Under a midday sun, I guided my horse up a steep, dusty slope, eventually emerging at the top of a ridge overlooking a brown valley, roads crisscrossing the landscape. Though it was the dry season on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast, this area seemed more void of life than normal. Above, a large hawk circled, riding thermals up and down the ridgelines, searching for small prey before settling in a large tree, one of the few still standing.
We should have been riding under the cover of dense forest canopy. Instead my skin, pale from the New York winter, steadily acquired a burn.
Every 5 meters were small saplings planted in rows lining the hillside. Around each sapling, the surrounding ground vegetation was removed, presumably to give the young trees the space and sunlight they needed to grow. I had expected to see more dramatic results, but I had to keep reminding myself that these trees were just planted two years ago, and it would take 10-15 years for this degraded former pastureland to resemble a forest.
I was in the middle of a 400 hectare reforestation project of 35,000 saplings of 70 different species of native trees, witnessing the start of what would some day be a dense dry tropical forest filled with spider monkeys, yellow-naped parrots, and ocelots.
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The reforestation project, aptly named Return to the Forest, is the result of a partnership between the owners of Las Fincas de Escamequita, and Southern California based Paso Pacifico. Donn Wilson, a San Diego native and owner ofLas Fincas, bought the property with the intention of returning parts of the land to their natural state.
Read his story in its entirety here.
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