SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Pho­tos by Rishi Ra­goonath

Over the past 32 years, al­most every part of Trinidad’s North­ern Range has been set to burn by man, killing mil­lions of trees, an­i­mals and de­stroy­ing vi­tal for­est cov­er.

Ac­cord­ing to the Forestry Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, the North­ern Range has a land mass of 277,167.23 acres (112,165.6 hectares). This means the city of San Fer­nan­do can fit some 58 times in­to the North­ern Range, while the city of Port-of-Spain can fit al­most 94 times.

A doc­u­ment pro­vid­ed by Forestry shows that every year there are hun­dreds of for­est fires and thou­sands of acres are de­stroyed. Be­tween 1987 and 2018, a to­tal of 276,758.027 acres (112,473 hectares) were burnt, all in fires start­ed by man.

The Forestry Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture con­tin­ues to re­plant and tries to pre­serve the ex­ist­ing for­est cov­er, but the task be­comes more and more dif­fi­cult be­cause of cli­mate chal­lenges as in­creas­ing­ly high tem­per­a­tures in the dry sea­son cause fires to burn for longer and in­creased rain­fall in the wet sea­son wash­es away soil that is vi­tal for re­growth.

In this fifth in­stal­ment of the Guardian Me­dia se­ries on the ef­fects of glob­al warm­ing and cli­mate change on the lo­cal ecosys­tem, our news team vis­it­ed dif­fer­ent ar­eas along the North­ern Range, fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Forestry Di­vi­sion.

Glob­al warm­ing is the heat­ing up of the earth’s at­mos­phere caused by man-made green­house gas emis­sions. Cli­mate change refers to the changes in weath­er and the en­vi­ron­ment caused by glob­al warm­ing.

Trees store car­bon diox­ide (CO2) in their leaves and stems and use it to grow. Be­cause of their long life spans, trees are es­sen­tial for car­bon se­ques­tra­tion. The for­est floor and soil al­so stores CO2 with trees that keep car­bon in their roots.

Con­ser­va­tor of Forests Den­ny Dipchans­ingh said over the years agri­cul­tur­al fires that got out of con­trol were the pri­ma­ry cause of the for­est de­struc­tion.

"Man is the num­ber one per­pe­tra­tor—the whole sce­nario with light­ning strik­ing and glass bot­tles mag­ni­fy­ing the sun’s rays and start­ing fires sim­ply does not ap­ply here. All for­est fires in this coun­try are start­ed by man, and the ma­jor­i­ty of it is ei­ther neg­li­gence, agri­cul­tur­al fires 'get­ting away', squat­ting or slash and burn," Dipchans­ingh said.

When it is not agri­cul­tur­al fires, there are "fire­bugs" who set the for­est on fire and run off.

"A few years ago, there was a man who lit small pieces of can­dles and ran off, so by the time the can­dle burn down, and we spot­ted the flames in one area, he would be gone. When we go to put out that fire, we would see smoke from an­oth­er area, and we rush across, and he is gone again, and we have an­oth­er fire to put out. That went on for some time, but we nev­er caught him."

Le­gal loop­holes

In 2016 one man was ar­rest­ed and charged for set­ting a fire in the North­ern Range but the fine at that time was just a pal­try $1,500 com­pared to the $20,000 fine that in­tro­duced in Jan­u­ary 2019.

But Dipchans­ingh said a loop­hole in the law was the rea­son why on­ly one per­son was charged. The law pro­vid­ing for the pro­tec­tion of state lands states that un­less a per­son is caught in the act of set­ting a fire, they can­not be charged.

There are al­so squat­ters who fake house fires to col­lect com­pen­sa­tion from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment.

"There are peo­ple who build small shacks in the for­est, they fill the shacks with old, non-work­ing ap­pli­ances and set the bush­es around the house on fire, then the house will catch and they will go to So­cial De­vel­op­ment and claim for loss­es to get a grant. There have been in­stances where these peo­ple will stand up and try to pre­vent the rangers from putting out these fires be­cause they know what they are try­ing to ac­com­plish," he said.

