Map can be found at www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/south_america/brazil/

DAYS FIVE, SIX, SEVEN: CAUAXI

• TROPICAL FOREST FOUNDATION TRAINING CAMP

•SPEAKERS: DR. JOHAN ZWEEDE, MARK SCHULZE, LOCAL COMMUNITY REPRESENTATIVES

 

  

Dr. Zweede is the Project Director for the TFF
Sustainable Forest Management Project in
Brazil. He has worked for 30 years as a
forester in the Amazon, with industry, NGO's,
and international institutions, including the
World Bank and has been with TFF since
1993.

Fundacao Floresta Tropical (FFT), or the Tropical Forest Foundation, provides reduced impact logging (RIL) training in the Amazonian basin.
FFT promotes sustainable tropical forest management by gathering and disseminating information about its benefits and by demonstrating and teaching proper management practices.

As a class, we found that FFT has created a crucial role for itself on the interface between forest researchers, conservationists and loggers. FFT counters the under-valuation of forest land that takes place in the Amazonian basin. By teaching efficient and effective methods of documenting forest inventory, felling trees, planning skid trails and initiating tree regeneration, FFT has shown that business and conservation-minded parties can use current research, technology, and the knowledge of local people to find a balance between forest use and conservation.

 

 

Conducting a forest inventory includes mapping commercially valuable trees. If this is not done, felling crews will damage large areas of forest with their machinery while looking for the economically valuable trees rather than following a map to them. This wastes time, fuel, potentially harvestable trees and it causes needless and severe impacts on forests.


FFT teaches an innovative method of felling that greatly reduces impacts on the surrounding trees and canopy, and increases the amount of wood that is harvested per tree. This combats unneccessary damage and under-valuation of the forest.

 

 Proper planning of skid trails and loading patios can make a dramatic difference in the extent of impact on the forest that results from logging. Our survey of test areas that had been subjected to conventional skidding vs RIL skidding revealed clearly that convential methods have long-lasting and severe impacts, while those of RIL methods are minimal.

Enrichment planting increases economic value of forest areas that have been impacted by logging. FFT conducts research on methods of making enrichment planting more profitable than abandoning land and continuing to encroach into the forest frontier.