- Several Indigenous communities in Honduras are trying to set up the Warunta Indigenous Anthropological Reserve, which will allow them to continue traditional hunting and fishing practices while co-managing the forest with the government.
- The reserve will cover 65,369 hectares (161,530 acres) in the department of Gracias a Dios, near the border with Nicaragua.
- Global Forest Watch data show that around 13% of the area’s forest was cleared between 2002 and 2023.
- The reserve has already gone through the consultation process with residents, but needs to complete technical studies by the government, which could take the rest of the year.
Over the last several decades, La Mosquitia has become one of the most dangerous regions of Honduras. Drug trafficking, cattle ranching and illegal logging have pushed into the isolated forests and mountains that stretch along the southern border, becoming part of an everyday struggle for many Indigenous communities.
Protected areas in La Mosquitia, like the Río Plátano and Tawahka Asangni biosphere reserves, receive some resources from the government to combat the problem, but satellite data show deforestation increasing in even these places. As a result, some Indigenous communities are trying to set up a nearby protected area of their own, managed and controlled by residents.
“The same community elders who protected this area for many years are today hampered by outsiders who have illegally invaded the land,” Daniel Kiapa, a legal representative for several Indigenous communities in the area, told Mongabay. “We’re hoping to see peace in the next couple of years and hopefully that the forest will regenerate.”
The protected area they want to establish won’t be a traditional park or reserve, because those designations would create restrictions for Indigenous communities, who still rely on ancestral hunting, farming and gathering of plants for medicinal practices. Instead, it will be an Indigenous anthropological reserve, with a multiple-use zone where communities can use natural resources.
The proposed Warunta Indigenous Anthropological Reserve will cover 65,369 hectares (161,530 acres) in the department of Gracias a Dios, on territory governed by the Council of Elders of La Mosquitia (known as Bakinasta). Indigenous Miskito, Pech, Tawahka and Garífuna peoples are present in the area, totaling around 8,000 inhabitants in 15 communities.
Indigenous residents told Mongabay that for years, they’ve seen outsiders push onto their private land, which has a communal title, to clear the forest for cattle ranching, a common form of money laundering for drug traffickers in this region of Honduras. They said other groups have taken advantage of the weak government presence in the area to claim sections of land and then resell them to poor families trying to start farms and ranches.
Residents said they’ve been frightened by violent clashes and threats, and that deforestation has started to interfere with their traditional hunting and fishing practices, as well as the availability of plants used in ancestral medicines. They said the wood of certain trees used for making boats, their primary mode of transportation, has also become scarce.
Some communities report struggling to maintain their farmland, where they grow rice, beans, corn, yucca, bananas and many kinds of vegetables.
“That area is where they collect traditional medicines and get their food for their households,” Kiapa said. “It’s where they get meat and fish to feed themselves, among a number of cultural activities … But today it’s a territory that’s been threatened with massive invasion.”
Bakinasta leaders told Mongabay that between 12% and 15% of the communities’ forests have been cleared for pasture so far.
This estimate falls in line with satellite data from Global Forest Watch, which show Warunta lost 13% of its primary forest cover between 2002 and 2023. The data show forest loss had been increasing gradually before spiking by 250% in 2023. However, preliminary data for 2024 show last year may have been even worse, with large swaths of forest lost throughout the protected area.
Satellite data and imagery show most of the 2024 forest loss in Warunta occurred in the first half of the year. Spikes in deforestation are often related to the dry season, starting at the end of the year and lasting several months.
Officials planned to establish a national park in the area in the early 2000s, but never finished the project. Impelled by increasing deforestation in the last few years, the communities decided to enact new protections in 2023 in the form of the Indigenous anthropological reserve. They started with the original boundary of the unfinished national park and will make modifications where appropriate for the new reserve.
The new protections could lead to more patrols through the area by the armed forces and the Forest Conservation Institute, a government agency, and even allow for the construction of a monitoring control center, Bakinasta leaders said. Right now, the few officials present in the area are limited in what they can do and suffer from death threats and exposure of their identities, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which is consulting on the project.
Communities that could use the reserve have already completed the prior consultation process and given their consent to move forward. Additional communities may be consulted farther away to see if they’re interested in expanding the reserve in other parts of the forest, Kiapa said.
Technical studies and mapping still need to be done by several government agencies, which could take the rest of the year, WCS said. After that, the Honduran parliament will have to vote it into law.
“Our people are clamoring for this,” Kiapa said. “We as residents would like this area to be declared an Indigenous anthropological area so that we can have effective control.”
Banner image: A view of the mountains in La Mosquitia. Photo by Laurie Hedges.
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Honduras taps armed forces to eliminate deforestation by 2029. Will it work?
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