Drugs and agriculture cause deforestation to skyrocket at Honduran UNESCO site
Honduras’ Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve occupies a large portion of the country’s eastern region.
However, despite official protection and recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Río Plátano is plagued by deforestation; satellite data show the biosphere reserve lost 13% of its primary forest cover between 2002 and 2020.
Deforestation shot up in 2020, nearly doubling the amount of forest loss over 2019. 2021 may be another rocky year for the biosphere reserve, with satellite data showing several “unusually high” spikes of clearing activity so far this year.
Sources say deforestation in the reserve is being driven by logging, agriculture and the drug trade.
Still going, through the storm
Format
Paola Barioli
How people in Honduras are surviving the impact of back-to-back hurricanes. Honduras was hit by back-to-back major hurricanes, Iota and Eta, in November 2020. The high winds and heavy rains compounded an already fragile humanitarian situation.
The municipality of Villeda Morales is home to the indigenous Miskito community, who make a living from fishing and rearing livestock. This population lives in an area of nearly 600 square kilometres, in villages reachable only by a maze of streams, rivers, lagoons and mangrove canals.
The hurricanes caused canals and rivers to overflow, flooding entire communities in Gracias a Dios. ‘Everything filled up with water and we spent more than a month walking with our feet in the water,’ Felicia remembers. ‘We lost our animals, our cows and our crops. It was bad. Extremely bad.’ Two months later, remote communities just like Felicia’s are still feeling the impact of those floods, as
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has been among the most vocal opponents of this rule aimed at protecting House Democrats from challengers on the left, i.e. challengers just like her. | Seth Wenig/AP Photo
DCCC Chair SEAN PATRICK MALONEY (D-N.Y.) this morning nixed the committee’s “blacklist” policy banning work with contractors who help candidates primary incumbents. But let s be clear about who really brought this thing down: Rep.
Hurricane Iota bashes Nicaragua, Honduras after Eta floods
Category 4 Iota hampered communications in Nicaragua and Honduras, cutting off contact with regions already devastated by Hurricane Eta.
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People watch the rising waters of the Rio Bermejo in the wake of Hurricane Iota in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on Tuesday. Hurricane Iota tore across Nicaragua on Tuesday, hours after roaring ashore as a Category 4 storm along almost exactly the same stretch of the Caribbean coast that was recently devastated by an equally powerful hurricane. [ DELMER MARTINEZ | AP ]
Published Nov. 18, 2020
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) â Hurricane Iota battered Nicaraguaâs Caribbean coast and flooded some stretches of neighboring Honduras that were still under water from Hurricane Eta two weeks earlier, leaving authorities struggling to assess damage after communications were knocked out in some areas.