The Choluteca and Valle regions on the south coast, for example, have become hotter, drier, and less productive as a result of deforestation. A side effect of this is that the campesinos, who are now unable to live off the land, are fleeing the south. Erosion resulting from deforestation also reduces soil fertility and thus the yield a farmer can get from the land. Soil infertility forces farmers to search elsewhere for a plot to work. There will soon come a time when there will be no other land to work.
Deforestation also affects the people of Honduras in other, less obvious, ways.
The loss of scenic beauty and loss of wildlife are obvious enough, but the resulting loss in potential tourism is harder to quantify. If you look at Costa Rica, a country that has set aside large areas of land as national parks and earns millions of dollars a year in ecotourism, you can see that the potential cost of environmental destruction is significant. Lost also is the natural heritage of the country, and the chance for its people to identity with it. Diminished and unclean water supplies, and the loss of fertile soil, hydroelectric potential, and tourism, all combine to decrease the productivity of the land. From reduced productivity comes low income, high unemployment, and poor health and nutrition.