And if the fires are not enough, there is al­so the con­stant is­sue of de­for­esta­tion, most of which takes place in pri­vate­ly owned parcels of the North­ern Range.

"There are peo­ple who will il­le­gal­ly cut down the trees for log­ging, and some­times we can catch them but not al­ways. Then there is the is­sue that a large part of the range is pri­vate land and you can’t stop some­one from clear­ing their land, so we are los­ing for­est cov­er that way as well," he added.

At Lau­rel Hill, Arou­ca, we stum­bled up­on hun­dreds of pine and oth­er logs, cut and placed along a for­est track.

Dipchans­ingh said the pres­ence of the logs, es­pe­cial­ly the pine, raised a lot of ques­tions in his mind be­cause he was con­cerned that they were from state lands.

On­ly one side of the forest­ed area was marked as state lands, ac­cord­ing to a small sign on a pine tree and the oth­er side was marked with larg­er sign warn­ing tres­passers.

Dipchans­ingh said the logs were sup­posed to be marked by a for­est ranger, but af­ter in­spect­ing dozens, on­ly a few were marked.

Lat­er that evening, he told Guardian Me­dia that the ranger re­spon­si­ble for mark­ing those trees had stopped the process be­cause he was con­cerned that the pine trees were cut from state land and he was giv­ing the log­ger an op­por­tu­ni­ty to prove oth­er­wise.

"Who­ev­er would have cut the trees will have to show the ranger the stumps that were left be­hind to prove that it did not come from state lands. If they can­not show that ev­i­dence, the logs will be seized, and they will be charged," Dipchans­ingh said.

While still in the area, two young­sters drawn by the con­voy of Forestry ve­hi­cles ran to the road­side to tell a ranger, "Them peo­ple cut­ting down alyuh trees in the back here!"

Al­though they were re­port­ing that is­sue, the young boys were prob­a­bly un­aware that they too were en­croach­ing on the for­est as their home stands among the pines.

They were not the on­ly fam­i­ly to seek shel­ter among the trees. One ranger said most squat­ters were gen­uine cas­es of peo­ple who could not af­ford to live any­where else. These peo­ple, he said, built their homes in the for­est but tried as much as pos­si­ble not to cut down the trees or dis­turb the for­est be­yond what they had al­ready done. They al­so served as look­outs for oth­er il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place in forest­ed ar­eas.

How de­for­esta­tion con­tributes to flood­ing

The Con­ser­va­tor of Forests said that de­for­esta­tion not on­ly lessens the abil­i­ty of the forests to se­quester or sink car­bon diox­ide emis­sions in the at­mos­phere, it al­so con­tributes great­ly to flood­ing.

"The for­est is de­signed to save wa­ter—the whole sys­tem from the leaves that break up rain­fall, al­low­ing it to be more eas­i­ly ab­sorbed in­to the soil for wa­ter in­fil­tra­tion—if you have no trees present, you have mas­sive wa­ter runoff and every­thing just comes wash­ing down and re­sults in more flood­ing," Dipchans­ingh said.

When for­est fires gut large ar­eas of the for­est, in ad­di­tion to de­stroy­ing trees, grass and oth­er veg­e­ta­tion are wiped out. When the rains come, the wa­ter gush­es down the hill­sides freely, that wa­ter ends up in the rivers, streams, and oth­er wa­ter­cours­es and con­tributes great­ly to peren­ni­al flood­ing.

"The whole pur­pose of the wa­ter­shed is to help as­sist in stor­ing some of that wa­ter—that is the role of trees and veg­e­ta­tion—but with no trees, you have no roots, no wa­ter en­ter­ing the nat­ur­al aquifers and you have a gush of wa­ter com­ing down that ends up in the flat­lands and go­ing straight down in­to the city, in­to peo­ple’s homes and busi­ness­es with noth­ing to stop it."

The gush­ing wa­ters present an­oth­er prob­lem, they take the nu­tri­ent-rich soil away from the for­est.

"Go­ing with that wa­ter is the soil with all the nu­tri­ents which makes it dif­fi­cult for the for­est cov­er to re­grow on its own."

