Turning over a new leaf, Colombian ranchers plant trees
In Colombia's southern Guaviare department, on the doorstep of the Amazon, cattle ranchers are engaged in a practice that belies their jungle-wrecking reputation. They plant trees.
Under an experiment started in 2020, dozens of Guaviare farmers have moved their cattle to smaller enclosures and implemented rotational pasture, returning vast swathes of land to nature and replanting lost forest.
"The forest is cared for because we are no longer cutting down trees," milk farmer Olga Martinez, 65, told AFP.
The area was populated in the late 20th century by an influx of settlers attracted by the promise of "a land without men for men without land."
Martinez herself first arrived in Guaviare some 45 years ago, when the landscape was "mountainous jungle."
She and others soon changed that, clearing vast tracts of rainforest for pasture and cropland.
From the air, it is clear to see the human expansion taking huge bites out of the thick vegetation surrounding San Jose de Guaviare, the departmental capital.
But a change is taking root.
Martinez and 34 other Guaviare farmers have signed up to a conservation program managed by France's ONF government forest agency and its local branch, ONF Andina.
Since last year, she has planted some 1,200 trees on her 55-hectare (135 acre) property without having to give up a single head of cattle.
Livestock farmer Olga Martinez, who implemented a pasture rotation system, works in San Jose del Guaviare, Colombia.
In Colombia's southern Guaviare department, on the doorstep of the Amazon rainforest, cattle ranchers are engaged in a practice belying their jungle-wrecking reputation: they plant trees.
Under an experiment started in 2020, dozens of Guaviare farmers have moved their cattle to smaller enclosures and implemented rotational pasture, returning vast swathes of land to nature and replanting lost forest.