“Sometimes law enforcement is not appropriate,” says Marleny Zelaya of the Institute of Forest Conservation (ICF), a government agency. “At the ICF we find ourselves between the authorities in the prosecutor’s office, the soldiers and the communities.” She added that the fact that the prosecutor’s office went from zero scrutiny actions to a heavy-handed approach against trafficking in illegal goods, including timber, without considering that many poor communities use the resources rationally, if not legally, was not the best way to enforce the law.
Anaida Panting has welcomed the animals that are now recovering in Mabita, even if the community has to care for them. She says the national institutions only show up so that they see their faces and then disappear. The prosecutor’s office leaves the animals there, and the ICF assists in the transportation of the animals, but then they leave. Zelaya contends that they do their best, but sometimes they need to serve as mediators to prevent bigger problems.
Panting says there will always be problems. She explained that weeks ago a young man stole a parrot egg, which can be sold in Nicaragua for 1,500 lempiras. Hunger also drives locals to become traffickers.
Panting has built a strong link with the birds she looks after and tends to. Image by Martin Cálix/Contracorriente.
Trafficking increases when foreigners arrive in Mabita to buy macaws. Investigations by the public prosecutor’s office show that different birds have been traded along the route that takes in the villages of Mocorón, Rus Rus and Leimus, and that a Chinese national was paying locals to steal hatchlings and eggs from the nests. The exchange means little money for locals and a lot for traffickers who sell the species in Europe, Asia and at home in Honduras. Locals who want to take care of the species are facing dangerous people.
“Here if they kill a Miskito it’s as if they’d killed a chicken,” says a resident of Rus Rus, a Miskito village in Gracias a Dios. Some residents here have worked to protect the macaw, but they know that if they are threatened and killed so that trade can continue, their deaths won’t make the news.
For the Maya peoples of Mesoamarica, the scarlet macaw is the forest protector, the incarnation of the sun. But today in the cities, the birds can only be seen in cages, and witnessing a macaw flying is almost a miracle. In Mabita, the miracle happens daily. Panting receives them and kisses them. Apu pauni pree palisa — “Scarlet macaw, fly free” — is written in Miskito language in signs around this community that barely receives visitors. The scarlet macaw flies free and returns to the arms of the people who rescued it.
The yellow-naped parrot, the great green macaw, and the scarlet macaw find their last free territory in La Mosquitia, but wildlife trafficking in the area threatens the conservation of these species. Image by Martin Cálix/Contracorriente.
Banner image: a scarlet macaw in Mabita. Image by: Martin Cálix – Contracorriente.
This article was first published by Mongabay Latam. Edits by Philip Jacobson.
Source link : https://news.mongabay.com/2019/07/la-mosquitia-dangerous-territory-for-scarlet-macaws-in-honduras/
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Publish date : 2019-07-01 03:00:00
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