rainforests
- Plantas medicinales and Sustainable Agriculture: They are trying to teach their community the uses of the rainforest plants, and especially the medicinal uses of those plants, before that knowledge is lost. Along the way, they're trying to promote sustainable agriculture in a place that is being ravaged by slash-and-burn corn farms. These farms are only productive for 2-3 years on the fragile and thin rainforest soil of the Petén region, after which they are depleted. The Mayans used a system of crop rotation and of letting land lie fallow as a sustainable means of recharging the forest soils.
- Reserva Bio-Itzá: They are preserving one of the largest pieces of unbroken rainforest in the Americas, mostly without government or NGO support. While we were walking on one of the trails with two of their rangers (they have three) one of them stopped and got an anxious look in his eye. He held up a hand for us all to be silent. Very faintly in the distance, we heard it: a chainsaw. The director of the reserve, who was with us, gravely sent off the other ranger to look into it. "Sólo mirar, ¡nada más!" he said: just look, but don't do anything else. The rangers don't carry any weapons and they cannot afford to carry powerful radios or telephones. So they walk the perimeter trying to intercept people who are hunting endangered animals or cutting down ancient trees. When they find those people, they use the most powerful tool they have: they talk with the poachers and try to teach them about the forest they are trying to preserve. When the poachers have automatic weapons, this is a very risky business. These intrepid rangers consider it worth their while. Visit the reserve if you are able - it's an amazing education in itself, and the largely unexcavated Mayan ruins there are well worth seeing.
- Asuntos Sociales: They provide funding for rural students to stay in school, and are working on a number of other projects to try to improve the well-being of their community.
- Lenguas Mayas: One of their earliest movements was an attempt to preserve the Mayan languages of their region: Itzaj, Kek'chi, Mopan, and a handful of others. One reason to do this is that the names of the plants and animals in those languages are not just names but stories. Another reason is that the languages used to bind them together as a community. Unfortunately, they lost a generation that was castigated and fined for speaking in Mayan languages. On the positive side, there is now an institute in San José that is dedicated to preserving and teaching these languages.
Of Fish and Forests
When people ask me what I do I sometimes reply “I study the relationships between fish and forests.”
A more precise way to describe my job might be to say I’m a teacher, a scholar, and a department chair and program director at my university. But that answer is pretty dry and uninteresting.
Adding detail doesn’t always help, though I could say that I teach philosophy, classics, religious studies, theology, field ecology, study abroad, environmental studies, and sustainability; and that I take my students to the places I study: rainforests in the tropics and in Alaska, deserts, and the Mediterranean.
So instead I say “fish and forests.” The words are simple and easy to understand. I hope they invite more questions, and often they do.
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| Salmon bones on woody plants beside a river near Lake Clark, Alaska. A bear left these bones after a meal. |
The question I hope for is some version of “what do fish have to do with forests?” The short version is: nearly everything.
Nearly as good as that question is when someone points out that fish don’t live in trees. Short version of my reply: that’s not exactly true, and many of my students can tell you the various ways fish do live in trees. Here are a few:
Around the world, the edges between land and water are held together by roots, and in those places, fish find food, shelter, and places to spawn.
A great example of this is mangroves, which are some of the most important ocean nurseries. Thousands of species bear their young and lay their eggs in mangroves. The mangroves provide shelter from predators; they stabilize the soil, protecting land from hurricanes and strong waves, and protecting the sea from too much runoff. Birds, mammals, insects, and reptiles live in the branches. Fish and myriad aquatic invertebrates live among the roots.
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| A mangrove on an island off the coast of Belize. |
We could add that there are “forests” of kelp and coral underwater, too.
Wherever birds eat fish, those birds also build the soil when they return to the land. Their waste becomes fertilizer for all manner of grasses, forbs, and trees. Visit the rivers of Alaska and you will find shrubs and trees growing on the banks, where seeds found fertile gardens in mounds of bear poop.
When a bear eats salmon and berries, the berry seeds pass through the bear undigested. The bear deposits the seeds in a steaming pile of fecundity. Bears are forest gardeners.
Here in the middle, between the tropics and the Arctic, the
Big Sioux River is entering its quiet winter’s rest. We haven’t had much rain,
and the river is ankle-deep in many places. The fish gather in deep holes that were
sculpted out by fallen trees. When the river claims a tree, that tree doesn’t
simply float away. It becomes food for beavers and decomposing insects. It
creates eddies that dig deep holes on one side and deposit sediment on the
other. Sometimes the tree becomes a new island, and new trees grow up on its
rotting wood and on the debris it collects. Raccoons grab mussels and crayfish,
and eat them in the branches. Mink and otters dine from a similar menu further
down on the bank.
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| Tree growing on an island in the Big Sioux River. The tree makes habitat for both terrestrial and aquatic life. |
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| Near the roots, a deep hole has been carved out. Habitat for fish, hunting grounds for raccoons and other mammals. |
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| A fallen tree has created an island in the Big Sioux River |
Everywhere I go with my students I ask them to pay attention to the water. The fish and the forests alike need it. The forests keep the water cool and clean, and the fish fertilize the trees. Often, when I am teaching in Morocco or Spain or Greece, I ask them to notice the architecture of water, and the way it relates to our values. Religions have rituals of ablution, and ancient temples collect water from their rooftops, letting it flow down ancient marble columns that imitate the tree trunks that once made porticoes, to flow into cisterns. The narrative of the Christian scriptures begins in a forested garden, and ends in a city with a river flowing through it.
My students smile and roll their eyes at hearing me repeat the same question yet again. What do fish have to do with forests? What does water have to do with dry ground?
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| Traditional Itzá canoes on the shore of Lake Petén Itzá. |
And then one will point out a young mangrove shoot, a migrating salmon, a traditional Itzá canoe on a lakeshore, a baptismal font, a hammam, a public fountain, a Roman aqueduct.
And we will all stop for a moment and consider the way that this water, right here, flows through every part of our lives.
Learn Spanish in Guatemala, Help Save the Rainforest
I think the best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it. Read books in the language you want to learn, eat the food of its cultures, and, if at all possible, travel to where it is spoken.
If you’re thinking about doing this with Spanish, let me recommend a place to do this in Guatemala: the Asociación Bio-Itzá in San José, Petén, Guatemala, on the Northwest shore of Lake Petén-Itzá.
This is a small, non-profit group run by a few devoted individuals who are trying to preserve their language, their forests, their modes of agriculture, and their communities. They teach Spanish by full immersion, providing four hours a day of individual instruction tailored to your needs, homestays with delightful local families, and the opportunity to experience both contemporary Guatemalan and traditional Mayan cultures.
So why am I writing about this? Because their Spanish school is their means of raising money to support a number of other important endeavors including: