Putting Back The Forest

One of the better defined tree species in terms of geographic distribution is that of Pinus caribaea var hondurensis that grows on the Mountain Pine Ridge in the Maya Mountains of Belize, formerly the British Honduras, bounded by Guatemala, Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.  At the beginning of this century the population of pines was decimated by the southern pine bark beetle which killed virtually every tree.  There weren’t any pine cones to produce seed and conditions were unfavourable for germination of the seed already on the ground.

Seed had been collected in the area by Sias Loock, a graduate of Stellenbosch University who was in the employ of the South African Department of Forestry during the years of WWII.  The early growth of the trees produced by the seed was so impressive that he returned to the area for a more extensive collection of seed and stands of the species were established on the coastal plain of Zululand, South Africa and also in Australia.

A team consisting of Brian Bredenkamp, Jolyon Hodgson and Riaan Webb, all foresters from South Africa, Kevin Darrow, an American colleague who worked in South Africa and Rene Gendre, a Canadian economist who saw to the financing of the project through the sale of carbon credits, built a nursery in Mountain Pine Ridge in 2002 and raised seedlings from seed imported from both South Africa and Australia.  The seedlings were planted by teams of Mayan Indians and the Pinus caribaea var hondurensis forest of Belize was thus re-established with trees having exactly the same genetic constitution as the best of those destroyed in the insect attack.

Posted by Professor Brian Bredenkamp, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa