Saint Lucia Forestry Stories: Lyndon John “Appreciating Our Own; driving change in forestry management practice – the move from exotic to native species in reforestation work”
Lyndon John Research Officer, 1986 to 2013, Acting Chief Forestry Officer, 2006-2013. Saint Lucia Forestry Department
Forestry Stories interview with Christopher Cox and Cletus Springer, December 2020
I joined the-then Forestry Division in the mid-1980s not too long after leaving the Saint Lucia Advanced Level College. During these days, the banana industry was flourishing and with the cultivation of bananas way into the mountainous interior, it was really taking a toll on the land…with the consequences of landslides and the massive loss of soil to the rivers that would eventually get lost to the sea. The Chief Forestry Officer, Gabriel ‘Coco’ Charles or ‘Charlo’ as we also called him, had his hands full, battling to protect the forests from the chainsaws and cutlasses that hacked away at the verdant soul of the island. Much of the destruction was taking place on forested private lands but there was also a great deal of encroachment into the Government Forest Reserves that were under the management of the Forestry Division.
The biggest priority of Charlo and the forestry team was protection of the Government Forest Reserve that was entrusted to the Forestry Division for management. One of the strategies employed to reverse degradation from illegal forest clearing and cultivation within reserve areas was the Taungya system, based on a forest rehabilitation technique from Burma. In the Taungya system, illegal squatters in the forest reserve would enter into an agreement with the Forestry Division where the Division would supply them mahogany seedlings and other exotic or introduced commercially important species which they planted and tended for, under the watch of the forestry officers assigned to that forest area or ‘forest range’. The squatters were allowed to continue to farm the lands until such time when the seedlings grew large enough and where the tree canopy had sufficient coverage and the roots were able to conserve the soil. The squatters were then either allocated another degraded area of forest within the reserve to undertake rehabilitation in a similar arrangement, or assigned alternative (government) lands outside the forest reserve for them to continue to earn a livelihood.
Besides the Taungya system the Forestry Division had a long history of ‘forest enrichment’, a practice where tracts of forests that were somehow deemed less commercially important, were ‘enriched’ through the planting of exotic timber species, in the process clearing away in rows, native or indigenous trees and vegetation that were considered of having little commercial value and replaced by commercially introduced important species. The idea was that over time these trees would mature into commercial forest plantations. In those days there was not much thought given to the consequences on native biodiversity in these reforestation efforts where the ultimate result was establishment of non-native mono-crop tree plantations of almost exclusively Caribbean Pine (Pinus caribaea), Honduras Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla), Blue Mahoe (Hibiscus Elatus), Leucaena (Leucaena leucocephala) and Teak (Tectona grandis). These species were either relatively fast-growing with the benefit of soil conservation, or valuable for the provision of timber. Following the passage of Hurricane Allen in August 1980, forest enrichment by line planting was undertaken as the thinking was that it would lead to faster forest recovery. We have since learned that some of these exotics for example Leucaena, are highly invasive and damaging to the native environment.
Some of these forest enrichment operations proved difficult to achieve desired results such as in the case of Honduras Mahogany, where the surrounding native vegetation would quickly grow up, overtopping the mahogany seedlings, shading them out and stunting their growth. When the overtopping vegetation was cut back to ‘release’ the mahogany, the exposure to direct sunlight and warmer temperatures, tended to favour attack by the mahogany shoot borer, (Hypsipyla grandella) (the larval stage of the moth) that ate away at the lead shoot that would cause the main stem of the young seedling to branch and grow irregularly, reducing the possibility for the growth of a straight stem that was desirable in a timber tree.
Investment in establishing commercial forest plantations was considered a viable forest management objective, as up until the 1980s and 1990s people were actively harvesting local trees for timber and charcoal. Combined with the destruction of forests for agriculture, this led the Forestry Division to implement measures to monitor and regulate forest extraction. Before timber (including bamboo) harvesters could extract and transport harvested material along the public roads, they had to obtain timber removal permits that allowed forestry management to determine whether or not the timber was being legally extracted. Every now and again forestry officers would stop vehicles that were carrying sawn boards and posts to request that the driver show the timber removal permit. These permits only cost EC $5.00 (equivalent to US$1.85) and if you could not produce it on request, you could be charged on the spot for illegal removal and transport of timber and in compounding the offence, the offender would need to come to the forestry office to settle the charge without going to court.
