Nevertheless, the primary responsibility falls on the Executive Branch for two powerful reasons. The first is that INAFOR, the entity responsible for forestry administration throughout the national territory, is affiliated with the presidency of the Republic. The second is that since 2009 Nicaraguan forestry policy has been managed by way of decrees.
In 2016 the Moratorium Law was renewed for another decade, only to continue to suspend it year after year. The decrees, previously and now, are based on the same justification: sustainable forestry use and energizing the economy.
DIVERGENTES and CONNECTAS made requests for information to Daniel Ortega, president of the Sandinista Government, and also to Indiana Fuentes, the executive director of INAFOR, to learn what were the technical aspects that were taken into account at the moment of approving felling pine trees in the Dipilto- Jalapa Natural Reserve. Nevertheless, we did not have a response by time this article was published.
Profits for few, poverty for many
Thirteen decrees suspending the moratorium and an environmental disaster later, the promise of economic growth for the municipalities and the improvement in the quality of life of the population continues unfulfilled. In Nicaragua the minimum salary of the agricultural sector is 4,723.25 córdobas (US$132.72) and the basic basket of goods is now over 17,000 córdobas.
In the Segovian countryside life is hard and the poverty is palpable. It is noted in the muddy trails and rustic adobe homes, in the small plots for family consumption and the cold hearths. In one of these homes, there in the El Potrerillo community in Dipilto Secundino Rugama lives, 78 years of age with his spouse and two children.
“How do you survive here?”
“Survive? Just working on other people´s land. Wage work is wielding a machete so that they give us money,” he responds, in a low voice and country accent.
“How many meals do you eat a day?”
“Two, at times, one. Given how things are…”
“And what is it that you eat?”
“Beans and rice.”
“Cheese?”
“Too expensive.”
“Eggs?”
“No.”
“Chicken?”
“At times, when the patrón pays us for the two weeks of work. If we do not buy chicken, we buy the rice that is enough for the entire week.”
“How often do you buy clothing in your family’”
“In the seasons, we buy two or three changes of clothing and we use them for the year.”
“Can I ask you how much money you have right now in your pocket?”
“Right now, I don´t have anything. Right now, the money that we are making we are spending on food, corn, which is expensive, and beans, which are expensive.”
Along the route from Santa Rosa to Ocotal two women around 70 years of age come walking, with their hair in a bun, dressed to go to town and wearing rubber sandals. One of them is carrying a pan with large squashes, some bundles of spinach and some small beets. The other one carries a sack with a hen inside.
They are headed to the market in Ocotal to sell what they have from their farms. Small farms, like their produce. Probably the beets are not ripe yet, but Doña Luisa wants to get at least 200 córdobas ($5.60 dollars at the official exchange rate) with their sale. Her fellow traveler, Doña Olga, will ask the same amount for her chicken and will use the money to buy rice and beans, maybe cheese.
“What one sells is cheap and what is in the market is expensive,” she complains hugging the chicken, half of whose body is outside the sack.
“Previously were less hungry, “says Doña Luisa. “I have ten children and they did not suffer because we had food. Beans, corn, sorghum, that we had, but today we are like this, everything we have to buy and at times we do not get anything. This time no one has anything, we are left with nothing.”
“I remember that we would go with my Dad over there, on the hill, which was a pine forest, but today there are no trees, now it is all deteriorated,” recalls Doña Luisa. “Nothing was left, just fields for grazing, that they have cut down, burned and now there is nothing. Not even rain.”
She, who has lived her entire life in this land, has seen the cycles of the forest, including the plagues of pine bore, real ones and false ones. The pine bore, which from time to time affects the pine forests in Northern Nicaragua, has been used to deforest the woodland, even in protected areas, with the pretext of preventing its propagation. Nevertheless, Grupo Cocibolca and community members interviewed by this news outlet, state that the supposed eradication is just an excuse to extract healthy trees.
“Trucks come in that take the pine wood and MARENA says that it is because of the pine bore. It is a lie,” states Doña Luisa. They cut down some young saplings, which is like when a child dies young. They are young saplings that even make you sad. I have seen that cutting. There is no pine bore. They are the bores,” she insisted.
IV Those who are making money
Those who are benefitting big time with the extraction of pine trees are logging companies. The Observatory of the Segovias, a spontaneous organization of citizens composed of inhabitants of the communities of this province, maintains a monthly record of the trucks that enter the protected area of the Dipilto-Jalapa range.
