The pine forests in the Cordillera de Dipilto and Jalapa in Nueva Segovia, today, are a childhood memory of those who knew them. They no longer have the density they had 45 years ago, now they are thin and scattered and struggle to survive the predation of their true bark beetles, the loggers, and the indifference of the environmental authorities.
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Denouncing deforestation in the area has become a dangerous task, due to the criminalization of the Nicaraguan State, toward human rights defenders and the environment. For this reason, those who continue to denounce do so anonymously or using pseudonyms as during the war, others denounce with the fear of being arrested at any moment. Emiliano Salas, a community member from the area, feels frustrated and helpless because of the deforestation that is in sight of him and he can do little to stop it.
Nicaragua’s forest cover has had a gradual decline. From 2001 to 2021, Nicaragua lost 1.68Mha of its tree cover, which is equivalent to a 22{e079e928c0ffac93fc2d0bcb855951dc424555b296fe89c532c6f4d7d2083413} decrease in tree cover since 2000, according to the Global Forest Watch map.
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The Segovias Observatory, a community organization that monitors the environmental situation in this area, calculates that in 2010 the northern region had 310,000 hectares of forest. From that year to date, some 70,000 hectares have been lost. The remaining 240,000 are still at risk.
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The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) published the “Diagnosis of the forestry sector in Nicaragua in March 2018”. The organization indicates that in 1969 the country “had 76{e079e928c0ffac93fc2d0bcb855951dc424555b296fe89c532c6f4d7d2083413} of its territory with some type of forest, equivalent to 98,982 km2, while the agricultural area was 11,148 km2 (8.6{e079e928c0ffac93fc2d0bcb855951dc424555b296fe89c532c6f4d7d2083413})”. In 2015, he adds, “the forest cover had decreased to 39,078 km2, which represents 30{e079e928c0ffac93fc2d0bcb855951dc424555b296fe89c532c6f4d7d2083413} of the Nicaraguan territory.”
Of this 39,078 km² of existing natural forest as of 2015, according to the IDB study, 59 percent was within indigenous or Afro-descendant territories. 28 percent were located outside Protected Areas and Indigenous Territories. The study identified that “the economically feasible forests to be put under management are those found mainly in the departments of Jinotega, Río San Juan and the two autonomous regions of the Caribbean; in the case of broadleaf forests correspond to 16,140 km².
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For the pine forests, it was determined that a total of 2,242 km² could be subjected to sustainable management, which was in Nueva Segovia and the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region. In total, the potentially productive forest area amounts to 18,362 km², which was equivalent to 48{e079e928c0ffac93fc2d0bcb855951dc424555b296fe89c532c6f4d7d2083413} of the remaining forests in the country in 2015”. IDB calculations indicated that there was a sustainable annual production potential of 5.6 million cubic meters per year, which, converted into currency, would represent a contribution of USD 210 million, only in the field”.
In the Dipilto and Jalapa mountain range, in northern Nicaragua, the loss of the forest can be seen with the naked eye. The forest has not had time to regenerate naturally because the timber sector has prevented it. “It’s a mafia protected by the authorities,” says Salas.
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“In a country where the AK is the law and where corruption prevails in every way, openly denouncing becomes a danger. They can even kill us, the loggers are dangerous here in the north, they have the support of the mayor’s offices, the police, the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA), and the National Forestry Institute (INAFOR). Before we could report them, at least they listened to us, now it is impossible”, says Emiliano Salas.
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The Dipilto and Jalapa mountain range is experiencing an environmental tragedy. The ambition of those who manage the logging companies is to destroy the pine forests and no authority is doing anything to stop what environmentalists consider “ecocide.”
“Here the paperwork keeps the inspectors at their desks and the logging happens every day out there in the fields,” says Don Guadalupe, an indigenous man from Ciudad Antigua, who also speaks on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. He maintains that irregularities in the procedures for the delivery of permits facilitate illegal logging.
