Lumber supplier, Mark Hansen Designs

About Our Forest Management Plan

Mark Hansen Designs has been providing tropical hardwood to the construction trade since 1991. Presently, we stock a variety of woods including Mahogany, Santa Maria, Red Locust, Kaobia and Cocobolo. All of our lumber is from approved sustainable yield forestry from a plan minimo on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua.

The sustainable yield forestry management plan we have approved by the Nicaraguan Department of Forestry (INAFOR) is called "Kung Kuncito". The area is 2,000 hectares, about 5,000 acres, & is located in the Miskito Indian community of Esperanza on the Rio Grande de Matagalpa, in the Region Autonimo de la Costa Atlantica (RAAS). The RAAS & RAAN (north region) were granted autonomous status by the central government though there are many restrictions on those regions & their governing bodies. The results have been a desperately poor region has emerged. Esperanza has no power or phone service & is accessible only by water. To reach the area you must fly to Bluefields on the Atlantic Coast as no roads exist between Managua & Bluefields. From Bluefields a fast launch will take you to Laguna Perla in 1 1/2 hours & another 4 1/2 hours to Esperanza, population roughly 250. From Laguna Perla to Esperanza you will see 7 or 8 cabins along the 4 1/2 hour trip. A few alligators, caimans, salt water crocodiles, snakes, & birds (including pink flamingos). Two weeks ago the Rio Grande flooded with water rising nearly 20' with severe damage to the few communities on its banks. I'll be going there this week to see the progress within the forest & to see what damage was done to the communities. The Sindigo (elected tribal leader) from Esperanza was here last weekend looking over WBT & GPT's operation. We have promised to train some of the community members in carpentry on the GPT side. The history of logging in that region is quite sad. They've been exploited by both foreigners & Nicaraguans from the Pacific Coast promising much & delivering devastated forest land. In the past INAFOR has been staffed by incompetents &, worse, corrupts. They now have a new director, Ileasor Rodriguez, that is intelligent & seemingly honest. We've been working with INAFOR & Dr. Rodriguez for over a year establishing this management plan. It should be an example of how a management plan is made & our intention is to operate it as an exemplary plan as well. Hasn't been done before in Nicaragua. Management plans, yes. Properly executed management plans, no. The premise behind a sustainable yield forestry management plan is that harvesting will be done on a revolving basis within a time frame. Our plan is for 10 years, dividing the forest into 10 equal areas. Each year for 10 years an area is harvested. At the end of the ten year cycle the first harvested area should be ready for re-harvesting. Not just a theory; there are managed forests cherry & walnut in Pennsylvania in better condition now than 100 to 150 years ago. A sustainable yield forestry management plan has several elements which must be met.

They include:

The forest itself & selection of the species & individual trees that will be harvested.
Access in & out of the forest. How & where the skid paths for extraction are made.
Environmental concerns to the waterways, the forest, & surrounding lands.
Sociological impact on the area residents.

We are addressing these issues as follows:

We had indicated to the forestry technicians prior to drawing up the management plan that we:

Would be cutting all marketable species, not just mahogany. Too many tropical forests have been negatively impacted when mahogany is "creamed" out of the forest leaving the other species to dominate the resulting forest stand. A species diverse forest is healthier.
Would not be cutting trees smaller than .75 meters diameter at the bole (cut line of a tree, usually 3 feet above the soil line).
10% of properly formed trees of 1 meter or larger will be saved as seed trees for forest regeneration. Additionally a nursery has been established in the forest for reforestation. (Latest research regarding mahogany reforestation comes from Mexico. The researchers interpretation of that data Is that restocking within the skid paths is not as effective as creating clear cut areas. I cannot bring myself to clear cut so we will be going against their suggestions. Previous data I'd seen coming from Bolivia did support at least a part of the Mexican findings. That is, mahogany regenerates itself after natural disasters; fires, floods. In other words, a natural clear cutting. Think we'll wait for nature to clear cut & continue trying to restock with seedlings in areas of some clearing & along the skid paths.)
We are fortunate that access is rather straight forward & that skid paths are not extensive.
Same as above. The topography allows us to extract & skid logs directly to the mill site in dry weather or to a stream where logs can be floated to the mill site. The forestry technicians were pleased with the topography & have laid out skid paths to minimize erosion & stream contamination.
The Smithsonian Institute sponsored a forum on tropical forest deforestation in the early 1980's. Their finding was that over 90% of deforestation is from slash & burn agriculture. Logging operations are not left out of the blame: the campesinos usually follow logging paths into the forest to create their clear cut lands. A conclusion drawn from that & other tropical forest forums is that if indigenous peoples of the forest can realize an income, a source of livelihood from their forest, then they are more willing to value & protect their forest. Campesinos from Chontales on the Pacific Coast (really the central part of the country) continue to encroach, clear cut, & squat on lands of the Atlantic Coast communities. The communities lack the funds & resources to protect their lands from this encroachment. We believe with funds the community receives from the management plan they will be able to protect their forest. The project now employs 15 people from Esperanza in the forest. The presence of those workers is a deterrent to encroachment. We will be training some of those people in the operation of the sawmill, which arrives in the forest this week.

Certified lumber is quite popular in Europe as well as the USA. We probably will seek certification, possibly with Smartwood. From the information regarding certification that I've seen I believe we would meet all the requirements. I do have reservations about applying for certification, however. It is quite costly, more so considering the small size of our plan. My temptation is to use certification application money to further help the community. In any event, certification would take at least a year after initial operation of the management plan. They cannot certify until they can verify what the managers of a plan are actually doing. Hope this gives you & your clients some understanding of what we are doing, trying to do, with the management plan.