Video: Forest Management Can Aid Jaguars

WCS Guatemala, in partnership with Wildlife Messengers, produced a video on a study showing how reduced-impact logging, which includes minimizing roads, avoiding sensitive areas and strictly regulating hunting, can have minimal impact on jaguars and other wildlife.

The study, originally published in 2018 by San Diego Zoo Global and WCS, indicates that well-managed forest concessions can maintain important populations of large and medium-sized mammals including large herbivores and large carnivores as long as hunting is controlled, outside access to roads is prohibited, and the volume of timber allowed to be extracted remains low.

The authors of the study say that responsible forest management would therefore be an ideal activity in the buffer zones and multiple use zones of protected areas creating much less impact and conflict than alternatives such as agriculture or cattle ranching while still providing economic opportunities. Forest concessions can also play an important role in maintaining landscape connectivity between protected areas, according to the study’s authors.

The results and video come now an October 22^nd event when the President of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, will extend the contract of three community forest concessions and approve two new community forest concessions in the Maya Biosphere Reserve – a significant conservation milestone for Guatemalan government, the National Council for Protected Areas (CONAP) and the Association of Forest Communities of Petén (ACOFOP).