In countries with mountainous terrain that are prone to landslides, it seems like common sense that not cutting down trees—or actively planting trees—will lessen the risk.
But urgent short-term goals often outweigh long-term strategies and good intentions. Deforestation sometimes occurs because large lumber companies clear-cut forests, but it can happen as well when individuals, needing fuel or wanting to clear land to grow crops, slowly but surely destroy huge tracts of trees. Such was the case in Haiti, which has lost about 98% of its forests. The same thing has been happening in Guatemala.
There, however, a professor of political science from Florida, Anne Hallum, has been working for nearly 20 years to reverse the situation. She has made more than 40 visits to the country and has started a nonprofit group, Alliance for International Reforestation, or AIR. Local staff trained in agroforestry work with local farmers, staying for years at a time in a single village to promote not only tree planting but also sustainable farming methods.
Even if people do understand the trees’ importance, it’s sometimes hard to know which ones offer the most protection and which ones are best to plant. Hallum’s original goal two decades ago was to ease poverty by planting various trees to provide food, coffee, herbs, and other resources. Almost by accident, Hallum says, she discovered that pine trees planted on mountain slopes do the most during the country’s rainy season and frequent hurricanes to protect the soil. To date, she says, AIR has helped 110 villages plant more than 3.8 million trees.