Pinewood has been coveted by the lumber companies in the area, the reason is economic, “pine wood has a high commercial value in the national and international market because it is easy to saw, dry, and finish. In addition, it is a strong and durable material, which makes it appreciable for trade and the lumber industry,” says Salas, who has become a specialist in forest management of the species.
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From the Environmental Observatory of Nueva Segovia, they denounce that the municipal authorities and representatives of the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA) and the National Forestry Institute (INAFOR) are part of the timber business. “These make a single orchestrated block to be able to exploit all the wood, then the sawmills come, they detect the areas, make the offer for the owner of the forest to sell and they give the information to the authorities so that they facilitate the procedures before MARENA. and INAFOR”, says Zenayda Marchena, a community member.
The INAFOR Interactive Map of the Forestry Sector reveals the existence of 116 sawmills throughout the country. 26{e079e928c0ffac93fc2d0bcb855951dc424555b296fe89c532c6f4d7d2083413} (31) are located in the department of Nueva Segovia, of which 24 are permanent and seven are portable or mobile.
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At least 11 of the registered sawmills are located in Jalapa. Another problem is that sawmills have flourished in the area, to the point that environmentalists have lost count of how many there are. They say they appear and disappear like ghosts along the highway.
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Vladimir Chinchilla monitors the movement of logging trucks and the proliferation of sawmills. In Ocotal, he assures him, they have expanded even within the neighborhoods. “In the Rancho area, there is a sawmill where they unload all the trees that they fell in Santa María de Ococona, so they don’t have to go through Estelí.”
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The strategy, according to Chinchilla, is to avoid exposing the sawmills on the highways so that people do not see them. He adds that “the sawn wood or paddocks leave at dawn through blind spots through Teotecacinte, directly to Honduras.”
The supervision of the sawn wood and the sawmills that receive it should be carried out by environmental inspectors, but these have low salaries, and to obtain an extra remuneration they give in to bribes, says Chinchilla.
The “mooring” for the felling of pine forests
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Finding the owner of a property with enough pine forests is the first step, says Zenayda Marchena. “They are contacted by a logger who, knowing the extension of the property, calculates the profits to make a substantial financial offer,” she says. Environmental damage is not discussed in the negotiations, nor if the property is near rivers or other water sources, only prices are discussed, she adds.
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After putting his farm up for sale, including an area of pine forests, a small producer receives an offer from a logger, who presents himself as an “old” businessman. Galeria News he Intertextual accessed the audios that the logger sent to the producer:
“You decide, commander, selling the property is a great thing. I know that in Jalapa the properties are nice. I am sure that you get your million pesos and be more careful. The most it takes for the permit is a month, because now the government is forcing that the permits do not take any longer, that’s why one already has to be taking advantage of the forests… here where I am removing it is a small forest and the owner has already removed it two and a half million pesos,” the logger tells the producer, trying to convince him to sell the farm.
In the audio, the logger brags about his connections with the authorities. “I have a lot of knowledge in the Inafor of Ocotal, Jinotega, Estelí, Matagalpa, Managua. All those people know me because I’m an old logger and they don’t put obstacles in the way of permits. Now there is another law that the government has dictated that the mayor’s offices have nothing to do with. You make your plan and it is approved immediately.”
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The “old logger” refers to Law 462, Law of Conservation, Development and Sustainable Management of the Forestry Sector and its reforms, approved on June 26, 2003, which is used as a legal shortcut or at the convenience of loggers.
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“I am extracting (wood) in San Rafael del Norte in a place called Cipresal, near Jinotega, I have a permit in Pantasma, for several places I have permission to harvest. Right now I am with a weevil that drives me crazy here in San Rafael del Norte. I’ve already removed three thousand meters and I can’t stop it”, confesses the logger.
The bark beetle is another of the pretexts used by loggers to exterminate pine forests. “If the management plan stipulates that 10 trees are going to be cut, they end up cutting 30. They use the Rolla or the weevil as an excuse, they say that they are drying out the pines; in the end, it is not true. There is poor management of forestry plans,” says Marchena.
