NGOs, Ecotourists, and Endangered Avifauna

IMMATERIAL LABOR, INCOMMENSURATE VALUES, AND INTERSUBJECTIVE INTENTIONS

Early Scientific Expedition

In the spring of 1989, ten German ecologists traveled to Guatemala to evaluate the extent and condition of cloud forest — the ecological home of the resplendent quetzal. Their endeavor was sponsored by the Landesbund für Vogelschutz, an organization dedicated to protecting the endangered avifauna of Germany and the world. Using satellite photos, they located all the regions in Guatemala where cloud forest still remained, an area approximately nineteen hundred square kilometers in size. Under the assumption that cloud forest requires a minimum annual rainfall of 2,000 mm, and a minimum altitude of 1,500 m, they inferred that this area constituted a mere fraction of Guatemala's original fifty-two hundred square kilometers of cloud forest. Using old maps of Guatemala, they determined that most of this destruction happened within the last thirty-six years (a period relatively coterminous with the civil war). Destroyed, they hypothesized, were first those areas of cloud forest that were lowest in elevation and closest to roads. If conditions remained the same, they predicted that by 2020 all of Guatemala's remaining cloud forest would be gone.

The ecologists decided to limit their conservation efforts to the Sierras, or mountainous regions, of Caquipek, Yalijux, and Guaxac in the Department of Alta Verapaz, an area approximately 270 square kilometers in size, wherein lived some six thousand people in thirty-four different communities. They gave two reasons for their decision. First, its population density of quetzals was the right size for a conservation effort to be fruitful. Any lower a density, and a population of birds would not be able to reproduce itself, no matter how otherwise favorable the environment. And second, the cloud forest in this area was in immediate danger because of the clearing of forest by indigenous peoples. Indeed, the ecologists called this region "one of the most seriously endangered (amenazadas) areas in Guatemala owing to the high density of indians (indios) that live in the region." In other words, this area became the focus of the ecologists' attention owing to its high density of both endangered birds and endangering people.

As the ecologists then saw it, a simple strategy would underlie their future conservation efforts: "to incite a co-existence between the indians and the forest" (incitar una coexistencia entre los indios y el bosque). Such an incitation would require a number of interventions, such as terracing and reforesting, eliciting grants from private organizations, and petitioning the government for environment-friendly laws. Most important, th