For­est fires be­tween 1987-2018

1987 : 502 fires, 21,420 hectares burnt

1988: 583 fires, 5,945 hectares burnt

1989: 146 fires, 970 hectares burnt

1990: 234 fires, 1,100 hectares burnt

1991: 229 fires, 680 hectares burnt

1992: 431 fires, 2,710 hectares burnt

1993: 228 fires, 1,570 hectares burnt

1994: 256 fires, 2,600 hectares burnt

1995: 516 fires, 7,745 hectares burnt

1996: 178 fires, 2,664 hectares burnt

1997: 156 fires, 446 hectares burnt

1998: 764 fires, 10,289 hectares burnt

1999: 167 fires, 988 hectares burnt

2000: 91 fires, 927 hectares burnt

2001: 464 fires, 5,309 hectares burnt

2002: 62 fires, 273 hectares burnt

2003: 347 fires, 4,723 hectares burnt

2004: 136 fires, 1,493 hectares burnt

2005: 270 fires, 1,696 hectares burnt

2006: 210 fires, 1,245 hectares burnt

2007: 452 fires, 3,566 hectares burnt

2008: 226 fires, 1,534 hectares burnt

2009: 133 fires, 544 hectares burnt

2010: 754 fires, 12,477 hectares burnt

2011: 42 fires, 101 hectares burnt

2012: 58 fires, 205 hectares burnt

2013: 533 fires, 2,786 hectares burnt

2014: 310 fires, 2,342 hectares burnt

2015: 497 fires, 3,367 hectares burnt

2016: 467 fires, 4,195 hectares burnt

2017: 498 fires, 4,734 hectares burnt

2018: 218 fires, 1,829 hectares burnt

Pro­tect­ing and pre­serv­ing forests

Ac­cord­ing to the Green­peace, the world’s largest non-gov­ern­ment, non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion ded­i­cat­ed to pro­tect­ing and pre­serv­ing the en­vi­ron­ment, end­ing de­for­esta­tion is the quick­est and most cost-ef­fec­tive way of curb­ing glob­al warm­ing.

"End­ing de­for­esta­tion is our best chance to con­serve wildlife and de­fend the rights of for­est com­mu­ni­ties. On top of that, it’s one of the quick­est and most cost-ef­fec­tive ways to curb glob­al warm­ing. That’s why we’re cam­paign­ing for a de­for­esta­tion-free fu­ture," Green­peace stat­ed.

The Unit­ed States De­part­ment of Agri­cul­ture, North­ern In­sti­tute of Ap­plied Cli­mate Sci­ence lists four ways in which forests can be man­aged to en­sure they keep se­ques­ter­ing CO2.

1- Avoid­ing de­for­esta­tion – De­for­esta­tion is a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change. Main­tain­ing cur­rent forest­land is cru­cial for avoid­ing ad­di­tion­al in­puts of CO2in the at­mos­phere and for en­sur­ing the abil­i­ty of the forests to con­tin­ue se­ques­ter­ing car­bon. For ex­am­ple, de­for­esta­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly that in the trop­ics, is re­spon­si­ble for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 per cent of hu­man-caused CO2 emis­sions.

2- Af­foresta­tion – Forest­lands se­quester CO2 in larg­er quan­ti­ties and for longer pe­ri­ods of time than many oth­er land us­es. Con­vert­ing agri­cul­tur­al, de­vel­oped, or de­grad­ed land to the for­est can dra­mat­i­cal­ly in­crease the amount of car­bon se­questered.

3- Re­for­esta­tion – Reestab­lish­ing trees on the pre­vi­ous forest­land is a spe­cif­ic type of man­age­ment. By main­tain­ing ar­eas as for­est, trees with con­tin­ue to se­quester car­bon.

4- For­est man­age­ment – Slight changes in for­est man­age­ment prac­tices can im­prove the abil­i­ty of forests to store car­bon while still pro­vid­ing oth­er ben­e­fits. Ex­tend­ing the time be­tween har­vests, en­cour­ag­ing fast-grow­ing species, and fer­til­i­sa­tion are a few ex­am­ples of man­age­ment tech­niques that could be used to im­prove for­est car­bon se­ques­tra­tion.