In the remote Petén region of northern Guatemala, environmentalists are fighting environmentalists in a behind-the-scenes ideological conflict over how best to save the vast but rapidly shrinking Maya forest.
On patrol with Guatemalan environment officials and soldiers
Published July 24, 2008
Michael Stoll, for the Pulitzer Center
La Pasadita, Guatemala
The signs were all there: tree stumps, hastily constructed barbed-wire fences and stray cattle. All that was missing was the perpetrator — or perpetrators — of this all too common environmental crime.
About 45 hectares of forestland had been burned, replaced by corn plots and tall grasses, with a few cattle scattered about. About 50 head of cattle congregated around an artificial watering hole.
Officials said they arrested the men they believed to be responsible for this unauthorized land-use change, but they were out of jail on administrative supervision. They face long prison terms if convicted.
The problem is that log-slash-burn-farm-ranch-abandon cycles are rampant in this area...
Project
The two-day trek to El Mirador and the three-day stay was our introduction as a group to Petén, Guatemala.
Photos by David M. Barreda
Project
Grantee
Michael Stoll is an environmental journalist, college journalism teacher and director of a nonprofit media-reform project in San Francisco. He first learned about the conflicting visions of the fate...
