A tropic nature preserve

Dawn was breaking as we traveled down the river, first as just a hint of color on the eastern horizon. The daylight was greeted by a multitude of bird calls, as we paddled on in our dugout canoe.

Mangroves on the river's edge transitioned into a seemingly impenetrable jungle. In the distance I heard the unmistakable oscillating roar of howler monkeys.

I was on my way to the Greenfields nature reserve, a lowland tropical rainforest along the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, accompanied by two local foresters.

Soon we paddled into a cove and were greeted warmly by the proprietor, a Swiss man named Raeto Pfranger.

He had purchased the property shortly after Hurricane Joann in 1988. Much of the older growth forest had been destroyed by the hurricane and wildfires during the following year. However, with a little care and protection, the forest had grown back into an oasis for native flora and fauna.

Much of the 800 acres protected by Raeto is actually not forest, but swampland, as I was soon to find out. Later that morning I traveled by canoe through mangrove-choked waterways. The mangroves provided an eerie atmosphere with all of their roots hanging down off of limbs.

At our destination, a small lake, birds were singing everywhere, some of them with exotic calls. We could hear flocks of parrots flying overhead and even glimpsed some of them where there were gaps in the tree canopy.

Perhaps the most interesting encounter was with caiman, smaller cousins to the American alligator. At one point on the lake, there were a halfdozen baby caiman tucked into the brush on the water's edge. These two-foot-long reptiles let us approach to a distance of about 10 feet before disappearing.

Raeto then took me on an overland tour through the trail system. It was the dry season, and thankfully so. If not, much of the trail would have been submerged in two feet of water.

There were interesting flowers everywhere. Some of the most interesting were bromeliad orchids that survived growing on other trees, taking nutrients from the moss that grows on the bark of these trees, a sort of symbiotic relationship.

Another fascinating relationship was between the cecropia tree and a species of ants that live only on this tree. They use some of the sugars produced by the tree as their food and in return protect the tree from insect pests, such as leaf cutter ants.

These ants don't eat the leaves they cut, but use them to cultivate a species of fungus in their underground gardens. The ant and the fungus are reliant on each other. The ant can only eat this species of fungus, and the fungus can only grow where the leaf cutter ant cultivates it.

Of the many mammals living in this area, the most interesting was the jaguar. Raeto said that, judging from the tracks he sees on the property and his sightings, a female jaguar frequents the property to hunt the abundance of deer and other animals, often raising young there. He had also sighted smaller male jaguars over the years.

Greenfields is in danger. Government laws protecting the surrounding areas as a buffer zone for his nature reserve weren't enforced. The government-owned forestland was being illegally cleared for grazing cattle.

Equally disturbing was the practice of using fire as a means of a deer drive by hunters. As a result, fire breaks were cut on the perimeter of the property for its protection. Raeto predicted that twenty years from now, his protected area would be an island in the midst of an environmentally destitute region.

He said many of the animals, including the jaguars would be gone. It was a sad reality, he confessed, but at least by his efforts he would be able to save the plants, many of them globally rare species in threat of extinction.

I could understand his concern. I had spent two months on the other side of the river, not even two miles away from his reserve. The land had been cleared, and was being burned on a consistent basis as a means of making it easier for planting crops.

On the outskirts of the community, about a 30-mile swath of rainforest had been cut in order to plant African palm trees by a Costa Rican company that makes palm oil used in cooking. And beyond that the land was being cleared for huge herds of cattle that were nothing more than skin and bones.

Such is the reality in present day Central America. Now I understood the struggle of poor people trying to survive in any way they can. I understood the devastation of the remnants of our Central American rainforests.

And I understood how valuable these resources are for us to protect.