To gather that information, the citizens who live in Dipilto, Ocotal, Jalapa, Mozonte and San Fernando fill out a type of form and then pass the data to the Observatory control center, where they are organized and checked.
The information is ordered by date and time the truck was seen, place or municipality, license plate number and a box of observations that offer relevant data about the destination of the wood. Also, records are kept of especially irregular details; for example, the loads that leave at night or in the early morning, hours during which transporting logs is illegal in theory.
In the first quarter of 2022 the observatory reported 165 trucks that left the natural reserve heading to the principal sawmills in Ocotal. The total loads were calculated in the following way: January 51, February 28, March 86 as evidenced in the database.
“Once at the sawmill, the wood is processed and then transported to Corinto and Puerto Cabezas,” said Camilo, a worker in one of the logging companies who spoke with DIVERGENTES and CONNECTAS under condition of anonymity.
This communications media looked on official Government websites for information about the volume of processed pine wood exported; but that data does not appear in any available documents. Nor is there a public record that details the destination for the wood extracted in the country.
Handsome profits from pine
The government of Daniel Ortega argues that the suspension of the moratorium on cutting and selling pine wood is to vitalize the economy. Nevertheless, the profits from deforestation have only benefitted the loggers who get thousands of dollars for each truck that they are able to fill with trunks of pine, while the inhabitants of the zone still live in extreme poverty and suffer from droughts as a result of the clearcutting.
This is an estimate of what those who control the commercialization of the forestry resource make.
In order to expose the approximate profits from the extraction of pine wood, Camilo revealed information that few dare to share with independent media.
Only double axel trucks enter the natural reserve because of the complicated access to the zone. In just one load, these heavy vehicles can take out 15 cubic meters of pine logs.
“Then, each cubic meter provides 300 board feet. And a board foot costs at least 400 córdobas,” explained Camilo. If we multiply the figures provided by the worker of the logging company, the income per cubic meter is 120,000 córdobas, approximately US$3,380.
In other words, with just 15 cubic meters a logging company earns approximately $50,700 dolars. And this amount could easily increase if we take as a reference the database of the Observatory of the Segovias.
If each truck takes out a load of 15 cubic meters, then the 86 that the organization reported in March, generated at least $4,360,200 dollars. All this without taking into account the enormous under-registration, derived from the discretionality, illegality and corruption.
“These are the trucks that we who are doing the monitoring see, but many more leave the protected reserve,” clarified Gabriela, a 48 year old citizen who lives outside of Ocotal and who is part of the Observatory.
In Nueva Segovia the Grupo Cocibolca has registered at least 29 logging companies. The largest companies are accustomed to contract smaller sawmills to prepare the wood extracted from the forest. DIVERGENTES and CONNECTAS visited two of them in Las Segovias and confirmed the presence of loaded trucks
Fires, coffee and more poverty
Apart from the classic justification of the pine bore, logging companies tend to use the excuse of forest fires to go in and cut down pine trees. Most of these fires are started, David said, a peasant born and raised in Mozonte, who spoke under conditions of anonymity.
“This year there practically were no fires in our territory, but there were fires in San Fernando. They were set, because last year it did not rain much, and when it does not rain here in this zone, well the grazing grasses do not grow and therefore there are no fires. If there had been a fire, it would have been set,” explained David, appealing to his years of experience. San Fernando is precisely the municipality that has most of the protected area: 48% of the total reserve area.
In their visit to the countryside, DIVERGENTES and CONNECTAS verified that in some places the burned trees remained standing, while the healthy ones had been cut down for the logging trade.
In the protected area of the reserve coffee growing has been gaining ground. The report done based on the satellite images revealed that shade grown coffee in the Dipilto-Jalapa Nature Reserve went from 5,231.96 hectares to 18,723.71 in 2022.
This activity is less damaging than planting monocrops and ranching but should not be practiced in nucleus zones whose vocation is purely forestry, notes the activist Amaru Ruiz.
The situation of the inhabitants of the range is not promising. For Esteban, a peasant from Mozonte, “what is expected here is more poverty…more poverty, it is just that simple.” He is convinced that many people will die in the zone, because they eat poorly and do not have the defenses to deal with diseases like COVID 19.
Ignacio is also concerned about his food and that of his people. “The other day we were doing the math, and it was difficult to get through the day with 100 córdobas. In my family there are four of us and at times, well, water, tortillas and that is all,” he said. “There are no jobs here, there is nothing here. The Government, along with the municipal authorities, has abandoned us, but God does not abandon us. He gives us corn, he gives us a few beans. And here we are, surviving from pure mercy.”