In those early days in my career, in the mid-1980s I did not have the word ‘biodiversity’ in my working vocabulary although I joined the Forestry Division due to my love for wildlife; back then for me the trees were simply the green background to the real action, and the real action was with the animals that lived within. However, it was from this viewpoint I started to figure out the relationship between what was happening to the wildlife based on how we were managing the forests. I distinctly remember one time when we were standing out in the field in the rain, and I was pitching the argument about how our approach was incorrect because the native trees also had other values; values of importance to the wildlife…certainly these values could not be maintained under homogeneous mono-cropped stands of non-native tree species. I would bring this up with Charlo who I think got the message as he too was becoming increasingly attuned to this, given his high-profile championship role in conservation of the endangered St. Lucia Parrot.
For decades the Forestry Division used to sell trees from the forest plantations across all the forest ranges and the records of these tree sales would be captured in a master ledger that was kept at forestry headquarters. I recall that the entries in these big books were handwritten in fancy writing using a fountain pen, along neatly ruled lines. These ledgers recorded transactions going well back to the early 1900s. By the time (1989 – 2000) I was Assistant Research Officer. In the early 1990s I came to realise that no one was analysing the data that was contained in these ledgers in terms of tracking the species being harvested, and from which locations across the island. I took it on to figure out the extent of exploitation of our native forest species so as to make a case for investment in conservation of those species that were known to be under threat. Back then we used the Lotus1-2-3 spreadsheet programme where I analysed the forest extractions by species from each district and how much was coming out. What struck me were the declining quantities in extractions over time of highly sought-after species like Lowyé mabwé (Ocotea leucoxylon) and Lowyé kannèl (Aniba ramageana). This indicated a reduction in availability of these species to me.
In the case of Lowyé kannèl it was a prized tree for timber on account of its colour, scent and its resilience to rot and termites, and now is perhaps one of the rarest native trees in St Lucia. You would come across stumps of Lowyé kannèl still intact showing that they had withstood the weathering of time and in some cases sadly, the wood was never moved from where the tree was cut, where the harvesters had the intention of coming back to process the timber, but never did. The job was indeed tough, considering the often-steep, inaccessible terrain with no roads. One had to saw the tree into boards and then carry these boards on the sturdy heads of porters to the roadside, usually quite some distance away. What concerned me was that in the face of declining records of these species, assumed to overharvesting, the department was not replanting these valuable local species in spite of them rapidly becoming rare, a fact that was well-known to the forestry colleagues. In the meantime, the department remained focused on planting mahogany and other exotic trees such as Blue Mahoe.
From the early 1980s up until 1992 there was an ongoing major project on improving forest management in Saint Lucia that was funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). The project greatly assisted building the management capability of the Forestry Division, that became upgraded to a Department, with staff trained at certificate, diploma and university levels at specialised colleagues and universities in Trinidad and Canada. The project also enhanced the expansion of forest protection and reforestation programmes across the island. I found that the Canadian forestry management experts assigned to the project tended to be oriented toward expanding commercial forestry operations, advocating for stepped up management effort to maintain and commercialize operations in these plantations.
It was under the CIDA forestry project that the Forestry Department set up permanent sample plots (PSPs) in the mahogany and blue mahoe plantations to assess their growth performance, however with little effort at doing similar with native species. By this time, around 1991, when I was Assistant Research Officer, I found myself in an awkward, confrontational position with the Canadian silvicultural advisor who was working with the CIDA forest management project at the time. I proposed the establishment of PSPs for indigenous species including the Lowyé kannèl, however the push-back from the silvicultural advisor was that small research plots would not have yielded statistically significant results and did not see value in their establishment.
“That is where Lyndon ran into problems…’cause now I’m talking to my ‘elders’ who are cutting the natural forests between the mahogany lines to allow the mahogany to take off and I’m looking at this thing and I said this can’t be right…”
My counter was that notwithstanding, the species that we’re dealing with are endangered, so any effort at research toward conservation effort was going in the right direction. Taking matters into my own hands, I overrode the silvicultural advisor’s insistence, and I established a quarter-acre of Lowyé kannèl and Gommyé at Edmund Forest Reserve (in the Soufriere Range) with the support of Michael Bobb who was in charge of the Range.
To this day I remain extremely proud about having established this plot as my contribution to conservation of a national floral treasure. By the way, this species is found only on Saint Lucia, and a few other islands of the Eastern Caribbean such as Dominica and Martinique and nowhere else in the world. It is funny to note that in talking with younger foresters that they have no insights of the drama that went into the establishment of this plot. Thanks to our efforts, the site can yield seeds that can now be used to establish seedlings across the island where the tree has been displaced by overharvesting.
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