BY EDWIDGE DANTICAT (edited by Christine Mann)
Last week more than 400 acres of Haiti’s La Visite National Park (Parc National La Visite) were ravaged by a raging forest fire. This park, about 7,400 acres of pine and broadleaf forest, is one of only two remaining official national parks in Haiti — the other is Pic Macaya.
Only 13 miles from the Haitian capital and with peaks towering above 5,000 feet, Parc National La Visite is, in a vastly deforested Haiti, one of the last sanctuaries for the country’s rarest birds. The park is also a major watershed supplying water to millions of Haitians in Port-au-Prince and many other cities in the southeastern region of the country.
In charcoal-dependent Haiti, the park is a rare, but constantly menaced treasure.This country has a history of beautiful, lush forests, but the wood is a necessity for a people who make their meals over open fires and charcoal.
Each year for the last 20 years, during which it has shrunk from more than 40,000 acres, Parc National La Visite has suffered from similar fires, which conservationists at the Haitian-run Fondation Seguin (http://www.fondationseguin.org/) believe are arson-related.
A few years ago, I visited the park, which is on the edge of a beautiful mountain town called Seguin. I had taken a side path, where wild cacti mingled among the hundred-plus-year-old pines. During my walk, I would hear the sound of water crashing against rock and would happen upon a series of layered cascades with startling, bright green moss-covered grottoes. Every now and then I would find myself on the ridge of a massive canyon with clouds hovering above and below me, the clouds at times blocking portions of lush ravines and valleys.
I imagined all this disappearing as the fires burned for four days last week.
Haiti has a less than 2 percent remaining tree cover. A fragile country, still attempting to recover from a devastating earthquake, the aftermaths of hurricanes, questionable elections and a cholera outbreak, can ill afford to lose its last remaining natural treasures.Otherwise, as the folks from Fondation Seguin somberly reminded the world, "we are simply watching another desert emerge".
Born in Haiti, Edwidge Danticat is an award-winning author living in Miami.
Only 13 miles from the Haitian capital and with peaks towering above 5,000 feet, Parc National La Visite is, in a vastly deforested Haiti, one of the last sanctuaries for the country’s rarest birds. The park is also a major watershed supplying water to millions of Haitians in Port-au-Prince and many other cities in the southeastern region of the country.
In charcoal-dependent Haiti, the park is a rare, but constantly menaced treasure.This country has a history of beautiful, lush forests, but the wood is a necessity for a people who make their meals over open fires and charcoal.
Each year for the last 20 years, during which it has shrunk from more than 40,000 acres, Parc National La Visite has suffered from similar fires, which conservationists at the Haitian-run Fondation Seguin (http://www.fondationseguin.org/) believe are arson-related.
A few years ago, I visited the park, which is on the edge of a beautiful mountain town called Seguin. I had taken a side path, where wild cacti mingled among the hundred-plus-year-old pines. During my walk, I would hear the sound of water crashing against rock and would happen upon a series of layered cascades with startling, bright green moss-covered grottoes. Every now and then I would find myself on the ridge of a massive canyon with clouds hovering above and below me, the clouds at times blocking portions of lush ravines and valleys.
I imagined all this disappearing as the fires burned for four days last week.
Haiti has a less than 2 percent remaining tree cover. A fragile country, still attempting to recover from a devastating earthquake, the aftermaths of hurricanes, questionable elections and a cholera outbreak, can ill afford to lose its last remaining natural treasures.Otherwise, as the folks from Fondation Seguin somberly reminded the world, "we are simply watching another desert emerge".
Born in Haiti, Edwidge Danticat is an award-winning author living in Miami.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/11/2110880/amid-the-flames-saving-haitis.html#ixzz1KrxcYiHb
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