Reforestation is about far more than planting trees, says Pro Eco Azuero’s Executive Director Sandra Vásquez de Zambrano. It’s about reshaping a community’s beliefs about the role and value of forests and the species within them.
Pro Eco Azuero is a not-for-profit organisation based in the Azuero Peninsula in southern Panama that’s dedicated to reforestation, habitat restoration, sustainable land management and environmental education.
The organisation partners with smallholder farmers who want to reforest part or all of their land, replanting about 86 different species, the seeds for which are sourced from nearby intact forest ecosystems.
But replanting is only a small part of the process. “Farm restoration doesn’t succeed in the long term unless the community feels it’s their project too,” Sandra says. By co-designing and collaborating wherever possible, “we make the community part of the process,” she adds.
Restoring habitat for the Azuero spider monkey
When people hear the term ‘tropical forest’, they typically think of rainforests. But the tropical forest biome is a mosaic of different vegetation types, with cloud forests at higher elevations and tropical dry forests in the lowlands.
Tropical dry forests are unique for their pronounced wet and dry seasons, and because most trees within this forest type are deciduous, shedding their leaves to conserve water when the 3-6 month dry season rolls around. Tropical dry forests are also one of the world’s most endangered forest types — partly because they are typically located in lowland areas favoured for development and agriculture. It’s estimated that less than 25% of tropical dry forests currently remain worldwide — most of which are located in South America.
The Azuero Peninsula was once cloaked by tropical dry forests. Today, however, much of it has been cleared for agriculture. The forest that remains is fragmented, dispersed among farmland, predominantly in hilly areas.
Azuero spider monkeys live in these forest fragments. This endemic subspecies is critically endangered — with just 145 estimated to be left in the wild, according to a 2013 study.
“Spider monkeys usually need a lot of habitat: 120-400 hectares is their typical range,” Sandra says.
“The patches of dry forest left in Azuero are about 45 hectares, so you can see that their habitat was cut in half.”
It’s this preference for a large habitat range that makes the Azuero spider monkey a great indicator of forest health.
Indicator species are plant, animal or microorganisms that are highly sensitive to changes in their ecosystems. For example, certain lichens can indicate air quality, certain frogs can indicate water quality, certain trees can indicate forest age, certain ants can indicate forest intactness and corals can be indicative of ocean temperature and acidification.
“If you have a lot of spider monkeys, that means that your forest is super healthy,” Sandra says, which is why Pro Eco Azuero is focused on restoring habitat for this species in particular.
By protecting the spider monkey, they can be confident they’re also protecting biodiversity more generally.
A corridor for local species and communities alike
When Pro Eco Azuero — formerly known as the Azuero Earth Project — was founded in 2008, the team connected with leading scientists at The Smithsonian and Yale University to design a restoration approach. The team and board then worked with GIS experts to map the peninsula and plan a corridor that would reconnect the fragmented patches of tropical dry forest.
Today, this planned corridor is 80km, with a buffer zone of 10km on either side, and includes nearly 400 private properties.
The corridor’s design was based on four factors, Sandra explains.
- Monkey sightings: in order to be sure they were reconnecting fragments of habitat, they needed to assess where Azuero spider monkeys were already located.
- Proximity to public schools: this ensured the corridor was close to populated areas, making the project accessible to the community while avoiding major roads.
- Topography: the corridor moves through highlands rather than lowlands, to appeal to farmers by prioritising land that’s less suitable for agriculture and cattle grazing.
- Water: the corridor protects an important watershed by following a basin of the Oria River.
In Azuero, all land is privately owned, including protected areas, so the Pro Eco Azuero team started asking local smallholder farmers to get involved. “But it wasn’t as simple as knocking on doors and saying, ‘you're part of my corridor, please plant these native trees that spider monkeys love’,” Sandra says. “People shut the door on them a lot.”
“It was a learning experience,” she adds. But the team was undeterred. They recognised the critical role of local communities in land-use decisions and in the overall viability of reforestation efforts, undertaking research to determine the best way to meaningfully connect with the community and partner on reforestation projects. This process led Pro Eco Azuero to work directly with school teachers.
“School teachers are one of the only professions that leave the community to get educated and return. You never see that here,” Sandra says. “We have a huge talent loss, because most of the people who want to study stay in the cities. But teachers return. They teach your kids. And if you trust them with your kids, you're going to trust them with other things too.”
At the time, there was no environmental curriculum in place for rural schools in Panama. “That was their entryway,” Sandra explains.
The Azuero Spider Monkey School Initiative is designed for primary school students aged 6 to 12. “It’s a very tailored, three-year-long curriculum that ladders biodiversity knowledge,” Sandra explains. “In year one, we talk about the forests and biodiversity of Azuero and focus on primate species. In year two, we talk about the importance of soil health, sustainable farming, pesticides, deforestation and reforestation and taking care of water. In year three, we talk about climate change.”
Pro Eco Azuero is currently delivering programs in 32 schools, with goals to reach 50 next year.
“We visit each school twice a year, and then at the end of the year, we do a community event. That’s where we give our message of reforestation to the whole community,” Sandra says.
“When we started our pilots in 2010, we had zero people who wanted to reforest. Now, we have a list of about 600 farmers who want to reforest with us. That’s because of 15 years of working with the communities and schools.”
