After a unanimous congressional vote, 12,620 acres of forest and a water source serving 5,000 families will be permanently protected as the Wildlife Refuge of Suyapa, Luís Hernán Baca Valladares, “MERO”.

For decades, the community of Aldea de Suyapa has followed in a Latin American tradition of creating an Easter procession route through their community, marked by a series of sawdust carpets, designed and created by local youth. This is a tradition dating back hundreds of years, with strong continuity in Mexico and Central America.

Every fire season is an existential crisis for our friends in the Aldea de Suyapa, Honduras. Since 1987, a volunteer group of community members have organized to protect their centuries-old communal forest from firewood poachers, land grabbers, and the expanding agricultural frontier.

Ignacio (Nacho) Osorto, founder of our partner organization AHDESA in Honduras, likes to say that when he met Trees, Water & People (TWP) founder Stuart Conway in 1998, his nonprofit was little more than an idea in a briefcase. An agronomist by trade, Nacho Osorto was working to restore and reforest several watersheds in rural communities outside of the capital city, Tegucigalpa.