up the mountain

This weekend I visited Parc National La Visite - a national park that is a 30 minute motorcycle ride + 4-hour hike above the greater Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. The 300 or so hectares of pine and deciduous trees around the village of Sequin compose one of the last standing forests in Haiti. It protects one of the country's three main watersheds - no small task in a country that has been completely ravaged by environmental destruction.

The region has technically been protected since 1983 when the second generation dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier declared it an protected area. His motivation was most likely to access large-scale international donor money available at the time for conservation efforts rather than any personal conviction about environmental protection. Before establishing the park, he had set up a lumber mill in the area and was exporting the valuable hard woods.

While the national park status has likely helped to slow degradation process to some degree, the total lack of capacity to enforce regulations (e.g. park guards have not been paid in a very long time)and the relative proximity to Port-au-Prince means that trees and other high value forest products continue to disappear at an alarming rate. We saw multiple donkeys and groups of children loaded down with fire food walking along the park roads.

The Foundation Seguin was founded by a group of wealthy Haitians committed to preserving this region. They run a small guest house just outside the park that is a popular weekend hiking destination for foreigners living in Haiti. FS has put significant effort into promoting the planting of fast-growing bamboo on deforested land. They sponsor ecole vert - or "green schools" providing environmental education for urban school children. A dozen or so other initiatives are at various stages of development and implementation.

My own trip up to Seguin was too short but lovely. I met up with three fellow Cornellians - my friend J#1 who works for the fortified peanut-butter producing NGO, J #2 an ornithologist I originally met back in Ithaca who has been making short research trips to Haiti for several years and J#3 who is a specialist in natural resource management who came to help J#2 conduct interviews with local residents about how they interact with the protected space.

Two remnants of deciduous forest zones in Haiti (Seguin and Pic Macacya) and one in the Dominican Republic are the migration destination of choice for the endangered Black-capped Petrels. J#2's research is focused on characterizing the current populations of these birds on Hispanola.

It probably goes without saying that I learned a lot this weekend. Beyond the fresh air and beautiful landscapes, my favorite thing about the trip was listening to the J's and the guest house's owner talk about conservation and development. Here are some photos of the hike up and back.