Pro Eco Azuero’s reforestation process
Pro Eco Azuero ensures community buy-in by co-designing each restoration project with the landowner and engaging local and international volunteers for planting days.
The benefits of this approach are clear, but it does bring logistical complexity. The organisation has a rotating roster of international volunteers and is constantly engaging different school groups, for example. And, every project is unique in its own way. One landholder might want to reforest all their land, while another might want to reforest 3-4 hectares along the river’s edge and keep pasture for cattle.
But Sandra says much of this complexity is offset by a group of 10 local men affectionately referred to as ‘The Magnificents’.
The members of this group vary in age, from 23 years old to a grandparent, but what they have in common is their knowledge of local biodiversity. “They know everything about the land locally, from the tree species to the soil, to the mountains, to the animals to the biodiversity,” Sandra explains.
“They are the kings of the reforestation process,” she adds. The Magnificents do all the hard jobs. They visit each site, clean up the land, take measurements, dig the holes, and distribute the saplings to the spots where they will be planted.
Then, the volunteers arrive and do the planting. “We can plant from 1,200 to 2,000 trees a day, depending on the group,” Sandra says.
“Last year, we planted 60,000 trees. This year, we want to plant 100,000 trees.”
After a farm is replanted, The Magnificents and the rest of the Pro Eco Azuero team visit the site for monitoring twice a year — once in the wet season and once in the dry season. They also visit each site to undertake maintenance works, constructing firebreaks, improving fences to prevent livestock intrusion and replacing any dead saplings.
The team also uses a range of technologies to monitor projects, including passive acoustic monitors, camera traps and moth boxes.
Camera traps are primarily used to monitor mammals, and Sandra says they provide valuable insights. For example, capturing footage of spider monkeys on the ground indicates significant fragmentation, as they are forced to walk instead of swinging through tree canopies.
Passive acoustic monitors are used to measure bat populations, and moth boxes measure the abundance and diversity of nocturnal pollinators in the area. Bats and moths are both essential pollinators and play a significant role in promoting natural regeneration in reforested areas. The data collected helps Pro Eco Azuero evaluate the ecological impact of their interventions and the site’s capacity for natural regeneration.
The importance of building local economies
Reforestation is vital — but what’s even more pressing is halting deforestation and protecting our remaining forests. Every year, we destroy about 5 million hectares of forest, and 95% of this destruction occurs in the tropics, with at least three-quarters driven by agriculture.
In order to halt this deforestation, you need to address the motivations behind it. Agriculture is the driver of deforestation in Azuero, but the motivations are income generation and food security.
Agriculture isn’t the problem, Sandra says. The problem is that grazing cattle is one of the only ways to make an income in Azuero, and “people have been taught that they need more land, more grass, more sun”, she explains.
Sandra plans to tackle both of these misconceptions. Pro Eco Azuero already offers a number of classes on regenerative agriculture and sustainable cattle-grazing for local producers, and Sandra has goals to validate new sustainable business models — including bee farms, butterfly farms, native vanilla plantations and cacao and coffee agroforestry — and then showcase them to the community.
“I want to have a showroom of green businesses. I want to be able to show landowners that they have options and help them to see sustainable approaches are possible,” she says.
“When I did my permaculture course, I remember telling my teacher I wasn’t sure if I could change people’s mindsets. But my teacher always said, ‘build it, and they will come’. He said, ‘Sandra, do it, build one square metre, and people will come, and they will see, and they will believe and they will want to repeat it’.”
In addition to validating new business models, the Pro Eco Azuero team is also focused on scaling its community nursery program.
“We help people in local communities to set up their own nurseries,” Sandra explains. Most of these “micro-producers” are women, and Pro Eco Azuero teaches them how to identify plants in the forest, collect and propagate seeds and care for saplings. Then, Pro Eco Azuero places an order for the species they need for their restoration projects, purchasing the saplings when they are ready for planting.
“It’s a cycle,” she says. “It makes the community part of the reforestation process — because while the land might not be theirs, those saplings are.”
To date, Pro Eco Azuero has helped establish seven community nurseries, with 54 micro-producers in total. Sandra’s goal is to hit 10 nurseries and 70-80 micro-producers by the end of 2025.
This goal — like all of Pro Eco Azuero’s goals — reflects a commitment to “grow bit by bit”, without cutting corners or sacrificing opportunities for community involvement.
Rather poetically, this approach to business growth reflects the way nature itself regenerates: seeds are spread far and wide, some take hold, bursting through the soil towards the sky, providing cover for more seeds to take root, until a forest stands tall.
And Sandra says she can see this figurative forest starting to grow.
Some of Pro Eco Azuero’s students are choosing to study biology and environmental sciences, for example. There’s a shift among farmers too. “Cattle farmers are now associating tree cover with water, and thinking about how they can ensure they have water throughout the summer,” Sandra explains.
And, many landowners are asking Pro Eco Azuero to reforest all their land.
“When I started at Pro Eco Azuero in 2017, you almost never saw people wanting to reforest their whole farms,” she says. “But more and more people are coming to us and asking us to reforest their whole farm because they want trees and they want to bring biodiversity back. That’s happening more and more often.”
“We have started a really robust green movement,” Sandra adds. “That’s super gratifying for us.”