Conservationist Amaru Ruíz, director of Fundación del Río, one of the environmental organizations whose legal status was canceled and their assets confiscated by Daniel Ortega’s regime, maintains that “the forestry mafia is still in force in the country and is associated with the capitals of the Ortega and Murillo regime”. Whoever buys it, Ruíz adds, is part of that timber mafia that takes advantage of State institutions to have the necessary permits and operate with a level of legality, but definitely under the illegitimacy that drives all the corruption that has occurred in the processes. of forest concessions.
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Nelson Hernández went from forest technician to INAFOR delegate for the region that includes the departments of Estelí, Madriz, and Nueva Segovia. His involvement in granting irregular permits for the Pino cut cost him his job.
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In March 2009, an inspection report signed by Hernández endorsed a clearing of the Los Ovillos farm, an area of pine forests known as El Peñascal. There was supposedly damage caused by a forest fire. But community members of the place warned that there was no damage. Hernández ignored it and authorized a Management Plan to cut down 199 pines. Environmentalists shouted to the sky and denounced that more than 600 pine trees were cut down under that guarantee. “Several trails were opened with heavy machinery, they despalled on slopes greater than 90 degrees, which is prohibited by law,” says Joaquín Loría, a community member from Las Segovias.
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An article published by the digital media 100{e079e928c0ffac93fc2d0bcb855951dc424555b296fe89c532c6f4d7d2083413} Noticias indicates that Nelson Hernández was denounced for benefiting a timber mafia installed in the north of the country where influence peddling, logging, and the movement of wood at night abounded. Hernández vacated the INAFOR delegation in 2016 but the vices and irregularities continued.
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In May 2020, Melvin Ortéz Beltrán, former mayor of the Sandinista Front of the municipality of San Fernando, department of Nueva Segovia, obtained authorization to clear an area of pine forests located on the Dipilto and Jalapa mountain ranges, which was declared a protected area in 1991, so said the permit should never have been granted.
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Community members and environmentalists in the area opposed the cutting of trees, but they were not heard. “We explained to them all the laws that they were violating, it was a protected area, it was a few meters from the San Fernando River. The impact would be tragic and it was, because as a result of the deforestation, in summer there is no water”, says Salas.
In 2017 he was denounced and brought to trial for another despatch. Álvaro Leiva, currently director of the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights (ANPDH), was his defense attorney. However, Leiva says that Ortez was the victim of a political case and that he was innocent of what he was accused of. Ortéz was released and never reforested the stripped area.
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Cases like Ortez’s show how impunity advances in the territory and the authorities seem to promote it say community members from Nueva Segovia. “We feel powerless; for example, in San Rafael del Norte loads of round wood always come out, they are good loads because even the trucks travel with low tires because they are so heavy. In March 2022, the townspeople denounced what was happening and the Mayor’s Office circulated a statement saying that they were unaware of this management plan, that they had not authorized it, and that MARENA had not taken them into account. They presented their statement, but it stayed there because loads of pine wood continue to pass from San Rafael to Estelí,” says Zenayda, who does not hide her annoyance and frustration.
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In the last 16 years, not only of the neoliberal governments but also of Daniel Ortega, an extractivist State policy has been established that dispossesses and plunders peasant, indigenous and Afro-descendant territories. “There is a will, a clear intention on the part of the regime to take advantage of these forest and natural resources in an indiscriminate manner, to get as much economic profit as possible,” says environmentalist Amaru Ruíz.
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Between 2018 and 2020, years in which Nicaragua has been submerged in a sociopolitical, economic, and health crisis, the latter due to the Covid 19 pandemic, Nicaraguan exports of sawn wood have increased. They went from 3.4 million dollars in 2018 to 6.14 million in 2020, which represents a growth of 26.4 percent, according to data from the Ministry of Development, Industry, and Commerce (MIFIC). In 2021, exports of wood products were 11.4 million dollars and 3.1 million in the first quarter of 2022, according to figures from the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN).
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Sawn lumber prices have increased significantly between 1990 and 2016, according to the IDB study. The price of Pino oocarpa, with the highest internal demand, went from 93 USD/m3 in 1994 to 310 USD/m3 in 2016, registering an annual increase of 10{e079e928c0ffac93fc2d0bcb855951dc424555b296fe89c532c6f4d7d2083413}.
Truck after truck full of Roundwood
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As we toured the area we saw at least three trucks full of wood in one afternoon. But the local people and the Observatory, day and night, see dozens of trucks loaded with wood pass by.
From the Las Segovias Observatory, the residents monitor the transport of wood on Segovian roads. With his cell phone, he photographs the trucks loaded with wood and they explain “When we go on the road every day we find loaded trucks. We photograph what we can. We write down the plate, the color of the harrow and we send data about the location”.
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In November 2021, the Las Segovias Observatory registered 150 trucks loaded with Roundwood. In January 2022 they counted 104 and 215 in March. Of the 215 trucks registered in March, 175 transported round wood, 38 processed wood, a truck with by-products, and another with firewood.
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But the capacities of human and technical resources for the monitoring tasks of the Observatory are limited. For that reason, the data they manage to collect has remained incomplete. In March 2022, the Segovias Observatory was able to verify the circulation of logging trucks after 6 in the afternoon, something that violates the forestry law, which states that wood from forests can only circulate during working hours of 8 from morning to 5 in the afternoon, except for wood extracted from forest plantations. But, in Dipilto and Jalapa there are no pine forest plantations.
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The movement of trucks transporting wood becomes almost unstoppable because many times the checkpoints are closed highlighting the Las Segovias Observatory. This journalistic team traveled the highway to Condega several times and was able to verify that the checkpoint remained closed.
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This investigation also carried out an observation task to verify the circulation of what we have called “the Nahua wood carts” because, as the legend says, they pass late at night. We have located at different points on the Estelí, Ocotal, and Nueva Segovia highways, on different days and times. In the three places, we checked the passage of the dredges, even in a caravan.
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On a dark road, but with the help of the headlights of moving vehicles, we spot a truck loaded with wood. “See what I tell you. It is supposed that it is forbidden for the draglines to circulate at night”, comments Emiliano Salas, who campaigned for us during our observation work.
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The situation facing Mozonte is perhaps the most serious in recent years. A community member, on condition of anonymity, agrees to tell us what is happening in his area. “For 2018 and 2019 I can calculate that between 18 and 20 hectares of pine were felled here, only in Mozonte. The excuses were management plans for the weevil.” The community has been able to speak with truck drivers and assures that some circulate without permits or guarantees.
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According to INAFOR, the Santa Emilia, Sermar S.A., San Judas Tadeo, Esquipulas, and Small Jaital Forest Industries operate in Mozonte, which together processed 47,879,023 cubic meters of wood in 2019.
Sawmills expand throughout the Segovian area. INAFOR registers registered sawmills in the municipalities of El Jícaro, Jalapa, Mozonte, Ocotal, and San Fernando. Among the strongest is Santa Emilia de Mozonte, which processed more than 17,000 cubic meters of wood, surpassed only by Madera Segoviana S.A. a public limited company that felled almost 19 thousand cubic meters of forest in 2019.
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Although some of these companies have been exploiting the forests for decades, none have their plantations or plans to replace the hectares cut down. “These companies have exploited the forests for the last fifty years and management plans are supposed to oblige them to replace the felled trees. “Where are those trees? Where are your plantations?” asks community member Zenayda Marchena. She adds that “the lack of control only reveals that there are colluding logging companies and environmental authorities.”
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The environmentalist, Amaru Ruíz, agrees with Marchena. “The damage is unforgivable and brutal” because the authorities act with total irresponsibility, he says. “In none of these cases do you see the reforestation plans? We environmentalists always tell them, show me where the reforestation areas that must be assigned by law are, let’s remember that for each felled tree the INAFOR procedure says you must plant at least 10, tell us where the reforestation plans are mapped, where are the restored areas, where are those areas”, challenges Ruiz.
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The environmentalist raises the challenge to higher levels. “That they demonstrate the processes of the reforestation crusades that Ortega boasts about. Where those areas are, we want to see them. Where are the watershed management plans for the deforested areas? In the end, management plans don’t work.”
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The National Plan for Production, Consumption and Trade 2020 -2021 outlined the production of 13,781,549 forest plants to reforest 17,859.3 hectares under plantations, agroforestry, and silvopastoral systems. In addition, 67,908 hectares of Natural Regeneration were identified and characterized. However, environmentalists are unaware of the results of these plans.
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Environmentalists observe a lack of political will of the institutions to ensure the environmental legal framework and the existence of a double discourse. On the one hand, Ruiz mentions, it lifts the forestry ban, and establishes mining and forestry concessions within these territories; and on the other hand, it ignores the environmental legal framework and the governing institutions such as the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA) and INAFOR, omits their functions, ultimately prevailing economic interests.
The National Plan for Production, Consumption and Trade 2020 -2021 established that 34,153 protected hectares would be restored through natural regeneration; and 7,193 hectares through the management of sustainable production and agroforestry systems. Within these actions, 1,500 Farm Management Plans would be executed in water recharge areas of the Nicaraguan Pine Corridor and 2,595 visits would be carried out in 13,000 hectares of pine forests, for the prevention and control of the bark beetle plague, in coordination with the Interinstitutional Monitoring Commission.
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However, environmentalists in the area assure that what was expressed in that plan did not occur. “On the contrary, the looting of the Corredor del Pino is evident.” The same Plan established the authorization for the legal and sustainable extraction of 120,000 m3 of the volume of wood at the national level, as well as the approval of 50 forest guarantees to companies with fiscal incentives; the certification of at least 1,057 forest activities, and the issuance of 315 export certificates for the sustainable use of forest ecosystems.
Ban suspension, endorsement to deforest
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“The extraction of wood in Nicaragua has never stopped, on the contrary, it is increasing. They know what is happening with the forests. Even so, they lifted the forest ban on pine, royal cedar, and pochote in 2022, what protection are they talking about?” asks Emiliano Salas.
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For the Segovia Observatory and the area’s conservation community, the suspension of the ban is an “open authorization for the felling of pine trees in protected areas of Nicaragua, it is a gift for the logging companies because they are rewarded with a suspension of the ban for cutting, harvesting, and marketing throughout the national territory, including protected areas”, says Zenayda Marchena.
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The decree was made public in February 2022, however, for environmentalists, the measure has been in force since 2018, since they have exploited this valuable resource for the last five years under the argument of boosting the economy and reducing the risks of attack by forest pests such as the bark beetle. The decrees warned that the periods of suspension of the ban could be extended and they did so with the permission of the National Forestry Institute and the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR).
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For Gracia Migda, an ecologist, the lifting of the ban on Pino evidences the economic interests in the Cordillera Diplito and Jalapa. The suspension of the ban on pine, she maintains, eliminates a legal instrument that sought to regenerate these pine forests. “When he returned to power in 2007, the Sandinista government found a ban on pine. Now we have had several consecutive suspensions of the ban and they say that the suspension is based on a study. It is false, there is not a single study, they were never presented”, says Magda.
The lifting of the 2022 pine ban is due, according to the State, to the growth and overpopulation of pine in the Cordillera and as an alternative to boost the economy. “What dynamism are they talking about if the sawmills barely hire five people, maximum? Where are the thousands of jobs they say? They occupy people to go up the mountain to cut, they do damage, they leave the place and do without people, there is no such development”, says Zenayda Marchena.
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The IDB diagnosis indicates that employment in the forestry sector was 80,000 workers in 2016, barely 0.8{e079e928c0ffac93fc2d0bcb855951dc424555b296fe89c532c6f4d7d2083413} of the workforce, which has fluctuated over the years with a marked seasonal pattern.
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According to information compiled by Galería News he Intertextual, among subcontracted pine loggers, the price of a cubic meter of round wood is 20 dollars per cubic meter, and they explain that from a cubic meter of Pine the sawmill extracts 300 board feet; a board foot has a cost in the city of Estelí of 33.56 dollars.
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The “tricks”, point out the Las Segovia Observatory, for the felling of pine forests is the same as in other parts of the country. They argue the need to deforest to prevent the spread of the weevil plague towards protected areas, fires caused to invade and enter protected areas and plunder the forests. Amarú Ruíz adds that the Ortega administration uses the law to continue with its extractivist policy, for example, the National Plan to Fight Poverty and Human Development 2022-2026 indicates that they will carry out monitoring, follow-up, and evaluation in at least 78,474 hectares of forests. of pine, to prevent damage caused by the bark beetle in the Natural Reserves in the departments of Estelí, Nueva Segovia, Madriz, Jinotega, Matagalpa, Chinandega, and León.
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The plague for northern environmentalists is used as a pretext for the indiscriminate felling of pine forests. The impact caused by the hurricanes has also been used so that the logging companies move their tentacles and obtain harvesting permits.
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On November 20, 2020, the National Forestry Institute (INAFOR) and the Forestry Co-directorate published a resolution for the administrative procedure of family use of trees affected by hurricanes Eta and Iota, decrees that become profits for the logging companies, in the Caribbean the big winner was Alba Forestal, says Ruíz.
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ALBA Forestal is an emblematic case to show who is inside the timber mafia, both in the north and in the Caribbean, where a single company has a monopoly on the first, second, and third transformation of wood in that area, and extracts millions of cubic meters of wood. Between 2014 and 2016, it extracted 60,647,887 cubic meters of wood from the forests of the North Caribbean. ALBA Forestal stopped working to become NH WOODS and “so they live by changing their company name to avoid all the responsibility they have and their link to the looting of wood,” says Amaru Ruíz.
Amaru Ruíz, who has been forced into exile for denouncing the looting and invasion of the protected areas of the South Caribbean and indigenous peoples, maintains that “what we have in all the forests of Nicaragua is the same model of looting and dispossession that occurs in the forest areas of Dipilto, Jalapa and Las Segovias, truck after truck extracting wood with a level of permissibility that the State itself and institutions establish, but that everyone already knows that these permits are more than all political permits that allow them to continue operating”.
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Ruíz adds that since 2007, the regime has implemented an extractivist policy that translates into forestry, mining, monoculture, and extensive cattle ranching concessions that become environmental stressors in the deforestation processes of Nicaragua’s natural forests. He affirms that, in the department of Nueva Segovia, “this forest mafia is supported by the Nicaraguan regime, through its institutions and the forest exploitation permitting system that, in the end, do not even comply with the legislation established by the INAFOR”
Where does the looted wood go?
Environmentalists consider that part of the wood they extract from the pine forests of Las Segovias and the Caribbean goes to Venezuela or Cuba through the Caribbean Sea. They also collect evidence that the wood leaves the northern border without any restrictions and enters Honduras where it is exported by other companies, they call this “wood laundering” and for this a criminal network is necessary, says Gracia Migda.
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The statistics of the General Directorate of Customs (DGA), the Ministry of Development, Industry, and Commerce (MIFIC), and the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN), do not detail the type of wood exported or the destination of the exports of wood products. Nicaraguan.
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“The government’s policy of destruction comes from when they came back to power. Even though they signed a series of agreements, they maintain a permanent policy of destroying natural resources”, said Migda.
